Audiobook · read by volunteers
Eight Cousins
Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888)
Read by Clarica · 25 chapters · 7 h 15
About the book
Rose Campbell is rich, lonely and frail, newly orphaned and sent to live with a houseful of well-meaning maiden aunts who fret endlessly over her health. Then her guardian, Uncle Alec, comes home from abroad, and he has very different ideas. He thinks a girl needs fresh air, exercise, sensible clothes and plenty of company, and he sets about raising her according to some decidedly unorthodox theories. Company arrives in force in the shape of seven boy cousins, ranging from the shy to the mischievous, who tumble through the house and the garden and draw Rose into a new life. Louisa May Alcott’s warm, funny novel mixes family comedy with a gentle argument about how children, and girls in particular, should be brought up. Clarica reads the twenty-five chapters. An old favourite for readers who loved Little Women.
Introduction
Louisa May Alcott was born in 1832 and died in 1888. She grew up in a family of idealists and thinkers in New England, worked at many jobs to support her relatives, and rose to fame with Little Women, which appeared in 1868 and 1869. After its success she became one of the best-known American authors of books for young readers.
Eight Cousins was published in 1875. It is the story of Rose, a girl who is sent to live with her relatives after the death of her parents, and of the way her guardian, Uncle Alec, takes charge of her upbringing. Alcott gives him a number of ideas about health, education and independence, many of which were advanced for their day, and she lets Rose’s life unfold among the family’s boys and girls with plenty of humour. A sequel, Rose in Bloom, follows the heroine into early adulthood.
The book has a clear moral purpose, as was usual in children’s fiction of the time, but it is carried lightly. Alcott’s fondness for her characters shows, and she is particularly good at the small domestic scenes in which feeling and comedy mix. Some attitudes and expressions reflect the nineteenth century and may feel dated.
This LibriVox recording has twenty-five sections, including a preface, and lasts about seven hours and twenty minutes. It is read by volunteer Clarica. It is a comfortable choice for family listening, for fans of classic girls’ stories, and for anyone who likes a story in which a family learns to grow together.
Public domain
Louisa May Alcott died in 1888: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text