Anne Boyd Rioux, professor of English at the University of New Orleans, will discuss her newest book, "Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters," at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 23, at the East Bank Regional Library, 4747 W. Napoleon, Metairie.

This event is free of charge and is open to the public.

Soon after its publication on September 30, 1868, Little Women became an enormous bestseller and one of America’s favorite novels. It quickly traveled the world and has become an international classic. When Anne Boyd Rioux read it in her twenties, it had a powerful effect on her. Through teaching it, she has seen its effect on many others.

In Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy, she recounts how Louisa May Alcott came to write the book, drawing inspiration for it from her own life. She also examines why this tale of family and community ties, set while the Civil War tore the country apart, has resonated through later wars, the Great Depression, and times of changing opportunities for women.

Today, Rioux sees the novel’s beating heart in its portrayal of family resilience and its honest look at the struggles of girls growing into women. In gauging its current status, she shows why it remains a book with such power that people carry its characters and spirit throughout their lives.

Anne Boyd Rioux has also written Constance Fenimore Woolson: Portrait of a Lady Novelist, named one of the ten best books of the year by the Chicago Tribune. She is the recipient of two National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships, one for public scholarship.

In her teaching and writing, Rioux is passionate about the recovery of 19th-century American women writers who wrote fascinating, sometimes provocative, and often daring works that have been unavailable and unread for generations. While this began as a scholarly interest, Rioux’s mission extended beyond the walls of academia as she realized how important it is for women writers today to know about these amazing foremothers who have been kept hidden from them. In addition to writing for scholarly and general interest publications, Rioux has also written Writing for Immortality: Women and the Emergence of High Literary Culture in America and edited Wielding the Pen: Writings on Authorship by American Women of the Nineteenth Century, both published by Johns Hopkins.

For more information regarding this presentation, contact Chris Smith, Manager of Adult Programming for the library, at 504-889-8143 or wcsmith@jefferson.lib.la.us.