1920 LITTLE WOMEN Victorian CHRISTMAS Gift for Her LOUISA MAY ALCOTT Civil War

  

GET IT WHILE YOU CAN!! MEG, JO, BETH AND AMY. Is for an original 1920 edition of the classic.

" LITTLE WOMEN; OR, MEG, JO, BETH, AND AMY " by Louisa. May Alcott, as illustrated by ALICE BARBER STEPHENS.

YOU'LL LOVE THIS BOOK!! One of the most popular of girls' books. It is a story of the happy home life of four girls, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy, drawn largely from the girlhood life of Miss Alcott and her sisters. What you will particularly appreciate about this edition are the 15 ILLUSTRATIONS! From drawings by ALICE BARBER STEPHENS. As educational opportunities were made more available in the 19th-century, women artists became part of professional enterprises, including founding their own art associations. Artwork made by women was considered to be inferior, and to help overcome that stereotype women became "increasingly vocal and confident" in promoting women's work, and thus became part of the emerging image of the educated, modern and freer New Woman.

ALICE BARBER STEPHENS was born on a farm in Salem, New Jersey, and attended local schools. Her Quaker family moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and at age 15 she became a student at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women (now Moore College of Art). She entered the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1876, where she studied under Thomas Eakins. She later studied at the Drexel Institute under Howard Pyle, and in Paris at the Académie Julian and the Académie Colarossi. She exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1887.

In 1890, Stephens won the Mary Smith Prize at the annual Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts exhibition. Her work regularly appeared in magazines such as Scribner's Monthly, Harper's Weekly, and The Ladies Home Journal. She illustrated books by Nathaniel Hawthorne, George Eliot, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and, notably, this edition of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. With artist and educator Emily Sartain, she was one of the founders of The Plastic Club of Philadelphia (1897), the oldest art club for women in continuous existence.

At that time, she taught at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women and worked as an illustrator. Female artists then, played crucial roles in representing the New Woman, both by drawing images of the icon and exemplifying this emerging type through their own lives. Stephens's artistic career spanned 50 years, during which she also lectured, taught, and judged painting and photography. L ITTLE WOMEN is a novel originally published on September 30, 1868 concerning the lives and loves of four sisters growing up during the American Civil War.

Based on Louisa May Alcott's childhood, this lively portrait of nineteenth-century family life possesses a lasting vitality that has endeared it to generations of readers. F irst published in two parts, Part I of LITTLE WOMEN appeared in October 1868 and was followed by Part II in 1 869.

THIS VOLUME COMBINES BOTH PART 1 & 2. T hrough their dreams, plays, pranks, letters, illnesses, and courtships, women of all ages have become a part of this remarkable family and have felt the deep sadness when Meg leaves the circle of sisters to be married at the end of Part I. Little Women is the story of The Marches, a family used to hard toil and suffering.

Although Father March is away with the Union armies, the sisters Meg, Jo, Amy and Beth keep in high spirits with their mother, affectionately named Marmee. Their friendly gift of a Christmas holiday breakfast to a neighboring family is an act of generosity rewarded with wealthy Mr. Laurence's gift of a surprise Christmas feast.

However, despite their efforts to be good, the girls show faults: the pretty Meg becomes discontented with the children she teaches; boyish Jo loses her temper regularly; while the golden-haired schoolgirl Amy is inclined towards affectation. However, Beth, who keeps the house is always kind and gentle. The novel tells of their progress into young womanhood with the additional strains of romance. This is the story of their growing maturity and wisdom and the search for the contentedness of family life.

Part two, or Part Second, also known as Good Wives, followed the March sisters into adulthood and their respective marriages. The critical reception of PART I was overwhelmingly positive; critics soon began calling the new novel a classic. Readers clamored for a second volume that would bring about a marriage between the main character Jo, and her childhood friend, Laurie.

Alcott received many letters and even visitors at her Concord home, asking for a sequel. In response to this demand, Alcott wrote a second part, entitled Good Wives, which was published in 1869. The second part picks up three years after the events in the last chapter of the first part ("Aunt March Settles The Question").

Both parts were eventually called. Little Women or Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy.

While resisting the popular demand to see Jo and Laurie wed, Alcott did write marriages for three of the March sisters. In 1880, the two parts were combined into one volume, and have been published as such in the United States ever since. It has become a much loved classic tale and many of the trials of the sisters are all too relevant today as evidenced by its continued following.

"Little Women" is one of the best loved books of all time. P ublished in 1920, this book is in GOOD+ CONDITION for its age; especially to be 106 YEARS OLD! And tightly bound with NO TEARS! It measures 5 3/4" X 8 1/4" and is complete with all 617 pages. Please see our other books too!