A Modern Cinderella

By Louisa May Alcott

A Modern Cinderella is a collection of four short stories by Louisa May Alcott, the author of Little Women. Like her more famous novels, Alcott tells stories of young women interacting with people and events from the late 1800s. A great addition to the Alcott library of stories.
This Xist Classics edition has been professionally formatted for e-readers with a linked table of contents. This eBook also contains a bonus book club leadership guide and discussion questions. We hope you’ll share this book with your friends, neighbors and colleagues and can’t wait to hear what you have to say about it.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Xist Publishing
• Release date: Apr 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781623959838

Louisa May Alcott

Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) was an American novelist, poet, and short story writer. Born in Philadelphia to a family of transcendentalists—her parents were friends with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau—Alcott was raised in Massachusetts. She worked from a young age as a teacher, seamstress, and domestic worker in order to alleviate her family’s difficult financial situation. These experiences helped to guide her as a professional writer, just as her family’s background in education reform, social work, and abolition—their home was a safe house for escaped slaves on the Underground Railroad—aided her development as an early feminist and staunch abolitionist. Her career began as a writer for the Atlantic Monthly in 1860, took a brief pause while she served as a nurse in a Georgetown Hospital for wounded Union soldiers during the Civil War, and truly flourished with the 1868 and 1869 publications of parts one and two of Little Women. The first installment of her acclaimed and immensely popular “March Family Saga” has since become a classic of American literature and has been adapted countless times for the theater, film, and television. Alcott was a prolific writer throughout her lifetime, with dozens of novels, short stories, and novelettes published under her name, as the pseudonym A.M. Barnard, and anonymously.

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Reviews for A Modern Cinderella

[philsyphe · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The four stories in this collection differ greatly from one another in tone and subject matter.The title story didn't appeal to me all that much, as the experimental style didn't suit my taste. At times I was quite confused as to what was happening.The tale features three sisters who live with their father. The oldest sister takes on the role mother, doing most of the household chores, thus she is the modern Cinderella.Her younger sisters are in their late teens and do little to help out until she suffers from exhaustion and becomes bedridden. The teens aren't in the wicked stepsister mould but that's who they represent - "idle sisters" would be more apt. Two stars for this one."Nelly's Hospital" is a children's story. Because of this I was tempted to skip it, but I have such respect for Ms Alcott's writing abilities that I gave it a go. I enjoyed this more than the title story.Nelly is a girl of, I assume, nine or ten. She has a friend called Tony who's twelve and I get the impression Nelly's a bit younger than him.Anyway, after the girl's soldier brother is wounded, she is inspired to start her own hospital - for small animals and insects. She and Tony clear a space to house the 'patients' and the following day Nelly goes into the garden to find injured creatures.Three stars for this tale."The Brothers" is the most serious story of the four.A lady who's previously had the pox agrees to look after an injured rebel soldier, aided by a man recently released from slavery (his mother was black; his father white). Can't say much more without giving the plot away, but it's quite a sombre tale.Three stars for this.In contrast, "Debby's Debut" is a light-hearted story, featuring eighteen-year-old Debby - aka Dora - on holiday and under her aunt's wing. Her aunt is the epitome of Victorian prudery, fussing all the time about appearances, and is careful with whom her niece should or should not keep company with.Debby, although respectful of her aunt's ideals, has a mind of her own. She's not rebellious but she is an independent thinker, good-natured, and cares little if her hair is out of place when she's having fun. Nor does it bother her to be seen having bread and milk to eat in public - this is an embarrassment as far as the pedantic aunt is concerned.Two men fall in love with Debby, adding further interest to the tale.So four stars for this enjoyable story with its humour and romantic interludes.