In yet another addition to the growing body of Louisa May Alcott's work, Ironweed follows The Poems of Louisa May Alcott (LJ 2/15/00) with these 19 previously uncollected stories, which chronicle the development of Alcott's early career as a writer. Though her earliest efforts, like "The Rival Painters: A Tale of Rome" and "The Masked Marriage," are patterned on the sentimental romances of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe, they contain glimpses of the creative genius behind her most popular later works. Alcott's more mature stories, like "Bertha," "The Lady and the Woman," and "The Sisters' Trial," demonstrate the growing influence of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Margaret Fuller. Monika Elbert's (English, Montclair State Univ.
