LOUISA MAY ALCOTT: THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEWS; ED. BY BEVERLY LYON CLARK.

This collection of nineteenth-century reviews provides a wealth of new information for scholars interested in Alcott (increasing the number of indexed reviews almost tenfold) but also insight into the ways in which reading audiences were constructed in the nineteenth-century United States. The reviews provide a window on to nineteenth-century attitudes toward popular fiction and toward women writers. The author of the novels and of sensational tales, of travel writing and of temperance tracts, Alcott was both highly popular and highly respected. Her works were reviewed not just in magazines for children, but also in the most prestigious literary journals of the day.