Louisa May Alcott
Louisa May Alcott | |
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Born | Germantown, Pennsylvania U.S. (present-day Philadelphia) | 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 (
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 receive 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 that focused on passion and revenge.[4]
Published in 1868, Little Women is set in the Alcott family home,
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.[5] She died from a stroke in Boston on March 6, 1888, just two days after her father's death.
Early life
Louisa May Alcott was born on November 29, 1832,
External videos | |
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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 on 2 acres (0.81 ha) of land, situated along the Sudbury River in Concord, Massachusetts. The three years they spent at the rented Hosmer Cottage were described as idyllic.[10] By 1843, the Alcott family moved, along with six other members of the Consociate Family,[8] to the Utopian Fruitlands community for a brief interval in 1843–1844. After the collapse of the Utopian Fruitlands, they rented rooms and finally, with Abigail May Alcott's inheritance and financial help from Emerson, they purchased a homestead in Concord. They moved into the home they named "Hillside" on April 1, 1845, but had moved on by 1852, when it was sold to Nathaniel Hawthorne, who renamed it The Wayside. Moving 21 times in 30 years, the Alcotts returned to Concord once again in 1857 and moved into Orchard House, a two-story clapboard farmhouse, in the spring of 1858.
Alcott's early education included lessons from the
Poverty made it necessary for Alcott to go to work at an early age as a teacher,
In 1847, Alcott and her family served as
Life in Dedham
Alcott's mother, Abba, ran an "intelligence office" to help the destitute find employment.
Richardson's sister, Elizabeth, was 40 years old and suffered from neuralgia.[19] She was shy and did not seem to have much use for Alcott.[19] Instead, Richardson spent hours reading her poetry and treating her like his confidant and companion, sharing his personal thoughts and feelings with her.[19] 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."[19] He responded by assigning her more laborious duties, including chopping wood and scrubbing the floors.[19]
Alcott quit after seven weeks, when neither of the two girls her mother sent to replace her decided to take the job.[19] As she walked from Richardson's home to Dedham station, she opened the envelope he handed her with her pay.[19] 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.[19]
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.[20] He rejected the piece, telling Alcott that she had no future as a writer.[20]
Literary success
As an adult, Alcott was an abolitionist and a feminist. In 1860, Alcott began writing for the
After she served as a nurse, Alcott's father wrote her a heartfelt poem titled "To Louisa May Alcott. From her father".[25] 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. This poem was featured in the books Louisa May Alcott: Her Life, Letters, and Journals (1889) and Louisa May Alcott, the Children's Friend, which details her childhood and close relationship with her father.[26]
Between 1863 and 1872, Alcott anonymously wrote at least thirty-three "
Catherine Ross Nickerson credits Alcott with creating one of the earliest works of
Alcott achieved further success with the first part of
In
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.[40]
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".[41] 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".[42]
Louisa May Alcott was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1996.[43]
Later years
In 1877, Alcott was one of the founders of the
Alcott died of a stroke[48] at age 55 in Boston, on March 6, 1888,[46] two days after her father's death.[22] She is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, near Emerson, Hawthorne, and Thoreau, on a hillside now known as "Authors' Ridge".[49] 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.[50][51]
The Alcotts' Concord, Massachusetts home, Orchard House (c. 1650), where the family lived for 25 years and where Little Women was written and set in 1868, has been a historic house museum since 1912, and pays homage to the Alcotts by focusing on public education and historic preservation. Her Boston home is featured on the Boston Women's Heritage Trail.[52]
Selected works
The Little Women series
- 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
- The Inheritance (1849, unpublished until 1997)
- Moods (1865, revised 1882)
- The Mysterious Key and What It Opened (1867)
- 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)
As A. M. Barnard
- 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
- A Modern Mephistopheles (1877)
Short story collections for children
- 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 (1849)
- 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", (1868); * "The Rose Family: A Fairy Tale" (1864), "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")
- Spinning-Wheel Stories* (1884). A collection of 12 short stories.
- The Candy Country (1885) (One short story)
- May Flowers (1887) (One short story)
- Mountain-Laurel and Maidenhair (1887) (One short story)
- 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.[53]
- The Brownie and the Princess (2004). A collection of ten short stories.
Other short stories and novelettes
- Hospital Sketches (1863)
- Pauline's Passion and Punishment (1863)
- Thoreau's Flute (1863)
- My Contraband, first published as The Brothers (1863)
- 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) A short piece about Alcott's family and the Transcendental Movement.
- Silver Pitchers, and Independence: A Centennial Love Story (1876)
- A Whisper in the Dark (1877)
- Proverb Stories (1882), (includes "The Baron's Gloves or Amy's Romance")
- Comic Tragedies (1893, posthumous)
In popular culture
Little Women inspired film versions in
Little Women also inspired a BBC Radio 4 version in 2017.[54]
Little Men inspired film versions in 1934, 1940, and 1998. This novel also was the basis for a 1998 television series.
Other films based on Alcott novels and stories are An Old-Fashioned Girl (1949), The Inheritance (1997), and
A dramatized version of Alcott appeared as a character in the television series Dickinson, in the episode "There's a Certain Slant of Light," which premiered on November 1, 2019. Alcott was portrayed by Zosia Mamet.[56]
Geraldine Brooks’s 2006 novel March tells the backstory of the absent father in Little Women. It won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize.[57]
References
Citations
- ^ ISBN 978-0-8160-4100-8.
- ^ "Humanity, Said Edgar Allan Poe, Is Divided Into Men, Women, And Margaret Fuller". American Heritage. Retrieved December 28, 2022.
- ^ "Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind 'Little Women'". American Masters. PBS. December 2009. Retrieved May 2, 2020.
- ^ "Louisa May Alcott". University of Alabama. 2005. Retrieved September 3, 2020.
- ISBN 978-0-19-869137-2.
- ^ Freeman, Jean R. (April 23, 2015). "Louisa May Alcott, a spinster hero for single women of all eras". The Washington Post. Retrieved October 25, 2023.
- ^ "Louisa M. Alcott Dead". The New York Times. March 7, 1888. Retrieved April 2, 2018.
The parents of the authoress removed to Boston when their daughter was 2 years old, and in Boston and its immediate vicinity she made her home ever after.
- ^ ISBN 978-0813512723.
Alternative Alcott By Louisa May Alcott by Elaine Showalter.
- ^ "Alcott: 'Not the Little Woman You Thought She Was'". Morning Edition. NPR. December 28, 2009. Retrieved April 2, 2018.
- ISBN 978-1416569923.
- ^ a b c d Richardson, Charles F. (1911). Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 1 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 529. . In
- ^ Parr 2009, p. 73-4.
- ^ Reisen, Harriet (December 29, 2009). "Alcott: 'Not The Little Woman You Thought She Was'". NPR. Retrieved April 2, 2018.
- ^ "Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women, The Alcotts". Nancy Porter Productions, Inc. 2015.
- ^ Brooks, Rebecca Beatrice (September 19, 2011). "Louisa May Alcott: The First Woman Registered to Vote in Concord". History of Massachusetts. Retrieved April 2, 2018.
- ^ Showalter, Elaine (March 1, 2004). "Moor, Please: New books on the Bronte phenomenon". Slate. Retrieved December 25, 2022.
- ISBN 1572332417.
- ^ Parr 2009, p. 71.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Parr 2009, p. 72.
- ^ a b Parr 2009, p. 73.
- ISBN 978-1626199736.
- ^ a b public domain: Johnson, Rossiter, ed. (1906). "Alcott, Louisa May". The Biographical Dictionary of America. Vol. 1. Boston: American Biographical Society. pp. 68–69. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the
- ISBN 9780226680101.
- ^ Elbert 1984)
- ^ To Louisa May Alcott. By Her Father.
- ^ "Oxford Art".
- ^ Franklin, Rosemary F., "Louisa May Alcott's Father(s) and 'The Marble Woman'" in ATQ (The American Transcendental Quarterly) Vol. 13, No. 4 (1999).
- ^ "A Brief History of Summer Reading". The New York Times. July 31, 2021. Retrieved August 3, 2021.
- ^ 1870's Louisa May Alcott
- ISBN 978-0-521-13606-8.
- ^ "Louisa May Alcott". Boston Women's Heritage Trail. Retrieved November 17, 2020.
- ^ Moulton, Louise Chandler (1884). "Louisa May Alcott". Our Famous Women: An Authorized Record of the Lives and Deeds of Distinguished American Women of Our Times. A. D. Worthington & Company. p. 49.
- ^ Martin, Lauren (November 29, 2016). "Louisa May Alcott's Quotes That Lived 184 Years". Words of Women. Archived from the original on June 3, 2019. Retrieved June 3, 2019.
- ISBN 0-8065-1654-2. Retrieved September 14, 2015.
- ^ a b Hill, Rosemary (February 29, 2008). "From little acorns, nuts: Review of 'Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father' by John Matteson". The Guardian.
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.
- ^ Sands-O'Connor, Karen (March 1, 2001). "Why Jo Didn't Marry Laurie: Louisa May Alcott and The Heir of Redclyffe". American Transcendental Quarterly. 15 (1): 23.[dead link]
- ISBN 978-0805082999.
- ISBN 0-14-039069-3.
- ISBN 978-1555534172.
- ISBN 978-1555534172.
- ISBN 978-0521827805.
- ^ "Review 2 – No Title". The Radical. May 1868.
- ^ National Women's Hall of Fame, Louisa May Alcott
- ISBN 0252067037.
- ^ a b c Lerner, Maura (August 12, 2007). "A diagnosis, 119 years after death". Star Tribune. Archived from the original on May 17, 2008.
- ^ ISBN 0-517-40302-1.
- ^ S2CID 26383085.
- S2CID 26383085.
- ^ Isenberg, Nancy; Andrew Burstein, eds. (2003). Mortal Remains: Death in Early America. University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 244 n42.
- ISBN 978-0312658878.
- ISBN 978-0822549383.
- ^ "Louisa May Alcott". Boston Women's Heritage Trail.
- ^ Alcott, Louisa May. Morning Glories and Queen Aster. Little, Brown.
- ^ "Little Women". BBC. Retrieved January 2, 2021.
- ^ "Louisa May Alcott Google doodle marks 184th birthday of 'Little Women' author". Search Engine Land. November 29, 2016.
- ^ ""Dickinson" There's a Certain Slant of Light". IMDB.
- ^ "The 2006 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Fiction". The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved August 19, 2023.
Print sources
- Parr, James L. (2009). Dedham: Historic and Heroic Tales From Shiretown. The History Press. ISBN 978-1-59629-750-0.
- Shealy, Daniel, ed. (2005). Alcott in Her Own Time: A Biographical Chronicle of Her Life, Drawn from Recollections, Interviews, and Memoirs by Family, Friends and Associates. Iowa City, Iowa: University of Iowa Press. ISBN 0-87745-938-X.
- Cheny, Ednah D., ed. (1889). Louisa May Alcott, Life, Letters, and Journals. Boston. ISBN 978-1518656934.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link - Madeleine Stern Louisa May Alcott (Normal, Okla. 1950 and London 1952).
- Majorie Worthington Miss Alcott of Concord: A Biography (Doubleday 1958).
- Atlantic's Brief lives: A Biographical Companion to the Arts, edited by Louis Kronenberger, Assoc. Ed. Emily Morison Beck, Little Brown & Co. 1965.
Further reading
- 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. OCLC 44174106.
- Eiselein, Gregory & Anne K. Phillips (2016). Critical Insights: Louisa May Alcott. Grey House Publishing. ISBN 978-1-61925-521-0.
- Elbert, Sarah. A Hunger for Home: Louisa May Alcott and Little Women (Temple UP, 1984).
- 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. OCLC 38981206.
- MacDonald, Ruth K. (1983). Louisa May Alcott. Twayne. ISBN 0-8057-7397-5.
- Matteson, John (2007). Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father. Norton. Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiographyin 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, "Castelli Romani," LVII, n. 6, nov.–dec. 2017, pp. 163–175.
- Reisen, Harriet (2009). Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women. Henry Holt and Company. .
- 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
Library resources about Louisa May Alcott |
By Louisa May Alcott |
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External videos | |
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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 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 at Online Books Page
- Index entry for Louisa May Alcott 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 at L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Brigham Young University
- Madeline B. Stern Papers on Louisa May Alcott, MSS 3953 at L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Brigham Young University
- Carolyn Davis collection of Louisa May Alcott at the University of Maryland Libraries
Other
- Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind ‘Little Women’ – American Masters documentary (PBS)
- The Louisa May Alcott Society 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
- Minneapolis Tribune, March 7, 1888, Obituary: Miss Louisa M. Alcott
- Encyclopædia Britannica, Louisa May Alcott
- Louisa May Alcott's Orchard House Louisa May Alcott's Orchard House historic site in Concord, MA.
- Norwood, Arlisha. "Louisa Alcott". National Women's History Museum. 2017.
- Matteson, J. (November 2009). Little Woman; The devilish, dutiful daughter Louisa May Alcott. Humanities, 30(6), 1–6.
- Louisa May Alcott[permanent dead link] s Orchard House. (n.d.). Retrieved March 20, 2018
- Hooper, E. (September 23, 2017). Louisa May Alcott: A Difficult Woman Who Got Things Done. Retrieved March 20, 2018,
- Powell, K. (n.d.). Louisa May Alcott Family Tree and Genealogy – ThoughtCo.. Retrieved March 20, 2018[permanent dead link]
- Louisa M. Alcott Dead[permanent dead link] – archive.nytimes.com. (March 7, 1888). Retrieved March 20, 2018
- Alcott: 'Not The Little Woman You Thought She Was'. (December 28, 2009). Retrieved March 20, 2018
- Raga, S. (November 29, 2017). 10 Little Facts About Louisa May Alcott. Retrieved March 20, 2018, National Women's Hall of Fame