Eight Cousins

1875, 1976 Grosset & Dunlap edition
Louisa May Alcott
Eight Cousins, or The Aunt-Hill
Bought new for $3.95
A couple food stains (macaroni & cheese?) and tattered bookjacket, otherwise good condition hardcover
B-

I got this book from my aunt for Christmas 1976, as the note on the inside cover tells me.  I remember getting The Wizard of Oz from her on another Christmas, maybe the previous year.  I went on to become a huge Oz fan, but I never took to this book in the same way.  I'm finding that the non-Little-Women children's books by Alcott are pleasant but not as memorable.  For instance, I'd totally forgotten about the way Alcott plays with Chinese stereotypes in this book, so that I'm pretty sure she's mocking them and embracing them at the same time.

As for the main plot, 13-year-old orphan Rose has been living with her great-aunts for a year after the death of her father (her mother having died long ago), but now her Uncle Alec is coming to town to be her guardian.  Meanwhile, she has seven boy cousins that she's somehow not seen much of, although they all live locally and are about to become ubiquitous.  Lessons are learned, including that sensation stories are worse than cigars, and earrings and corsets are bad for health and vanity.  Uncle Alec encourages her to learn both housework and physiology.

So how does this "Rose" compare to the "Rose" of A Long Fatal Love Chase?  Well, Rosamond Vivian "sells her soul" for and gets a year of freedom but then the rest of her short life is spent running from her possessive "husband," until she dies in a boating accident he causes.  Rose Campbell is the subject of Uncle Alec's bet that he can be a good guardian for a year.  During that time, she agrees to trust his judgment but is allowed to tell him if his changes make her unhappy.  She becomes not only happier but healthier and more outgoing.  She also becomes a positive force in the lives of her cousins, and to a lesser degree her aunts.  (She has four regular aunts as well as the two great-aunts.)

In Rose in Bloom (1876), which I've read once or twice but don't own, Rose comes out in society and as a beautiful, rich heiress is sought as a wife, including by two of her cousins.