Sunday, February 10, 2013

Rose in Bloom - Louisa May Alcott

I enjoy going to estate sales.  I picked up this book at one recently because I remember as a little girl reading books of this style. They must have been inexpensive but they looked nice, hard-covered and shiny covers.  I hadn't realized that they were "modern abridged editions" back then; I had always thought I'd read the original classics.

This story is part of the series Alcott wrote after "Little Women".  Rose was orphaned and taken in by a group of aunts who had many sons who became her cousin playmates.  In this volume, Rose has returned from a trip abroad with her Uncle Alex, a budding young woman ready for adulthood who finds her cousins have grown into dashing young men.

It is still a good story to read, with strong family and moral values and a life when manners and decorum mattered.  Having read of the life of Alcott and her father (Eden's Outcasts) I saw the influence of her beliefs in the story.  I noticed her references to the writers of her day; Thoreau, Emerson and Keats.  I was able to reflect on how reading these stories when I was young undoubtedly influenced my attitudes toward life, romance and being a woman. I felt the  vocabulary was advanced for the age I would have been when reading it the first time.  I plan to seek out the unabridged version and see how it differs.

Published: 1876 (original) 1952 (abridged version)  Read: February 2013  Genre: Fiction

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