The Young Woman’s Guide

“Happiness,” William A. Alcott argues, is the wrong thing to pursue first: seek holiness and excellence, and happiness may follow. His guide opens with a challenge to a familiar promise—and asks young women to aim higher than comfort.

In early nineteenth-century America, Alcott addresses young women as more than pupils: their character, he insists, will shape families and the moral future of the world. Education, he says, is not merely instruction in books or sciences, but every influence that trains the mind and forms the person. A young woman must take charge of her own growth, even as she prepares to guide others. The task is at once personal and far-reaching: what might change if she makes excellence her first aim?

With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world.

Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.