Intro
Acknowledgments
Contents
Chapter 1: Reading Alcott's Textual Childhood
Childhood and Literature
The Little Women Legacy
Writing an American Childhood
Alcott and the Canon
'Childhood Persists'
The Chapters
Chapter 2: 'We Really Lived Most of It': The Trouble with Autobiography
Genre Trouble
Women Writing
The Trouble with 'I'
Retrieving the Real
Alcott and the Archives
Real Child, Real Author: Jo, Peter, Alice
Negotiating the 'Counter-Flow'
Chapter 3: Subverting the Sentimental Domestic
Positioning the Textual Child

'There's No Place Like Home': Locating a Sentimental Childhood
Subverting the Domestic
Reconstructing the Family Unit
Changing Spaces
Fleeing the Domestic: Outside Spaces and Wild Children
Chapter 4: Queering the Child
Narrating the Queer Child
Queering Language
Child Sexuality
Queering the Family: Gender and Domestic Roles
Gender Performativity and the Cross-Dressing Child
Can Childhood Be Queer?
Chapter 5: Race, Disability, and Class: Alcott's Peripheral Children
Reading Alcott's Peripheral Children

'Poor Lads' and 'Brave Little Girls': Class and Poverty in Alcott
Reading the Disabled Child
Language and Race
Language and the Utopian Society
Chapter 6: A Transcendental Childhood
Reading Transcendentalism
A Transcendental Childhood
The Trouble with Utopia
'This Large-Hearted Child': Emerson, Thoreau, and Childhood26
A Textual Transcendentalism
Chapter 7: 'The Model Children': Alcott's Theories of Education
A Transcendental Education
A Place to Learn
Books and Education: Reading the Canon
A Mutual Education
The Educated Child

Chapter 8: Retelling Alcott in the Twenty-First Century
Reading Fan Fiction
The Value of Fan Fiction
Children's Literature and Fan Fiction
Little Women as Origin
Alcott Adaptations
Reading Alcott Fan Fiction
'Everything Was Finally Right with the World'
Bibliography
Index