Philadelphia: Henry Altemus Company, (Ca 1907, C 1905). Hardcover - A now hard-to-find copy of this influential book by this prolific children's author. A charming spinoff of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, this story of "four friends aged eleven to thirteen who decide to form a club and who enact the novel in their daily lives, seeded Little Women Clubs across the United States. They were an outgrowth of two important social trends spanning the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: the womenÕs club movement and the settlement house movement. By the 1920s, Little Women Clubs had become a well-worn trope in American culture, linked to quaint domesticity and traditional femininity, values that were being challenged by feminism, women's suffrage, and the emergence of the 'new woman.' 'Day-Dreams,' a humorous poem by Dorothy Parker, appeared in the Boston Globe in July of 1922. It concludes "But though I'd cook and sew and scrub, / A higher life I'd find; / I'd join a little women's club / And cultivate my mind.'" (Gibson House Museum) However, even though the Clubs no longer exist, this remains a delightful story, illustrated by Eva M. Nagel, and appealingly bound in illustrated red boards with a cream spine and gilt lettering a decorations. Part of the slightly smaller Cherrycroft series issued in 1907 (measuring 6.75 x 4.5"). 176 pp.