The Literate Quilter

Thursday, August 23, 2018

Very Old Books on My Shelves

We have many bookcases in our house. Today I want to share the books in the secretary, some of the oldest books, many badly worn.

They came to us in many ways, picked up at bookstores and sales and inherited from family.

Blaise Pascal's Pensees was a new book I purchased after taking a philosophy course in college. I bought several other philosophers at an estate sale in the early 1970s including Lucretius On The Nature of Things and Marcus Aurelius' Meditations.

The Meditations is inscribed, "Read, Ponder, and be Wise," and dated 1902.

I was a freshman in high school when I noticed Archy and Mehitabel by Don Marquis on a friend's parent's bookshelf. I would stop by her house on my way to school and I read the book while I waited. I bought a paperback copy and later found Archy Does His Part dated 1935.

Years ago my son and I helped an older couple downsize for a retirement home. We carted boxes of books to the library resale shop. I kept a few for my own library, including Carol's copy of Little Women.

It was a gift from her mother in 1932. Inserted are newspaper articles about the movie version starring Katherine Hepburn.

The volume was illustrated.

My father found this 1888 copy of Robinson Crusoe which I incorporated into my library after his passing.

I read it and blogged about it here.

From my grandfather Lynne O. Ramer's library is a 1903 copy of The Complete Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant.

I always loved his bookplate that appears in books from from his college and early teaching days in the late 1920s.

The Further Poems of Emily Dickinson, published in 1929, include those "withheld by her sister Lavina."

I first read Penguin Island by Anatole France in college, found while browsing the library stacks. This copy dates to 1925.

Modern Library editions on the shelf include Wuthering Heights, The Ordeal of Richard Feveral, my Pascal, and Vanity Fair.

I read George Meredith's The Ordeal of Richard Feveral at university. I picked up this 1913 edition of The Egoist but have not read it.

I have a very old and cheap copy of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables.

Religious books include The Holy War by Paul Bunyon from 1846.

This copy of the New Testament dates to the early 1800s and is a family heirloom. You can learn about the bible and "Indian Chief John Riley" who gifted it to my husband's great-great-great grandmother here.

A hymnal and worship book was presented to my grandfather in 1950. The wear shows he used it at worship every week for many years.

When I was growing up my family was close to the neighboring Kuhn family. When the youngest daughter passed my aunt was executress of the estate and kept this book which she gave to me.

On the shelves is a complete set of James Barrie and Jane Austen (including her letters and juvenilia).

And my grandfather Ramer's set of Emerson. Somewhere I found George Eliot's Life by Cross.

Mrs. Lincoln's Boston Cook Book from 1899 has the subtitle "What to do and what not to do in cooking."

Formation of the Union 1750-1829 was published in 1900.

I have several illustrated books of poetry selections including Through the Year with Browning and Pearls from Whittier. I just like them.

I wrote about my Grandfather's Edgar Allan Poe set in a post you can read here.

Other books from my husband's family include the 1881 children's book Reggie's Christmas, which I shared in my post about making a Redwork quilt based on the illustrations.

I shared a post on this Primary Arithmetic book, too, found here.

My husband's grandfather's 1880 Spelling-Book is on the shelf.

And his great-grandfather's book The Household Guide dated 1891, which I wrote about here.

Last of all there is a two-volume set of Don Quixote of La Mancha which has had four owners.

Tuesday, August 21, 2018

The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters

2018 marks the 150th anniversary of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, a novel which became a trendsetter best seller, influencing generations of girls.

Anne Boyd Rioux's new book Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: the Story of Little Women and Why They Still Matter celebrates the novel's history, legacy, and influence.

I don't recall when I first read Little Women. I was given a copy of Alcott's later novel Eight Cousins when I was in elementary school. Madame Alexander created Little Women dolls, and in 1960 to 1962 my great-grandmother gifted me Marmee, Beth, Amy and Meg. I never got a Jo or Beth doll for sadly my great-grandmother passed away in 1963. By then, I must have read the book or seen the movie, because I recall thinking that Amy was spoiled and I did not like her. I always liked Jo because she was a writer and at age nine I had decided I wanted to be an author when I grew up.

my Madame Alexander Little Women Dolls, 1960-62

Meg, Beth, Jo, Amy is more than a nostalgic look at the novel, for Rioux seeks to answer the question of what the novel offers to young readers today. Is it still relevant?

But first, she turns her attention to The Making of a Classic, presenting Alcott 's family and personal history, how they were fictionalized in the novel, how she came to write the novel and its early success.

Although the novel was inspired by the Alcott's family experiences, it was a very much idealized version of their life. Bronson Alcott held ideals that did not include worldly considerations so that his wife and daughters had to struggle to provide for their daily needs. He may have had episodes of mental instability. Louisa was perhaps a genius, but she also had to write to contribute to the family coffers.

Alcott never meant to marry off all the March girls, save Beth who dies. But the publisher insisted. Jo was at least allowed to marry on her own terms, and her husband and she run a school together.

This section alone was fascinating for those of us who love the novel.

The various printings of the novel, the illustrators (including those by May Alcott) are also presented.

In Part II, The Life of a Classic, follows the novel's adaptation for the screen and stage--including a musical and an opera--and their influence. I recently viewed the last adaptation, the BBC/PBS television series on Masterpiece Theater, which I very much enjoyed.

Rioux then turns her attention to the novel's Cultural and Literary Influence, including how it has dropped off the literary canon and has been marginalized as a 'girl's book.' And yet the novel had "more influence on women writers as a group than any other single book," Rioux writes, and she quotes dozens of writers extolling its inspiration. Little Women's legacy includes novels such as Anne of Green Gables by L. M Montgomery and Hermonine Granger in the Harry Potter novels by J. K. Rowling.

Is the novel an idealized version of life, or does it reflect reality? G. K. Chesterton thought Alcott "anticipated realism by twenty or thirty years," while many 20th c writers found it preachy and, in short, too feminine. Gloria Steinem and Germaine Greer both loved Little Women, while other feminists rejected the novel.

Is Little Women still relevant today, and why should it continue to be read, is probed in Part III: A Classic for Today.

In recent years fewer children have read Little Women, and that is in part because educational standards became slanted toward boys and their needs and interests. Even if Teddy Roosevelt liked the book as a boy, today's boys won't pick up a book that is girlish. That's why some writers use initials instead of first names--so the boy readers won't know the books are written by a female! Sadly, few books by women appear on school reading lists.

What is lost when boy don't read about family and community? Have we 'hypermasculinized' boys and condoned intolerance of the feminine?

Last of all, Rioux looks at the role models girls today have, from Disney princesses to the action heroines and warrior princesses, Rory Gilmore to Girls.

As a novel about young girls growing up, the March sisters offer readers images of what it means to be a girl and the choices girls have.

The novel, Rioux says, "is about learning to live with and for others," and it is about the compromises we make in life.

I highly recommend this book.

Anne Boyd Rioux is also the author of Constance Fenimore Woolson (read my review here) and editor of Miss Grief and Other Stories by Constance Fenimore Woolson.

Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters

by Anne Boyd Rioux

W. W. Norton & Company

Pub Date 21 Aug 2018

ISBN 9780393254730

PRICE $27.95 (USD)

“Reading Anne Boyd Rioux’s engaging Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters, has made me pick up Alcott’s novel yet again with renewed insight and inspiration. Every fan of Little Women will delight in reading this book. And all the women―and men―who haven’t read the novel will race to it after reading Rioux.”
- Ann Hood, author of Morningstar and The Book That Matters Most

*****

Little Women has influenced quilters as well.

Copy of pattern by Marion Cheever Whiteside Newton

Artist Marion Cheever Whiteside Newton established Story Book Quilts, a cottage industry of quiltmakers who sewes quilts based on her applique designs inspired by children's literature.