An Old-Fashioned Girl was published by Roberts Brothers in 1870, between the two parts of Little Women’s enormous success. The novel’s first section was serialized in Merry’s Museum in 1869; Alcott expanded it into a full novel by adding a second part set six years later.
Polly Milton visits her wealthy friend Fanny Shaw in Boston and is bewildered by the Shaw family’s values: the children are spoiled, the parents are distracted, and social performance has replaced genuine feeling. Polly’s “old-fashioned” qualities — sincerity, kindness, domestic competence, religious faith — are treated with contempt by the fashionable Shaws, but they attract genuine love and respect from those who are not blinded by fashion.
The second half leaps forward: Polly, now twenty, returns to Boston to support herself as a music teacher. She joins a community of working women (artists, writers, teachers) who are building independent lives without wealth or male support. This section is Alcott at her most feminist — celebrating women who work not from necessity alone but from conviction that self-reliance is morally superior to dependence, and showing a community of female mutual support that does not require male validation.
The contrast with the Shaws continues: Fanny, once the fashionable one, faces financial ruin when her father’s speculations fail, and must learn the very skills Polly always possessed.
Collecting An Old-Fashioned Girl
First edition (Roberts Brothers, Boston, 1870): Cloth binding.
Market values:
- First edition: $200–$600
- Good condition: $100–$300
- Later editions (1870s): $30–$100