Last night my Little Women reading group and I met to watch the first episode of the PBS Masterpiece Little Women. It was wonderful to see them (my friends and the March sisters) again. My reading group had meet several times in 2016, while I was writing my book on Little Women, to discuss the novel and its two successors. They had all…
It has been lovely to hear from the first readers of Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters, which will come out Aug. 21. Because I had to produce the book so quickly in order to get it published for the 150th anniversary of Little Women on September 29, 2018, very few people had read it before it…
One of the new experiences for me as a trade author is the process of getting reviews. When I published my first two book with an academic press, it took a year or more for reviews to start coming in. This time around, as Constance Fenimore Woolson: Portrait of a Lady Novelist and Miss Grief and Other Stories get ready for publication on February 29, reviews have…
Here, finally, is my list of female Bildugsromane to read this year as part of the Classics Club's Women's Classic Literature Event 2016. I have only read the first before, and I'm reading the rest as part of my research for a chapter in the book I am writing, tentatively titled Reading Little Women: The History of an American Classic. Many of these are books…
The folks over at The Classics Club recommend beginning the Women's Classic Event (I sort like the idea of calling it a "Challenge") by answering some questions about yourself. So here goes . . . Introduce yourself. Tell us what you are most looking forward to in this event. I teach American literature at the university level and my research interests are particularly…