An Old-Fashioned Girl
novel by Louisa May Alcott
An Old-Fashioned Girl is a novel by Louisa May Alcott first published in 1869. The book revolves around Polly Milton, the 'old-fashioned' girl of the title, who visits her friend Fanny Shaw's wealthy family in the city and is overwhelmed by the fashionable life they lead and disturbed to see how the family members fail to understand one another and demonstrate little affection. She is largely content to remain on the fringes of their social life but exerts a powerful influence over their emotional lives and family relations.
The first six chapters of the novel were serialized in the Merry's Museum magazine between July and August 1869. Alcott added another thirteen chapters before publishing the novel.
The novel was the basis of a 1949 musical film starring Gloria Jean as Polly.
Plot
Polly Milton, a bright 14-year-old country girl who is sweet and kind, visits her friend Fanny Shaw and her wealthy family in Boston, Massachusetts for the first time. Polly is overwhelmed by the splendor of the Shaws' household and their urbanized, fashionable lifestyles, expensive clothes and other habits she has never been exposed to, and, for the most part, dislikes. Fanny's friends ignore her because of her different behavior and simple clothing, Fanny's brother Tom teases her, and Fanny herself can't help considering her unusual sometimes.
Despite feeling odd and out of place, and amid the new fashions and the constant demands of the Shaws, Polly keeps on being kind to the Shaw family, and eventually, her warmth, support, and kindness eventually win the hearts of all the family members, and her old-fashioned ways teach them a lesson they will never forget.
“An Old-Fashioned Girl” enters the record as novel by Louisa May Alcott. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Old-Fashioned, Girl and novel can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1448469. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1869 and 1949.
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This entry incorporates text from “An Old-Fashioned Girl” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.