Quick Classics Collection Victorian ..., Louisa May Alcott
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Quick Classics Collection: Victorian Women

Author: Louisa May Alcott, George Eliot, Jane Austen

Narrator: Glenda Jackson, Dame Judi Dench, Prunella Scales

Abridged: 8 hr 36 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/10/2020


Synopsis

William Collins Books and Decca Records are proud to present ARGO Classics, a historic catalogue of classic fiction read by some of the world’s most renowned voices. Originally released as vinyl records, these expertly abridged and remastered stories are now available to download for the first time. What did it mean to be a woman in the Georgian and Victorian periods? These beloved novels offer three dramatically different, but universally recognisable, experiences. Whether it is the drama of sisterhood, the trials and tribulations of romantic encounters, or the struggles of being a writer in a male world, each story holds just as much resonance for the female experience as they did on first publication. These classic stories are read by two-time Academy Award winner, Glenda Jackson; Fawlty Towers’ Pruncella Scales; and Dame Judi Dench. This collection includes:• by Louisa May Alcott, read by Glenda Jackson• by George Eliot, read by Dame Judi Dench• by Jane Austen, read by Prunella Scales

Author Bio

Louisa May Alcott was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, on November 29, 1832. She and her three sisters—Anna, Elizabeth, and May—were educated by their father, philosopher/ teacher Bronson Alcott, and raised on the practical Christianity of their mother, Abigail May.

Louisa spent her childhood in Boston and in Concord, Massachusetts, where her days were enlightened by visits to Ralph Waldo Emerson's library, excursions into nature with Henry David Thoreau, and theatricals in the barn at Hillside. Like her character Jo March from Little Women, young Louisa was a tomboy.

For Louisa, writing was an early passion. She had a rich imagination, and often her stories became melodramas that she and her sisters would act out for friends. At age fifteen, troubled by the poverty that plagued her family, she vowed to make something of herself. Confronting a society that offered little opportunity to women seeking employment, Louisa remained determined; whether as a teacher, seamstress, governess, or household servant, for many years Louisa did any work she could find.

Louisa's career as an author began with poetry and short stories that appeared in popular magazines. In 1854, when she was twenty-two, her first book, Flower Fables, was published. Another milestone along her literary path was Hospital Sketches, which was based on the letters she had written home from her post as a nurse in Washington, D.C., during the Civil War.

When Louisa was thirty-five, her publisher asked her to write a book for girls. Thus, she wrote Little Women, which is based on Louisa and her sisters' coming of age and is set in Civil War New England. Jo March was the first American juvenile heroine to act from her own individuality; a living, breathing person rather than the idealized stereotype that was then prevalent in children's fiction.

In all, Louisa published over thirty books and collections of stories. She died on March 6, 1888, only two days after her father.

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