A Strange Life – Selected Essays of Louisa May Alcott

Louisa May Alcott is best known as the author of Little Women. But she was also a noted essayist who wrote on a wide range of subjects, including her father’s failed utopian commune, life as a Civil War nurse and her experience as a young woman sent to work in service to alleviate her family’s poverty. Blending gentle satire with reportage and emotive biography, A Strange Life – edited by Liz Rosenberg and with a preface by Jane Smiley – shows Alcott to be one of the sharpest wits in American literature. ‘Lively, occasionally grim, and genuinely funny essays from a beloved author.’ Kirkus