"Depicts Alice Austen's poignant career as a photographer of New York's Lower East Side, the elegant parlors of society, and the immigrant masses at Ellis Island, and presents a representative selection of her works."--,Provided by publisher.

"Born into comfortable circumstances on New York's Staten Island, Alice Austen felt no need to pursue her 'career' for fame or fortune. In her old age, neither, tragically, was to be hers. Except for a fleeting and fortuitous moment of national recognition in 1951, a year before her death, her work has never been widely seen.In the late nineteenth century, cameras were cumbersome, 'film' consisted of fragile glass plates and exposures were made by educated guesswork. Despite complex technical difficulties, the youthful Alice Austen began to pursue the art strenuously, on her own, in obscurity and iust for pleasure. What resulted from such persistent dedication is a collection of images that equal or surpass those of any photographer of her time. Her independent, visual sensitivity, in fact, even anticipates the immediacy of Cartier-Bresson, the scope of Ansel Adams, the humor of J.R. Lartigue and the documentary journalism of Alfred Eisenstaedt, to name a few who followed long after her. Alice's world seems full of spontaneous vitality; from Society at play to the immigrant street characters in New York, the coming of the automobile, the beginnings of tennis, sailing ships, Chicago's Columbian Exposition, Philadelphia, Boston, the countryside of New England and beyond.Through the efforts of a dedicated few, including those at the Staten Island Historical Society, the little-known Austen collection of plates has been largely preserved and now made available for their first large-scale reproduction in book form. Ann Novotny, after four years of research into the up-to-now undiscovered details of Miss Austen's long and remarkable life, has produced a biography as moving and dramatic as the images which document it.As social history as much as art, Alice's World constitutes a memorable legacy from the American past."--,Front flap of dust jacket.

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