Work: A Story of Experience was published by Roberts Brothers in 1873, serialized first in the Christian Union. It is Alcott’s most directly autobiographical adult novel (as opposed to the fictionalized autobiography of Little Women) and her most politically radical — a Bildungsroman that traces a woman’s education not through marriage but through labor.
Christie Devon, twenty-one, leaves her uncle’s farm determined to support herself. Over the next decade, she works as a domestic servant (learning the humiliation of service), an actress (learning that public performance compromises private identity), a governess (learning the isolation of the genteel poor), a seamstress (learning how capitalist production destroys workers’ bodies), and a companion to a mentally ill woman (learning the cost of emotional labor). Each job teaches her something about women’s place in the economy, and each is eventually lost to circumstances beyond her control.
The novel’s second half moves from individual struggle to collective action: Christie finds a community of reformers — women working for suffrage, labor rights, and racial equality — and her personal story becomes part of a larger movement. Alcott explicitly connects women’s economic subjection to other forms of oppression, and her Christie does not find happiness through romantic love (her husband dies) but through purposeful work in community with other women.
Collecting Work: A Story of Experience
First edition (Roberts Brothers, Boston, 1873): Cloth binding.
Market values:
- First edition: $150–$400
- Good condition: $75–$200
- Later editions: $25–$80