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Polly Milton, a simple, cheerful country girl, comes to visit her rich friend Fanny Shaw in Boston and finds a fashionable family where the children are…
Polly Milton, a simple, cheerful country girl, comes to visit her rich friend Fanny Shaw in Boston and finds a fashionable family where the children are spoiled, the parents distant and the girls care only for clothes and flirting. Her kindness slowly wins them over, and years later, when Polly returns to the city to earn her living as a music teacher, the Shaws lose their fortune and discover how much they need her old-fashioned values.
Context and significance
Louisa May Alcott published the novel in 1870, two years after Little Women, and it was one of her most popular books. Read also Eight Cousins, and see her life.
About the author
Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888) grew up in Concord, Massachusetts, daughter of the idealistic and often penniless educator Bronson Alcott; Emerson and Thoreau were family friends and teachers. To support her family she sewed, taught, worked as a servant and wrote sensational thrillers under a pen name.
During the Civil War she nursed soldiers in Washington until she fell gravely ill. When her publisher asked for a book for girls, she wrote Little Women (1868), drawn from her own family, and it made her famous and secure. She campaigned against slavery and for women's right to vote.