Louisa May Alcott
Louisa May Alcott | |
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Born | Germantown, Pennsylvania U.S. | November 29, 1832
Died | March 6, 1888 Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. | (aged 55)
Resting place | Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord, Massachusetts, U.S. |
Pen name | A. M. Barnard |
Occupation | Novelist |
Period | American Civil War |
Genre |
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Subject | Young adult fiction |
Signature | |
Louisa May Alcott (/ˈɔːlkət, -kɒt/; November 29, 1832 – March 6, 1888) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet best known for writing the novel Little Women (1868) and its sequels Good Wives (1869), Little Men (1871) and Jo's Boys (1886). Raised in New England by her transcendentalist parents, Abigail May and Amos Bronson Alcott, she grew up among many well-known intellectuals of the day, including Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau.
Alcott's family suffered from financial difficulties, and while she worked to help support the family from an early age, she also sought an outlet in writing. She began to achieve critical success for her writing in the 1860s. Early in her career, she sometimes used pen names such as A. M. Barnard, under which she wrote lurid short stories and sensation novels for adults.
Published in 1868, Little Women is set in the Alcott family home, Orchard House of Concord, Massachusetts, and is loosely based on Alcott's childhood experiences with her three sisters, Abigail May Alcott Nieriker, Elizabeth Sewall Alcott, and Anna Alcott Pratt. The novel was well-received at the time and is still popular today among both children and adults. It has been adapted for film and television many times.
Alcott was an abolitionist and a feminist and remained unmarried throughout her life. She also spent her life active in reform movements such as temperance and women's suffrage. She died from a stroke in Boston on March 6, 1888, just two days after her father's death.
Early life[edit]
Louisa May Alcott was born on November 29, 1832, in Germantown,[1] which is now part of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her parents were transcendentalist and educator Amos Bronson Alcott and social worker Abigail "Abba" May.[2] She was the second of four daughters: the eldest, Anna, with Elizabeth and May following.[3] As a child, she was a tomboy who preferred boys' games.[4] The family moved to Boston in 1834,[5] where Alcott's father established the experimental Temple School[6] and met with other transcendentalists like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.[7] Bronson participated in child-care but often failed to provide income, creating conflict in the family.[8] Alcott's father was constantly teaching morals and improvement, while Abba emphasized imagination and supported Alcott's writing.[9] Alcott also shared her mother's temper and deeply-rooted feminism.[3]
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Tour of Orchard House, June 19, 2017, C-SPAN |
In 1840, after several setbacks with Temple School, the Alcott family moved to a cottage in Concord, Massachusetts rented by Emerson. Louisa described the three years they spent at Hosmer Cottage as the "happiest of her life."[9] By 1843, the Alcotts moved to Fruitlands, a utopian community started by Alcott's father and Charles Lane.[10] She later described these early years in a newspaper sketch entitled "Transcendental Wild Oats." The sketch was reprinted in the volume Silver Pitchers (1876), which relates the family's experiment in "plain living and high thinking" at Fruitlands.[11] After the collapse of Fruitlands, they rented rooms next to their old cottage, then in 1845 used Abba's inheritance to buy a home in Concord they called Hillside, although the family struggled without income beyond the girls' sewing and teaching. Eventually, some friends arranged a job for Abba[12] and three years after moving into Hillside, the family moved to Boston. Hillside was sold to Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1852.[13] After moving over twenty times in 30 years, the Alcotts returned to Concord once again in 1857 and moved into Orchard House, a two-story manor house with a tenant house joined onto the back, in the spring of 1858 until 1877. It was at Orchard House that Alcott wrote Little Women.[14]
Alcott was primarily educated by her father, who established a strict schedule and believed in "the sweetness of self-denial."[15] She was also instructed by naturalist Henry David Thoreau, as well as Sophia Foord, who lived with the family for a time, and whom she would later eulogize.[16] She also grew up around writers and educators such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Margaret Fuller, and Julia Ward Howe, all of whom were family friends. Alcott had a particular fondness for Thoreau and Emerson; as a young girl, they were both "sources of romantic fantasies for her."[17]
Poverty made it necessary for Alcott to go to work at an early age as a teacher, seamstress, governess, domestic helper, and writer. Her sisters also supported the family by working as seamstresses, while their mother took on social work among the Irish immigrants. Only the youngest, Abigail, was able to attend public school. Due to all of these pressures, writing became a creative and emotional outlet for Alcott.[18] Her first book was Flower Fables (1849), a selection of tales she originally told Ellen Emerson, daughter of Ralph Waldo Emerson.[19] Alcott, who was driven in life not to be poor, is quoted as saying, "I wish I was rich, I was good, and we were all a happy family this day."[20]
When Alcott was young, her family served as station masters on the Underground Railroad, when they housed fugitive slaves. Alcott knew Frederick Douglass later as an adult.[21] Alcott read and admired the Declaration of Sentiments published by the Seneca Falls Convention on women's rights, advocated for women's suffrage, and became the first woman to register to vote in Concord, Massachusetts in a school board election.[22] The 1850s were hard times for the Alcotts, and in 1854 Louisa found solace at The Boston Theatre where she wrote The Rival Prima Donnas, which she later burned due to a quarrel between the actresses over who would play what role. At one point in 1857, unable to find work and filled with despair, Alcott contemplated suicide. During that year, she read The Life of Charlotte Brontë by Elizabeth Gaskell and found many parallels between Charlotte Brontë's life and her own.[23] In 1858, her younger sister Elizabeth died and her older sister Anna married a man named John Pratt. Alcott considered these events catalysts to breaking up their sisterhood.[18]
Life in Dedham[edit]
Alcott's mother, Abba, ran an "intelligence office" to help the destitute find employment.[24] When James Richardson came to Abba in the winter of 1851 seeking a companion for his frail sister who could also help out with some light housekeeping, Alcott volunteered to serve in the house filled with books, music, artwork, and good company on Highland Avenue.[25] Alcott may have imagined the experience as something akin to being a heroine in a Gothic novel, as Richardson described their home in a letter as stately but decrepit.[25]
Richardson's sister, Elizabeth, was 40 years old and suffered from neuralgia.[25] She was shy and did not seem to have much use for Alcott.[25] Instead, Richardson spent hours reading her poetry and treating her like his confidant and companion, sharing his personal thoughts and feelings with her.[25] Alcott reminded Richardson that she was supposed to be Elizabeth's companion, not his, and she was tired of listening to his "philosophical, metaphysical, and sentimental rubbish."[25] He responded by assigning her more laborious duties, including chopping wood and scrubbing the floors.[25]
Alcott quit after seven weeks, when neither of the two girls her mother sent to replace her decided to take the job.[25] As she walked from Richardson's home to Dedham station, she opened the envelope he handed her with her pay.[25] According to Alcott family tradition, she was so unsatisfied with the four dollars she found inside that she mailed the money back to him in contempt.[25] She later wrote a slightly fictionalized account of her time in Dedham titled How I went into service, which she submitted to Boston publisher James T. Fields.[26] He rejected the piece, telling Alcott that she had no future as a writer.[26]
Literary success[edit]
As an adult, Alcott was an abolitionist, temperance advocate, and feminist.[27] In 1860, Alcott began writing for the Atlantic Monthly. When the American Civil War broke out, she served as a nurse in Union Hospital in the Georgetown area of Washington, D.C., for six weeks in 1862–1863.[11] She intended to serve three months as a nurse, but contracted typhoid fever and became deathly ill halfway through her service, although she eventually recovered. Her letters home—revised and published in the Boston anti-slavery paper Commonwealth and collected as Hospital Sketches (1863, republished with additions in 1869)[11]—brought her first critical recognition for her observations and humor.[28] This was her first book and was inspired by her army experience.[29] She wrote about the mismanagement of hospitals, the indifference and callousness of some of the surgeons she encountered, and her passion for seeing the war firsthand.[30] Her main character, Tribulation Periwinkle, shows a passage from innocence to maturity and is a "serious and eloquent witness".[18] Soon after, she wrote her novel Moods (1864), based on her own experience and stance on "woman's right to selfhood."[31]
After she served as a nurse, Alcott's father wrote her a heartfelt poem titled "To Louisa May Alcott. From her father". The poem describes her father's pride in her nursing work, helping injured soldiers, and bringing cheer and love into their home. He ends the poem by telling her she's in his heart for being a selfless, faithful daughter.[32]
Between 1863 and 1872, Alcott anonymously wrote at least thirty-three gothic thrillers for popular magazines and papers such as The Flag of Our Union; they were rediscovered in 1975.[33] In the mid-1860s she wrote passionate, fiery novels and sensation stories akin to those of English authors Wilkie Collins and Mary Elizabeth Braddon under the nom de plume A. M. Barnard. Other pen names she used include Aunt Weedy, Flora Fairfield, Oranthy Bluggage, and Minerva Moody. Among these sensation stories are A Long Fatal Love Chase and Pauline's Passion and Punishment.[34] The protagonists of these books, like those of Collins and Braddon (who also included feminist characters in their writings), are strong, smart, and determined. She also wrote stories for children and did not return to writing for adults after her children’s stories became popular. Alcott also wrote the novelette A Modern Mephistopheles (1877), which was published anonymously and during her lifetime believed to be the work of Julian Hawthorne. She also wrote the semi-autobiographical novel Work (1873).[35]
Catherine Ross Nickerson credits Alcott with creating one of the earliest works of detective fiction in American literature, preceded only by Edgar Allan Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and his other Auguste Dupin stories, with the 1865 thriller "V.V., or Plots and Counterplots." Alcott published the story anonymously and it concerns a Scottish aristocrat who tries to prove that a mysterious woman has killed his fiancée and cousin. The detective on the case, Antoine Dupres, is a parody of Poe's Dupin who is less concerned with solving the crime than in setting up a way to reveal the solution with a dramatic flourish.[36]
Alcott achieved further success with the first part of Little Women: or Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy (1868), a semi-autobiographical account of her childhood with her sisters in Concord, Massachusetts, published by the Roberts Brothers. When Alcott returned to Boston following her travels in Europe, she became an editor of the children's magazine Merry's Museum. There she met Thomas Niles, who encouraged the writing of Part I of the novel by asking her to write a book especially for girls.[37] Part II, also known as Good Wives (1869), followed the March sisters into adulthood and marriage. Little Men (1871) detailed Jo's life at the Plumfield School she founded with her husband Professor Bhaer after Part Two of Little Women. Lastly, Jo's Boys (1886) completed the "March Family Saga", Alcott's best-known books.[38]
In Little Women, Alcott based her heroine "Jo" on herself. However, Jo marries at the end of the story, whereas Alcott remained single throughout her life. She explained her "spinsterhood" in an interview with Louise Chandler Moulton, saying "I am more than half-persuaded that I am a man's soul put by some freak of nature into a woman's body.... because I have fallen in love with so many pretty girls and never once the least bit with any man.”[39] Alcott's romance while in Europe with the young Polish man Ladislas "Laddie" Wisniewski was detailed in her journals but then removed by Alcott before her death.[40] Alcott identified Laddie as the model for the character Laurie in Little Women.[41] Likewise, each of her characters seems to have parallels with people from Alcott's life—from Beth's death mirroring Lizzie's to Jo's rivalry with the youngest sister, Amy, mirroring Alcott's own rivalry with her sister (Abigail) May.[42][43] In addition to drawing on her own life during the development of Little Women, Alcott also took influence from several of her earlier works including "The Sisters' Trial", "A Modern Cinderella", and "In the Garret". The characters within these short stories and poems, in addition to Alcott's own family and personal relationships, inspired the general concepts and bases for many of the characters in Little Women and the author's subsequent novels.[44] Little Women was well-received, with critics and audiences finding it to be a fresh, natural representation of daily life suitable for many age groups. An Eclectic Magazine reviewer called it "the very best of books to reach the hearts of the young of any age from six to sixty".[45] With the success of Little Women, Alcott shied away from public attention and would sometimes act as a servant when fans came to her house.
Along with Elizabeth Stoddard, Rebecca Harding Davis, Anne Moncure Crane, and others, Alcott was part of a group of female authors during the Gilded Age who addressed women's issues in a modern and candid manner. Their works were, as one newspaper columnist of the period commented, "among the decided 'signs of the times'".[46]
Later years[edit]
In 1877, Alcott helped found the Women's Educational and Industrial Union in Boston.[47] After her youngest sister May died in 1879, Louisa assumed the care of her niece, Lulu, who was named after Louisa.[48] Alcott suffered from chronic health problems in her later years,[49] including vertigo.[50] She and her earliest biographers[51] attributed her illness and death to mercury poisoning. During her American Civil War service, Alcott contracted typhoid fever and was treated with calomel, a compound containing mercury.[52] Recent analysis of Alcott's illness suggests that her chronic health problems may have been associated with an autoimmune disease, not mercury exposure. However, mercury is a known trigger for autoimmune diseases as well. An 1870 portrait of Alcott shows her cheeks to be quite flushed, perhaps with the "butterfly rash" across cheeks and nose which is often characteristic of lupus,[53] but there is no conclusive evidence available for a firm diagnosis.
Alcott died of a stroke[51] at age 55 in Boston, on March 6, 1888,[50] two days after her father's death.[29] She is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, near Emerson, Hawthorne, and Thoreau, on a hillside now known as Authors' Ridge.[54] Her niece Lulu was only eight years old when Louisa died. She was cared for by Anna Alcott Pratt, then reunited with her father in Europe and lived abroad until her death in 1976.
Louisa frequently wrote in her journals about going on long walks and runs. She challenged prevailing social norms regarding gender by encouraging her young female readers to run as well.[55]
Legacy[edit]
Biography and documentary[edit]
Before her death, Alcott asked her sister Anna Pratt to destroy her letters and journals; Anna did not destroy all of them and gave the rest to family friend Ednah Dow Cheney.[56] In 1889 Cheney was the first person to undergo a deep study of Alcott's life, compiling the journals and letters to publish Louisa May Alcott: Her Life, Letters, and Journals. The compilation has been published multiple times since then.[57] Cheney also published Louisa May Alcott: The Children's Friend, a version of the first compilation revised to focus on Alcott's appeal to children.[56] Other various compilations of Alcott's letters were published in the following decades.[58] In 1909 Belle Moses wrote Louisa May Alcott, Dreamer and Worker: A Study of Achievement, which established itself as the "first major biography" about Alcott.[59] Katharine S. Anthony's Louisa May Alcott, written in 1938, was the first biography to focus on the author's psychology.[60] A comprehensive biography about Alcott was not written until Madeleine B. Stern's 1950 biography Louisa May Alcott.[61] In the 1960s-1970s, feminist analysis of Alcott's fiction increased; analysis also focused on the contrast between her domestic and sensation fiction.[62]
"Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind 'Little Women'" aired in 2009 as part of the American Masters biography series and was aired a second time on May 20, 2018.[63] It was directed by Nancy Porter and written by Harriet Reisen, who wrote the script based on primary sources from Alcott's life.[64] The documentary, which starred Elizabeth Marvel as Alcott, was shot onsite for the events it covered. It included interviews with Alcott scholars, including Sarah Elbert, Daniel Shealy, Madeleine Stern, Leona Rostenberg, and Geraldine Brooks.[63]
Alcott homes[edit]
The Alcotts' Concord home, Orchard House, where the family lived for 25 years[65] and where Little Women was written, is open to the public and pays homage to the Alcotts by focusing on public education and historic preservation.[66] The Louisa May Alcott Memorial Association allows tourists to walk through the house and learn about Alcott.[67] Her Boston home is featured on the Boston Women's Heritage Trail.[37]
Film and television[edit]
Little Women inspired film versions in 1933, 1949, 1994, 2018, and 2019. The novel also inspired television series in 1958, 1970, 1978, and 2017, anime versions in 1981 and 1987, and a 2005 musical. It also inspired a BBC Radio 4 version in 2017.[68] Little Men inspired film versions in 1934, 1940, and 1998, and was the basis for a 1998 television series.[69] Other films based on Alcott novels and stories are An Old-Fashioned Girl (1949),[70] The Inheritance (1997),[71] and An Old Fashioned Thanksgiving (2008).[72]
Influence[edit]
Various modern writers have been influenced and inspired by Alcott's work, particularly Little Women. As a child, Simone de Beauvior felt a connection to Jo and expressed, "Reading this novel gave me an exalted sense of myself.[73] Cynthia Ozick calls herself a "Jo-of-the-future", and Patti Smith explains, "[I]t was Louisa May Alcott who provided me with a positive view of my female destiny."[73] Writers influenced by Alcott include Ursula K. Le Guin, Barbara Kingsolver, Gail Mazur, Anna Quindlen, Anne Lamott, Sonia Sanchez, Ann Petry, Gertrude Stein, and J. K. Rowling.[74] U. S. president Theodore Roosevelt said he "worshiped" Alcott's books. Other politicians who have been impacted by Alcott's books include Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Hillary Clinton, and Sandra Day O'Connor.[75] Louisa May Alcott was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1996.[76]
Selected works[edit]
The Little Women series[edit]
- Little Women, or Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy (1868)
- Second Part of Little Women, or Good Wives, published in 1869 and afterward published together with Little Women.
- Little Men: Life at Plumfield with Jo's Boys (1871)
- Jo's Boys and How They Turned Out: A Sequel to "Little Men" (1886)
Novels[edit]
- The Inheritance (1849, unpublished until 1997)
- Moods (1865, revised 1882)
- An Old Fashioned Girl (1870)
- Will's Wonder Book (1870)
- Work: A Story of Experience (1873)
- Beginning Again, Being a Continuation of Work (1875)
- Eight Cousins, or The Aunt Hill (1875)
- Rose in Bloom: A Sequel to Eight Cousins (1876)
- Under the Lilacs (1878)
- Jack and Jill: A Village Story (1880)
- Diana and Persis (1978, posthumous; incomplete manuscript)
As A. M. Barnard[edit]
- Behind a Mask, or a Woman's Power (1866)
- The Abbot's Ghost, or Maurice Treherne's Temptation (1867)
- A Long Fatal Love Chase (1866; first published 1995)
Published anonymously[edit]
- A Modern Mephistopheles (1877)
Short story collections[edit]
- Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag (1872–1882). (66 short stories in six volumes)
- 1. "Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag"
- 2. "Shawl-Straps"
- 3. "Cupid and Chow-Chow"
- 4. "My Girls, Etc."
- 5. "Jimmy's Cruise in the Pinafore, Etc."
- 6. "An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc."
- Lulu's Library (1886–1889) A collection of 32 short stories in three volumes.
- Flower Fables (1854)
- On Picket Duty, and other tales (1864)
- Morning-Glories and Other Stories (1867) Eight fantasy stories and four poems for children, including "A Strange Island", "The Rose Family", "A Christmas Song", "Morning-Glories", "Shadow-Children", "Poppy's Pranks", "What the Swallows Did", "Little Gulliver", "The Whale's Story", "Goldfin and Silvertail".
- Kitty's Class Day and Other Stories (Three Proverb Stories), 1868, (includes "Kitty's Class Day", "Aunt Kipp" and "Psyche's Art")
- Proverb Stories (1882)
- Spinning-Wheel Stories (1884). A collection of 12 short stories.
- A Garland for Girls (1887). A collection of seven short stories, including "May Flowers", "An Ivy Spray and Ladies' Slippers", "Pansies", "Water-Lilies", "Poppies and Wheat", "Little Button-Rose", and "Mountain-Laurel and Maidenhair".
- Morning-Glories and Queen Aster (1904) Two short stories.
- The Brownie and the Princess (2004). A collection of ten short stories.
Other short stories and novelettes[edit]
- Hospital Sketches (1863)
- Pauline's Passion and Punishment (1863)
- Thoreau's Flute (1863)
- My Contraband, first published as The Brothers (1863)
- The Mysterious Key and What It Opened (1867)
- Doctor Dorn's Revenge (1868)
- La Jeune; or, Actress and Woman (1868)
- Countess Varazoff (1868)
- The Romance of a Bouquet (1868)
- A Laugh and A Look (1868)
- Perilous Play (1869)
- Lost in a Pyramid, or the Mummy's Curse
- Transcendental Wild Oats (1873)
- Silver Pitchers, and Independence: A Centennial Love Story (1876)
- A Whisper in the Dark (1877)
- The Candy Country (1885)
- May Flowers (1887)
- Mountain-Laurel and Maidenhair (1887)
- Comic Tragedies (1893, posthumous)
Songs[edit]
- “My Kingdom” (written 1845, published 1875)
- “The Children’s Song” (written 1860, published 1889)
- “Young America” (1861)
- "With A Rose That Bloomed on the Day of John Brown’s Martyrdom" (1862)
- “Come, Butter, Come” (1867)
- “What Shall the Little Children Bring” (1884)
- “Oh, the Beautiful Old Story” (1886)
- “The Fairy Spring” (1887)
References[edit]
- ^ Cullen-DuPont 2000, pp. 8–9.
- ^ MacDonald 1983, p. 1.
- ^ a b Alcott 1988, pp. x–xi.
- ^ Freeman 2015.
- ^ "Amos Bronson Alcott". National Parks Service. Retrieved June 18, 2024.
- ^ Richardson 1995, pp. 245–251.
- ^ Alcott 1988, p. xi.
- ^ a b Alcott 1988, p. xiii.
- ^ Cheever 2011, p. 77; Alcott 1988, p. xiv–xv
- ^ a b c Richardson 1911, p. 529.
- ^ Cheever 2011, p. 87.
- ^ Ronsheim 1968.
- ^ "About Orchard House". Louisa May Alcott's Orchard House. 2024. Retrieved June 19, 2024.
- ^ Alcott 1988, p. xii; Britannica 2024
- ^ Parr 2009, p. 73-4.
- ^ American Heritage; MacDonald 1983, p. 2, 74; Durst Johnson 1999, pp. 104–105
- ^ a b c Alcott 1988.
- ^ Richardson 1911, p. 529;Cheever 2010, p. 46
- ^ NPR 2009.
- ^ Nancy Porter Productions 2015.
- ^ Brooks 2011.
- ^ Showalter 2004; Doyle 2003, p. 3
- ^ Parr 2009, p. 71.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Parr 2009, p. 72.
- ^ a b Parr 2009, p. 73.
- ^ Norwich 1990, p. 11.
- ^ Peck 2015, pp. 73–76.
- ^ a b Johnson 1906, pp. 68–69.
- ^ Dromi 2020, p. 26.
- ^ Elbert 1987, pp. 118–119.
- ^ americanliterature.com.
- ^ Franklin 1999.
- ^ University of Alabama 2005; The New York Times 2021
- ^ Live Journal.
- ^ Ross Nickerson 2010, p. 31.
- ^ a b Boston Women's Heritage Trail.
- ^ Lyon Clark 2004, pp. 156, 369; Cullen-DuPont 2000, pp. 8–9.
- ^ Moulton 1884, p. 49; Martin 2016
- ^ Stern & Shealy 1993; Hill 2008
- ^ Sands-O'Connor 2001.
- ^ Reisen, Harriet (2009). Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women. John MacRae Books. ISBN 978-0805082999.
- ^ "Introduction". Little Women. Penguin Classics. 1989. ISBN 0-14-039069-3.
- ^ Stern 1999, pp. 168–182.
- ^ Clark, Beverly Lyon (2004). Louisa May Alcott: The Contemporary Reviews. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521827805.
- ^ The Radical 1868.
- ^ Sander 1998, p. 66.
- ^ Stern 1999.
- ^ Lerner 2007.
- ^ a b Donaldson, Norman and Betty (1980). How Did They Die?. Greenwich House. ISBN 0-517-40302-1.
- ^ a b Hirschhorn & Greaves 2007, pp. 243–259.
- ^ Lerner 2007; Hill 2008, "Louisa succumbed to typhoid pneumonia within a month and had to be taken home. Although she narrowly survived the illness she did not recover from the cure. The large doses of calomel—mercurous chloride—she was given poisoned her and she was never well again."
- ^ Lerner 2007; Hirschhorn & Greaves 2007, pp. 243–259
- ^ Isenberg & Burstein 2003, p. 244 n42.
- ^ Reisen 2009a, p. 188; Allen 1998, p. 22
- ^ a b Reisen 2009a, pp. 301–302.
- ^ Delamar 1990, p. 227.
- ^ Delamar 1990, pp. 279–230.
- ^ Delamar 1990, p. 232.
- ^ Delamar 1990, p. 233; Stern 1998, p. 264
- ^ Reisen 2009a, p. 302; Stern 1998, p. 264
- ^ Golden 2003, p. 12.
- ^ a b R., Cindy (May 14, 2018). "Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind 'Little Women' ~ About the Film | American Masters | PBS". American Masters. Retrieved June 7, 2024.
- ^ louisamayalcott.net.
- ^ Alcott 2015, p. 689.
- ^ "Louisa May Alcott's Orchard House". Louisa May Alcott's Orchard House. Retrieved June 13, 2024.
- ^ Delamar 1990, p. 247.
- ^ BBC.
- ^ Hischak 2014, p. 123.
- ^ Turner Classic Movies.
- ^ Scott 1997.
- ^ Scheib 2008.
- ^ a b Atlas 2017.
- ^ Atlas 2017; Eiselein 2016, p. 221
- ^ Eiselein 2016, p. 221.
- ^ National Women's Hall of Fame.
Works cited[edit]
- "A Brief History of Summer Reading". The New York Times. July 31, 2021. Archived from the original on August 3, 2021. Retrieved August 3, 2021.
- "A Conversation with Harriet Reisen | Louisa May Alcott". louisamayalcott.net. Retrieved June 7, 2024.
- "Louisa M. Alcott Dead". The New York Times. March 7, 1888. Archived from the original on January 6, 2018. Retrieved April 2, 2018.
- "Alcott: 'Not The Little Woman You Thought She Was'". NPR. December 29, 2009. Archived from the original on March 22, 2018. Retrieved April 2, 2018.
- "An Old-Fashioned Girl". www.tcm.com. Retrieved June 12, 2024.
- Alcott, Louisa May (1988). Showalter, Elaine (ed.). Alternative Alcott. Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-0813512723.
Alternative Alcott
- Alcott, Louisa May (November 2, 2015). The Annotated Little Women. Manhattan, NY: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0393072198.
- Allen, Amy Ruth (1998). Louisa May Alcott. Minneapolis: Lerner Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0822549383.
- Atlas, Nava (September 2, 2017). "10 Writers Who Were Inspired by Jo March of Little Women". Literary Ladies Guide. Retrieved June 7, 2024.
- Brooks, Rebecca Beatrice (September 19, 2011). "Louisa May Alcott: The First Woman Registered to Vote in Concord". History of Massachusetts. Archived from the original on February 3, 2018. Retrieved April 2, 2018.
- Cheever, Susan (2011) [2010]. Louisa May Alcott: A Personal Biography (1st ed.). Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-1416569923.
- Cheney, Ednah D., ed. (1889). Louisa May Alcott, Life, Letters, and Journals. Boston. ISBN 978-1518656934. Archived from the original on May 2, 2023. Retrieved May 2, 2023.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - Cheever, Susan (November 2010). Louisa May Alcott. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1-4165-6991-6.
- Cullen-DuPont, Kathryn (2000). Encyclopedia of Women's History in America. Infobase Publishing. pp. 8–9. ISBN 978-0-8160-4100-8. Archived from the original on January 13, 2023. Retrieved August 24, 2017.
- Gloria T. Delamar (1990). Louisa May Alcott and "Little Women": Biography, Critique, Publications, Poems, Songs and Contemporary Relevance. McFarland & Company. ISBN 0-8995-0421-3. Wikidata Q126509746.
- Doyle, Christine (2003). Louisa May Alcott and Charlotte Bronte: Transatlantic Translations. Univ. of Tennessee Press. ISBN 1572332417.
- Dromi, Shai M. (2020). Above the fray: The Red Cross and the making of the humanitarian NGO sector. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press. p. 26. ISBN 9780226680101. Archived from the original on October 29, 2020. Retrieved June 12, 2020.
- Durst Johnson, Claudia (1999). "Discord in Concord: National Politics and Literary Neighbors". In Idol, Jr, John L.; Ponder, Melinda M. (eds.). Hawthorne and Women. University of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 1-55849-174-0.
- Eiselein, Gregory (2016). "Louisa May Alcott, Patti Smith, and Punk Aesethetics". In Eiselein, Gregory; Phillips, Anne K. (eds.). Critical Insights: Louisa May Alcott. Ipswich, MA, USA: Salem Press. pp. 221–236. ISBN 978-1-61925-521-0.
- Elbert, Sarah (1987) [1984]. A Hunger for Home: Louisa May Alcott's Place in American Culture. Rutgers University Press. ISBN 0-8135-1199-2.
- Franklin, Rosemary F. (1999). ""Louisa May Alcott's Father(s) and 'The Marble Woman'"". ATQ (The American Transcendental Quarterly). 13 (4).
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Further reading[edit]
- Alcott, Louisa May, May Alcott, and Daniel Shealy. Little Women Abroad : The Alcott Sisters' Letters from Europe, 1870-1871. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2008. ISBN 9780820330099
- Cheever, Susan (2006). American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau: Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-7432-6461-7.
- Eiselein, Gregory; Phillips, Anne K., eds. (2001). The Louisa May Alcott Encyclopedia. Greenwood Press; online in ebrary, also available in print ed. ISBN 0-313-30896-9. OCLC 44174106.
- Eiselein, Gregory & Anne K. Phillips (2016). Critical Insights: Louisa May Alcott. Grey House Publishing. ISBN 978-1-61925-521-0.
- LaPlante, Eve (2012). Marmee & Louisa: The Untold Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Mother. Free Press. ISBN 978-1-451-62066-5.
- Larson, Rebecca D. (1997). White Roses: Stories of Civil War Nurses. Gettysburg, PA: Thomas Publications. ISBN 1577470117. OCLC 38981206.
- Matteson, John (2007). Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father. Norton. ISBN 978-0-393-05964-9. This book won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography in 2008.
- Meigs, Cornelia (1968). Invincible Louisa: The Story of the Author of Little Women. Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 978-0316565943.
- Myerson, Joel; Shealy, Daniel; Stern, Madeleine B. (1987). The Selected Letters of Louisa May Alcott. Little, Brown. ISBN 0-316-59361-3.
- Myerson, Joel; Shealy, Daniel; Stern, Madeleine B. (1989). The Journals of Louisa May Alcott. Little, Brown. ISBN 0-316-59362-1.
- Paolucci, Stefano. Da Piccole donne a Piccoli uomini: Louisa May Alcott ai Colli Albani Archived March 24, 2019, at the Wayback Machine, "Castelli Romani," LVII, n. 6, nov.–dec. 2017, pp. 163–175.
- Saxton, Martha (1977). Louisa May: A Modern Biography of Louisa May Alcott. Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-395-25720-4.
- Seiple, Samantha (2019). Louisa on the Front Lines: Louisa May Alcott in the Civil War. New York: Seal Press, Hachette Book Group. ISBN 978-1-58005-804-9.
- Shealy, Daniel (2022). Little Women at 150. University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 978-1496837981.
External links[edit]
External videos | |
---|---|
Presentation by Harriet Reisen on Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women, November 12, 2009, C-SPAN |
Sources
- Works by Louisa May Alcott in eBook form at Standard Ebooks
- Works by Louisa May Alcott at Project Gutenberg
- Works by Louisa May Alcott Archived November 13, 2012, at the Wayback Machine at Project Gutenberg Australia
- Works by or about Louisa May Alcott at Internet Archive
- Works by Louisa May Alcott at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- Works by Louisa May Alcott Archived August 3, 2020, at the Wayback Machine at Online Books Page
- Index entry for Louisa May Alcott Archived June 12, 2010, at the Wayback Machine at Poets' Corner
- Bibliography (including primary works and information on secondary literature – critical essays, theses and dissertations)
Archival materials
- Guide to Louisa May Alcott papers, MS Am 800.23 at Houghton Library, Harvard University
- Guide to Louisa May Alcott additional papers, 1839–1888, MS Am 2114 at Houghton Library, Harvard University
- Guide to Louisa May Alcott additional papers, 1845–1945, MS Am 1817 at Houghton Library, Harvard University
- Guide to Louisa May Alcott additional papers, 1849–1887, MS Am 1130.13 at Houghton Library, Harvard University
- Guide to Louisa May Alcott papers, MSS 503 Archived November 29, 2022, at the Wayback Machine at L. Tom Perry Special Collections Archived November 2, 2017, at the Wayback Machine, Brigham Young University
- Madeline B. Stern Papers on Louisa May Alcott, MSS 3953 Archived November 29, 2022, at the Wayback Machine at L. Tom Perry Special Collections Archived November 2, 2017, at the Wayback Machine, Brigham Young University
- Carolyn Davis collection of Louisa May Alcott Archived August 3, 2020, at the Wayback Machine at the University of Maryland Libraries
Other
- Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind ‘Little Women’ Archived August 3, 2020, at the Wayback Machine – American Masters documentary (PBS)
- The Louisa May Alcott Society Archived February 3, 2015, at the Wayback Machine A scholarly organization devoted to her life and works.
- Louisa May Alcott, the real woman who wrote Little Women. Documentary materials.
- Obituary, New York Times, March 7, 1888, Louisa M. Alcott Dead Archived January 6, 2018, at the Wayback Machine
- Minneapolis Tribune, March 7, 1888, Obituary: Miss Louisa M. Alcott
- Encyclopædia Britannica, Louisa May Alcott Archived April 30, 2015, at the Wayback Machine
- Louisa May Alcott's Orchard House Archived March 12, 2022, at the Wayback Machine Louisa May Alcott's Orchard House historic site in Concord, MA.
- Norwood, Arlisha. "Louisa Alcott" Archived July 12, 2018, at the Wayback Machine. National Women's History Museum. 2017.
- Matteson, J. (November 2009). Little Woman; The devilish, dutiful daughter Louisa May Alcott Archived March 21, 2018, at the Wayback Machine. Humanities, 30(6), 1–6.
- Hooper, E. (September 23, 2017). Louisa May Alcott: A Difficult Woman Who Got Things Done Archived March 21, 2018, at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved March 20, 2018.
- Raga, S. (November 29, 2017). 10 Little Facts About Louisa May Alcott Archived March 21, 2018, at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved March 20, 2018, National Women's Hall of Fame
- 1832 births
- 1888 deaths
- 19th-century American novelists
- 19th-century American poets
- 19th-century American women writers
- Alcott family
- American children's writers
- American Civil War nurses
- American women nurses
- American feminist writers
- Suffragists from Massachusetts
- Temperance activists from Massachusetts
- American women novelists
- American women poets
- American women's rights activists
- Female wartime nurses
- Members of the Transcendental Club
- Writers from Concord, Massachusetts
- Writers from Dedham, Massachusetts
- People from South End, Boston
- Pseudonymous women writers
- Underground Railroad people
- American women children's writers
- Women in the American Civil War
- Novelists from Boston
- Novelists from Philadelphia
- Writers of Gothic fiction
- Sewall family
- Quincy family
- 19th-century pseudonymous writers
- Burials at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery (Concord, Massachusetts)