Alcott's family experienced financial hardship, and while Alcott took on various jobs to help support the family from an early age, she also sought to earn money by writing. In the 1860s she began to achieve critical success for her writing with the publication ofHospital Sketches, a book based on her service as a nurse in theAmerican Civil War. Early in her career, she sometimes used pen names such as A. M. Barnard, under which she wrote lurid short stories andsensation novels for adults.Little Women was one of her first successful novels and has been adapted for film and television. It is loosely based on Alcott's childhood experiences with her three sisters,Abigail May Alcott Nieriker,Elizabeth Sewall Alcott, andAnna Alcott Pratt.
Alcott was anabolitionist and afeminist and remained unmarried throughout her life. She also spent her life active in reform movements such astemperance andwomen's suffrage. During the last eight years of her life she raised the daughter of her deceased sister. She died from a stroke inBoston on March 6, 1888, just two days after her father's death and was buried inSleepy Hollow Cemetery. Louisa May Alcott has been the subject of numerous biographies, novels, and a documentary, and has influenced other writers and public figures such asUrsula K. Le Guin andTheodore Roosevelt.
Louisa May Alcott was born on November 29, 1832, inGermantown,[1] now part ofPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania. Her parents were transcendentalist and educatorAmos Bronson Alcott and social workerAbigail May.[2] Alcott was the second of four daughters, withAnna as the eldest andElizabeth andMay as the youngest.[3] Alcott was named after her mother's sister, Louisa May Greele, who had died four years earlier.[4] After Alcott's birth, Bronson kept a record of her development, noting her strong will,[5] which she may have inherited from her mother's May side of the family.[6] He described her as "fit for the scuffle of things".[7]
The family moved to Boston in 1834,[8] where Alcott's father established the experimentalTemple School[9] and met with other transcendentalists such asRalph Waldo Emerson andHenry David Thoreau.[10] Bronson participated in child-care but often failed to provide income, creating conflict in the family.[11] At home and in school he taught morals and improvement, while Abigail emphasized imagination and supported Alcott's writing at home.[12] With all the commotion going on at the time writing helped her handle her emotions.[13] Alcott was often tended by her father's friendElizabeth Peabody,[14] and later she frequently visited Temple School during the day.[15]
Alcott kept a journal from an early age. Bronson and Abigail often read it and left short messages for her on her pillow.[16] She was a tomboy who preferred boys' games[17] and preferred to be friends with boys or other tomboys.[18] She wanted to play sports with the boys at school but was not allowed to.[19]
Alcott was primarily educated by her father, who established a strict schedule and believed in "the sweetness ofself-denial."[20] When Alcott was still too young to attend school, Bronson taught her the alphabet by forming the letter shapes with his body and having her repeat their names.[21] For a time she was educated bySophia Foord,[22] whom she would later eulogize.[23] She was also instructed in biology and Native American history by Thoreau, who was anaturalist,[24] while Emerson mentored her in literature.[25] Alcott had a particular fondness for Thoreau and Emerson; as a young girl, they were both "sources of romantic fantasies for her."[26] Her favorite authors includedHarriet Beecher Stowe,Sir Walter Scott,Fredericka Bremer,Thomas Carlyle,Nathaniel Hawthorne,Goethe, andJohn Milton,Friedrich Schiller, andGermaine de Staele.[27]
In 1840, after several setbacks with Temple School and a brief stay inScituate,[28] the Alcotts moved to Hosmer Cottage inConcord.[29] Emerson, who had convinced Bronson to move his family to Concord, paid rent for the family,[30] who were often in need of financial help.[31] While living there, Alcott and her sisters befriended the Hosmer, Goodwin, Emerson,Hawthorne, andChanning children, who lived nearby.[32] The Hosmer and Alcott children put on plays and often included other children.[33] Alcott and Anna also attended school at theConcord Academy, though for a time Alcott attended a school for younger children held at the Emerson house.[34] At eight years-old, Alcott wrote her first poem, "To the First Robin". When she showed the poem to her mother, Abigail was pleased.[35]
In October 1842 Bronson returned from a visit to schools in England[36] and broughtCharles Lane and Henry Wright with him[37] to live at Hosmer Cottage, while Bronson and Lane made plans to establish a "New Eden".[38] The children's education was undertaken by Lane, who implemented a strict schedule. Alcott disliked Lane and found the new living arrangements difficult.[39]
In 1843 Bronson and Lane establishedFruitlands, autopian community,[40] inHarvard, Massachusetts, where the family were to live.[41] Alcott later described these early years in a newspaper sketch titled "Transcendental Wild Oats", reprinted inSilver Pitchers (1876), which relates the family's experiment in "plain living and high thinking" at Fruitlands.[42] There, Alcott enjoyed running outdoors and found happiness in writing poetry about her family,elves, and spirits. She later reflected with distaste on the amount of work she had to do outside of her lessons.[43] She also enjoyed playing with Lane's son William and often put on fairy-tale plays or performances ofCharles Dickens's stories.[44] She read works by Dickens,Plutarch,Lord Byron,Maria Edgeworth, andOliver Goldsmith.[45]
During the demise of Fruitlands, the Alcotts discussed whether or not the family should separate. Alcott recorded this in her journal and expressed her unhappiness should they separate.[46] After the collapse of Fruitlands in early 1844, the family rented in nearbyStill River,[47] where Alcott attended public school and wrote and directed plays that her sisters and friends performed.[48]
In April 1845 the family returned to Concord, where they bought a home they calledHillside with money Abigail inherited from her father.[49] Here, Alcott and her sister Anna attended a school run by John Hosmer after a period of home education.[50] The family again lived near the Emersons, and Alcott was granted open access to the Emerson library, where she read Carlyle,Dante,Shakespeare, and Goethe.[51] In the summer of 1848 sixteen-year-old Alcott opened a school of twenty students in a barn near Hillside. Her students consisted of the Emerson, Channing, and Alcott children.[52]
The two oldest Alcott girls continued acting in plays written by Alcott. While Anna preferred portraying calm characters, Alcott preferred the roles of villains, knights, and sorcerers. These plays later inspiredComic Tragedies (1893).[53] The family struggled without income beyond the girls' sewing and teaching. Eventually, some friends arranged a job for Abigail[54] and three years after moving into Hillside, the family moved to Boston. Hillside was sold toNathaniel Hawthorne in 1852.[55] Alcott described the three years she spent at Concord as a child as the "happiest of her life."[56]
When the Alcott family moved to theSouth End of Boston in 1848,[57] Alcott had work as a teacher, seamstress, governess, domestic helper, and laundress, to earn money for the family.[58] Together, Alcott and her sister taught a school in Boston,[59] though Alcott disliked teaching.[60] Her sisters also supported the family by working as seamstresses, while their mother took on social work among theIrish immigrants. Elizabeth and May were able to attend public school, though Elizabeth later left school to undertake the housekeeping.[61] Due to financial pressures, writing became a creative and emotional outlet for Alcott.[62] In 1849 she created a family newspaper, theOlive Leaf, named after the localOlive Branch. The family newspaper included stories, poems, articles, and housekeeping advice.[63] It was later renamed toThe Portfolio.[64] She also wrote her first novel,The Inheritance, which was published posthumously and based onJane Eyre.[65] Alcott, who was driven to escape poverty, wrote, "I wish I was rich, I was good, and we were all a happy family this day."[66]
Abigail ran an intelligence office to help the destitute find employment.[67] WhenJames Richardson came to Abigail in the winter of 1851 seeking a companion for his frail sister and elderly father who would also be willing to do light housekeeping,[68] Alcott volunteered to serve in the house filled with books, music, artwork, and good company on Highland Avenue.[69] Alcott may have imagined the experience as something akin to being a heroine in aGothic novel, as Richardson described their home in a letter as stately but decrepit.[69]
Louisa May Alcott
Richardson's sister, Elizabeth, was 40 years old and suffered fromneuralgia.[70] She was shy and did not seem to have much use for Alcott.[69] Instead, Richardson spent hours reading her poetry and sharing his philosophical ideas with her.[71] She reminded Richardson that she was hired to be Elizabeth's companion and expressed that she was tired of listening to his "philosophical,metaphysical, and sentimental rubbish."[69] Richardson's response was to assign her more laborious duties, including chopping wood, scrubbing the floors, shoveling snow, drawing water from the well, and blacking his boots.[72]
Alcott quit after seven weeks, when neither of the two girls her mother sent to replace her decided to take the job.[69] As she walked from Richardson's home toDedham station, she opened the envelope he handed her with her pay.[69] One account states that she was so unsatisfied with the four dollars she found inside that she mailed the money back to him in contempt.[69] Another account states that Bronson may have returned the money himself and rebuked Richardson.[73] Alcott later wrote a slightly fictionalized account of her time in Dedham titled "How I Went Out To Service", which she submitted to Boston publisherJames T. Fields.[74] Fields rejected the piece, telling Alcott that she had no future as a writer.[74]
In September 1851 Alcott's poem "Sunlight" appeared inPeterson's Magazine under the name Flora Fairchild, making it her first successful publication.[75] 1852 marked the publication of her first story, "The Rival Painters: A Tale of Rome", which was published in theOlive Branch.[76] In 1854 she attendedThe Boston Theatre, where she was given a pass to attend free of charge.[77] She published her first book,Flower Fables, in 1854; the book was a selection of tales she originally told toEllen Emerson, daughter of Ralph Waldo Emerson.[78]Lidian Emerson had read the stories and encouraged Alcott to publish them.[79] Though she was pleased, Alcott hoped to eventually shift her writing "from fairies and fables to men and realities".[80] She also wroteThe Rival Prima Donnas, a play adaptation of her story with the same title.[81]
In 1855 the Alcotts moved toWalpole, New Hampshire,[82] where Alcott and Anna participated in the Walpole Amateur Dramatic Company. Alcott was praised for her "superior histrionic ability".[83] At the end of the theater season, Alcott, encouraged by the success ofFlower Fables, began writingChristmas Elves, a collection of Christmas stories illustrated by May Alcott. In November Alcott traveled to Boston and attempted to publish the collection while living with a relative. November was too late in the year to publish Christmas books and Alcott was unable to publishThe Christmas Elves.[84] She then wrote and published "The Sisters' Trial", a story about four women who were based on the Alcott sisters.[85]
Alcott returned to Walpole in mid-1856 to find her sister Elizabeth ill withscarlet fever. Alcott helped nurse Elizabeth, and when she was not nursing helped with the housekeeping and wrote.[86] Alcott prepared to publishBeach Bubbles that year, but the book was rejected.[87] By the end of the year she was writing for theOlive Branch, theLadies Enterprise,The Saturday Evening Gazette, and theSunday News.[88] Alcott again lived in Boston for a time, where she metJulia Ward Howe andFrank Sanborn.[89] In the summer of 1857 Alcott and Anna rejoined the Walpole Amateur Dramatic Company and sought to entertain Elizabeth with stories about their acting.[90] The family later visitedSwampscott in an effort to boost Elizabeth's health, which was poor from effects of the scarlet fever, but it did not improve.[91] During this time Alcott readThe Life of Charlotte Brontë byElizabeth Gaskell and found inspiration fromBrontë's life.[92]
The family moved back to Concord in September 1857, where the Alcotts rented while Bronson repairedOrchard House.[93] During that time, the two oldest Alcott sisters organized theConcord Dramatic Union.[94] Elizabeth Alcott died on March 14, 1858, when she was twenty-three.[95] Three weeks later, Anna became engaged toJohn Pratt, a man she met in the Concord Dramatic Union.[96] Alcott experienced depression about these events and considered Elizabeth's death and Anna's engagement catalysts to breaking up their sisterhood.[97] After the family moved into Orchard House in July 1858, Alcott again returned to Boston to find employment.[98] Unable to find work and filled with despair, Alcott contemplated suicide by drowning, but she decided to "takeFate by the throat and shake a living out of her."[99] She eventually received an offer to work as a governess for invalid Alice Lovering, which she accepted.[100]
As an adult, Alcott Alcott was an abolitionist,temperance advocate, and feminist.[101] When theAmerican Civil War broke out in 1861, Alcott wanted to enlist in theUnion Army but could not because she was a woman. Instead, she sewed uniforms and waited until she reached the minimum age for army nurses at thirty years old.[102] Soon after turning thirty in 1862, Alcott applied to theU. S. Sanitary Commission, run byDorothea Dix, and on December 11 was assigned to work in theUnion Hotel Hospital inGeorgetown, Washington, D. C.[103] When she left, Bronson felt as if he was "sending [his] only son to the war".[104] When she arrived, she discovered that conditions in the hospital were poor, with over-crowded and filthy quarters, bad food, unstable beds, and insufficient ventilation.[105] Diseases such as scarlet fever,chicken pox,measles, andtyphus were rampant among the patients.[106] Alcott's duties included cleaning wounds, feeding the men, assisting withamputations, dressing wounds, and later assigning patients to theirwards.[107] She also entertained patients by reading aloud and putting on skits.[108] She served as a nurse for six weeks in 1862–1863.[109] She intended to serve three months,[110] but contractedtyphoid fever and became critically ill partway through her service.[111] In late January Bronson traveled to the hospital and took Alcott to Concord to recover.[112]
Alcott nursed her mother Abigail, who was dying, in 1877 while writingUnder the Lilacs (1878).[113] Alcott also became ill and close to dying, so the family moved in with Anna Alcott Pratt, who had recently purchased Thoreau's house with Alcott's financial support.[114] After Abigail's death in November,[115] Alcott and Bronson permanently moved into Anna's house.[116] Her sister May was living in London at the time and marriedErnest Nieriker four months later.[117] May became pregnant and was due to deliver her child near the end of 1879. Though Alcott wanted to travel to Paris to see May in time for the delivery, she decided against it because her health was poor.[118] On December 29 May died from complications developed after childbirth, and in September 1880 Alcott assumed the care of her niece, Lulu, who was named after her.[119] Nieriker sent the news to Emerson and asked him to share it with Bronson and his daughters. Only Alcott was at home when Emerson arrived; she guessed the news before he told her and shared it with Bronson and Anna after he left.[120] During the grief that followed May's death, Alcott and her father Bronson coped by writing poetry.[121] In a letter to her friend Maria S. Porter, Alcott wrote, "Of all the griefs in my life, and I have had many, this is the bitterest."[122] It was at this time that she completedJack and Jill: A Village Story (1880).[123]
Alcott sometimes hired a nanny when her poor health made it difficult to care for Lulu.[124] While raising Lulu, she published few works.[125] Among her published works at this time are the volumes ofLulu's Library (1886–1889), collections of stories written for her niece Lulu.[126] When Bronson suffered a stroke in 1882, Alcott became his caretaker.[127] In the years that followed she alternated between living in Concord, Boston, andNonquitt.[128] In June 1884 Alcott sold Orchard House, which the family was no longer living in.[129]
As Alcott's health declined, she often lived at Dunreath Place, a convalescent home run by Dr. Rhoda Lawrence for which she had provided financial support in the past.[140] Eventually a doctor advised Alcott to stop writing to preserve her health.[141] In 1887 she legally adopted Anna's son, John Pratt, and made him heir to herroyalties, then created a will that left her money to her remaining family.[142] Alcott visited Bronson at his deathbed on March 1, 1888, and expressed the wish that she could join him in death.[143] On March 3, the day before her father died,[144] she suffered a stroke and went unconscious, in which state she remained[145] until her death on March 6, 1888.[146] She was buried inSleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, near Emerson, Hawthorne, and Thoreau, on a hillside now known as Authors' Ridge.[147] Her niece Lulu was eight years old when Alcott died and was cared for by Anna Alcott Pratt for two years before reuniting with her father in Europe.[148]
In 1859 Alcott began writing for theAtlantic Monthly.[149] Encouraged by Sanborn andMoncure Conway, Alcott revised and published the letters she wrote while serving as a nurse in the Boston anti-slavery paperCommonwealth, later collecting them asHospital Sketches (1863, republished with additions in 1869).[150] She planned to travel toSouth Carolina to teach freed slaves and write letters she could later publish, but she was too ill to travel and abandoned the plan.[151] Soon after the success ofHospital Sketches, Alcott published her novelMoods (1864), based on her own experience with and stance on "woman's right to selfhood."[152] Alcott struggled to find a publisher because the novel was long.[153] After abridgments,Moods was published and popular.[154] In 1882 Alcott changed the end.[125] While touring Europe in 1870, she was displeased to find out that her publisher released a new edition without her approval.[155]
Alcott began editing the children's magazineMerry's Museum to help pay off family debts[156] incurred while she toured Europe as the companion of wealthy invalidAnna Weld in 1865–66.[157] Though Alcott disliked editing the magazine,[158] she became its main editor in 1867.[159] Around the same time,[160] Alcott's publisher, Thomas Niles, asked her to write a book especially for girls.[161] She was hesitant to write it because she felt she knew more about boys than she did about girls,[162] but she eventually set to work on her semi-autobiographical novelLittle Women: or Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy (1868).[132] After publishingLittle Women she, and her sister May, moved to Europe. Alcott developed a close relationship with the young Polishrevolutionary[163] Ladislas Wisniewski during her European tour with Weld.[164] She met him inVevey, where he taught her French and she taught him English.[165] She detailed a romance between herself and Wisniewski but later took it out.[166] Alcott identified Wisniewski as one of the models for the character Laurie inLittle Women.[167] Her other model for Laurie was fifteen-year-oldAlfred Whitman, who she met shortly before the death of her sister Elizabeth and with whom she corresponded for several years afterward.[168] She based the heroine Jo on herself,[169] and other characters were based on people from Alcott's life.[170] Later Niles asked Alcott to write a second part.[171] Also known asGood Wives (1869), it follows the March sisters into adulthood and marriage.[172]
In 1870 Alcott joined May and a friend on a European tour. Though numerous publishers requested new stories, Alcott wrote little while in Europe, instead preferring to rest. Meanwhile, rumors began to spread that she had died fromdiphtheria.[173] She eventually described their travels in "Shawl Straps" (1872).[174] While in Europe, Alcott began writingLittle Men after finding out that her brother-in-law, John Pratt, had died. She was driven to write the book to provide financial support for her sister Anna and her two sons.[175] Alcott felt that she "must be a father now" to her nephews.[176] After she left Europe, the book was released the day she arrived in Boston.[177] Alcott took seven years to completeJo's Boys (1886), her sequel toLittle Men.[178] She began the book in 1879 but discontinued it after her sister May's death in December. Alcott resumed work on the novel in 1882 afterMary Mapes Dodge ofSt. Nicholas asked for a new serial.[179]Jo's Boys (1886) completed the "March Family Saga", Alcott's best-known books.[1] The general popularity of her first few published works surprised Alcott.[180][181] Throughout her career as a writer, she shied away from public attention, sometimes acting as a servant when fans came to her house.[182]
Before her death, Alcott asked her sister Anna Pratt to destroy her letters and journals; Anna destroyed some and gave the remaining ones to family friendEdnah Dow Cheney.[183] In 1889 Cheney was the first person to undergo a deep study of Alcott's life, compiling the journals and letters to publishLouisa May Alcott: Her Life, Letters, and Journals. The compilation has been published multiple times since then.[184] Cheney also publishedLouisa May Alcott: The Children's Friend, which focused on Alcott's appeal to children.[183] Other various compilations of Alcott's letters were published in the following decades.[185] In 1909 Belle Moses wroteLouisa May Alcott, Dreamer and Worker: A Study of Achievement, which established itself as the "first major biography" about Alcott.[186]Katharine S. Anthony'sLouisa May Alcott, written in 1938, was the first biography to focus on Alcott's psychology.[187] A comprehensive biography about Alcott was not written untilMadeleine B. Stern's 1950Louisa May Alcott.[188] In the 1960s and 1970s, feminist analysis of Alcott's fiction increased; analysis of her works also focused on the contrast between her domestic and sensation fiction.[189]
Martha Saxton's 1978Alcott May: A Modern Biography of Louisa May Alcott depicts Alcott's life in a manner that Karen Halttunen, a professor of History and American Studies at the University of Southern California, called "controversial".[190] Alcott biographer Ruth K. MacDonald considered Saxton's biography to be excessively psychoanalytical, portraying Alcott as a victim to her family.[191] MacDonald also praised Saxton's description of Alcott's acquaintance with several intellectuals of the time.[192] MacDonald praised Sarah Elbert's 1984 biographyA Hunger for Home: Louisa May Alcott and Little Women for its combination of Saxton's psychological perspective and Madelon Bedell's larger discussion of the Alcott family fromThe Alcotts: Biography of a Family. She also stated that the biography could use more analysis of Alcott's works.[193] Kate Beaird Meyers of theUniversity of Tulsa felt that the 1987 version, entitledA Hunger for Home: Louisa May Alcott's Place in American Culture, "is much more sophisticated" because Elbert drew upon other scholars and placed Alcott within American literature.[194] Alcott scholar Daniel Shealy compiled and editedAlcott in Her Own Time.Roberta Trites called it "fascinating and thorough", though she said it needed more background information about the essayists,[195] while fellow Alcott scholar Gregory Eiselein praised Shealy's use of original accounts.[196] Trites called Harriet Reisen's biographyLouisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women "far more balanced than some of her predecessors['] in that ... she followsJohn Matteson's lead in demonstrating how emotionally complex the relationship was between Alcott's parents and their daughters."[197] She was referring to John Matteson'sEden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father, which won the 2008Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography. Taylor Barnes ofThe Christian Science Monitor generally praised Reisen's biography but wrote that its "microscopic examination" of Alcott's life becomes confusing.[198]Cornelia Meigs's 1934 biographyInvincible Alcott: The Story of the Author of Little Women won theNewbery Medal.[199]Critical Insights: Louisa May Alcott, edited by Gregory Eiselein and Anne K. Phillips, contains a series of essays discussing Alcott's life and literature.[200]
Alcott preferred writingsensation stories and novels more thandomestic fiction, confiding in her journal, "I fancy 'lurid' things".[201] They were influenced by the works of other writers such asGoethe, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, and Nathaniel Hawthorne.[202] The stories follow themes ofincest, murder, suicide, psychology, secret identities, and sensuality.[203] Her characters are often involved inopium experimentation or mind control and sometimes experienceinsanity, with males and females contending for dominance.[204] The female characters push back against theCult of Domesticity and explore its counter ideals,Real Womanhood.[205] Important to Alcott's income because they paid well,[206] these sensation stories were published inThe Flag of Our Union,Frank Leslie's Chimney Corner, andFrank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper.[207] Her thrillers were usually published anonymously or with the pseudonym A. M. Barnard.[208] J. R. Elliott ofThe Flag repeatedly asked her to contribute pieces under her own name, but she continued using pseudonyms.[209] Louisa May Alcott scholarLeona Rostenberg suggests that she published these stories under pseudonyms to preserve her reputation as an author of realistic and juvenile fiction.[210] Researching for his dissertation in 2021, doctorate candidate Max Chapnick discovered a possible new pseudonym, E. H. Gould.[211] Chapnick found a story referenced in Alcott's personal records in theOlive Branch, published under the name E.H. Gould.[212] While Chapnick is uncertain if the pseudonym conclusively belongs to Alcott,[213] other stories he found include references to people and places in her life.[214]
American studies professor Catherine Ross Nickerson credits Alcott with creating one of the earliest works ofdetective fiction in American literature—preceded only byEdgar Allan Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and his otherAuguste Dupin stories—with her 1865 thriller "V.V., or Plots and Counterplots." The story, which she published anonymously, 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.[215] Alcott'sgothic thrillers remained undiscovered until the 1940s and were not published in collections until the 1970s.[216]
Alcott's adult novels were not as popular as she wished them to be.[217] They lack the optimism of her juvenile fiction[218] and explore difficult marriages, women's rights, and conflict between men and women.[219]
Alcott had little interest in writing for children, but saw it as a good financial opportunity.[158] She felt that writing children's literature was tedious.[220] Alcott biographer Ruth K. MacDonald suggests that Alcott's hesitance to write children's novels may have arisen from the societal perception that writing for children was a means by which poor women made money.[220] Her juvenile fiction portrays both women who fitVictorian ideals of domesticity and women who have careers and decide to remain single.[221] In her domestic stories she focuses on women and children as characters, and some of the adult characters discuss social reform, such as women's rights.[222] The child protagonists are often flawed, and the stories includedidactics.[223] Though her juvenile fiction is largely based on her childhood, she does not focus on the poverty her family experienced.[79]
Alcott's writing has been described as "episodic" because the narratives are broken into distinctive events with little connective tissue.[224] Her early work is modeled after Charlotte Brontë's work.[225] The style and ideas that appear in her writing are also influenced by her transcendental upbringing, both promoting and satirizing transcendentalist ideals.[226] As arealist writer, she explores social conflict; she also promotes advanced views on education.[227] She incorporates slang into her characters' dialogue,[228] which contemporaries criticized her for doing.[229] She also uses intertextuality by frequently including references to plays and well-known statues, among other things.[230]
When Alcott was young, her family served asstation masters on theUnderground Railroad and housedfugitive slaves.[231] Alcott was unable to dictate when she first became an abolitionist, suggesting that she became an abolitionist either whenWilliam Lloyd Garrison was attacked for his abolitionist efforts or when a youngAfrican-American boy saved her from drowning inFrog Pond. Both events occurred when Alcott was a child.[232] Alcott formed herabolitionist ideas, in part, from listening to conversations between her father and uncleSamuel May or between her father and Emerson.[233] She was also inspired by the abolitionism ofRev. Theodore Parker,Charles Sumner,Wendell Phillips, and William Lloyd Garrison, with whom she was acquainted.[234] She also knewFrederick Douglass in adulthood.[231] As a young woman Alcott joined her family in teaching African-Americans how to read and write.[235] WhenJohn Brown was executed on December 2, 1859, for his involvement in anti-slavery, Alcott described it as "the execution of Saint John the Just".[236] Alcott attended several abolitionistrallies, including a rally atTremont Temple that advocated forThomas Simm's freedom.[237] She also believed in the full integration of African-Americans into society.[238] She wrote multiple anti-slavery stories such as "M. L.", "My Contraband", and "An Hour".[239] According toSarah Elbert, Alcott's anti-slavery stories show her regard for Harriet Beecher Stowe's anti-slavery works.[240]
After her mother's death, Alcott committed to following her example by actively advocating forwomen's suffrage.[241] In 1877, Alcott helped found theWomen's Educational and Industrial Union in Boston.[242] She read and admired theDeclaration of Sentiments published by theSeneca Falls Convention onwomen's rights, and became the first woman to register to vote inConcord, Massachusetts in a school board election on March 9, 1879.[243] She encouraged other Concord women to vote and was disappointed when few did.[244] Alcott became a member of the National Congress of the Women of the United States while attending the Woman's Congress in 1875[245] and later recounted it in "My Girls".[246] She gave speeches advocating women's rights and eventually convinced her publisher Thomas Niles to publish suffragist writings.[247] She advocated for dress and diet reform[248] as well as for women to receive college education,[249] sometimes signing her letters with "Yours for reform of all kinds".[250] Alcott also signed the "Appeal to Republican Women in Massachusetts", a petition that attempted to secure the vote for women.[251]
Along withElizabeth Stoddard,Rebecca Harding Davis,Anne Moncure Crane, and others, Alcott was part of a group of female authors during theGilded 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'".[252] Alcott also joinedSorosis, where members discussed health and dress reform for women,[253] and she helped found Concord's first temperance society.[254] Between 1874 and 1887 many of her works, published in theWoman's Journal, discussed women's suffrage.[255] Her essay "Happy Women" inThe New York Ledger argued that women did not need to marry.[256] She explained herspinsterhood in an interview withLouise 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."[257] After her death, Alcott was memorialized during a suffragist meeting inCincinnati, Ohio.[248]
The Alcotts' Concord home, Orchard House, where the family lived for 25 years[258] and whereLittle Women was written, is open to the public and pays homage to the Alcotts' by focusing on public education and historic preservation.[259] The Louisa May Alcott Memorial Association, which was founded in 1911 and runs the museum, allows tourists to walk through the house and learn about Louisa May Alcott.[260] The Alcotts' earlier home in Concord,Hillside, is open as part of theMinute Man National Historic Park. Her Boston home is featured on theBoston Women's Heritage Trail.[161]
Alcott appears as the protagonist in theLouisa May Alcott Mystery series, written byJeanne Mackin under the pseudonym Anna Maclean.[267] In book one,Alcott and the Missing Heiress, Alcott is living in Boston in 1854[268] and writing her sensation stories.[269] She finds the dead body of a fictional friend who recently returned from a honeymoon and solves the mystery.[270]Alcott and the Country Bachelor follows Alcott as she visits cousins in Walpole, New Hampshire, in the summer of 1855 and discovers the dead body of an immigrant bachelor.[271] Alcott decides to solve what she suspects is a murder.[272] InAlcott and the Crystal Gazer, the third and final book in the series, she solves the murder of adivination woman in Boston in 1855.[273]
The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott by Kelly O'Connor McNees takes place in Walpole in 1855 and follows Alcott as she finds romance.[274] Alcott falls in love with a fictional character named Joseph Singer but chooses to pursue a profession as a writer instead of continuing her relationship with Singer.[275] InOnly Gossip Prospers by Lorraine Tosiello, Alcott visits New York City shortly after publishingLittle Women. During her trip, Alcott seeks to remain anonymous because of an unrevealed circumstance from her past.[276]The Revelation of Louisa May Alcott by Michaela MacColl takes place in 1846; young Alcott solves the murder of aslave catcher.[277] Patricia O'Brien'sThe Glory Cloak tells of a fictional friendship between Alcott andClara Barton, Alcott's work in the Civil War, and her relationships with Thoreau and her father.[278] Theepistolary novelThe Bee and the Fly: The Improbable Correspondence of Louisa May Alcott and Emily Dickinson, by Lorraine Tosiello and Jane Cavolina, follows a fictional correspondence between Alcott and Dickinson, which Dickinson initiates in 1861 by asking Alcott for literary advice.[279]
^Saxton 1995, p. 116;Anderson 1995, p. 16;Elbert 1987, p. 41. Saxton and Anderson state that Anna and Louisa attended Concord Academy. Elbert states that Anna attended the academy while Louisa attended a school for younger children held at the Emerson home.
^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."
Doyle, Christine (2001). "Louisa May Alcott (29 November 1832–6 March 1888)". In Hudock, Amy E.; Rodier, Katharine (eds.).Dictionary of Literary Biography: American Women Prose Writers, 1820–1870. Vol. 239. USA: The Gale Group.ISBN978-0787646561.
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.ISBN1-55849-174-0.
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: Salem Press. pp. 221–236.ISBN978-1-61925-521-0.
Eiselein, Gregory; Phillips, Anne K. (2016). "On Louisa May Alcott: Questions on Her Significance, Singularity, Sorority, and Staying Power". In Eiselein, Gregory; Phillips, Anne K. (eds.).Critical Insights: Louisa May Alcott. Ipswich, MA, USA: Salem Press. pp. 3–17.ISBN978-1-61925-521-0.
Elbert, Sarah (1987) [1984].A Hunger for Home: Louisa May Alcott's Place in American Culture. Rutgers University Press.ISBN0-8135-1199-2.
Matteson, John (2016). "'When Rude Hands Shake the Hive': Louisa May Alcott and the Transformation of America". In Eiselein, Gregory; Phillips, Anne K. (eds.).Critical Insights: Louisa May Alcott. Ipswich, MA: Salem Press. pp. 27–38.ISBN978-1-61925-521-0.
Norwich, John Julius (1990).Oxford Illustrated Encyclopedia Of The Arts. USA: Oxford University Press.ISBN978-0-19-869137-2.
Parr, James L. (2009).Dedham: Historic and Heroic Tales From Shiretown. The History Press.ISBN978-1-59629-750-0.
Porter, Maria S. (2005). "Recollections of Louisa May Alcott (1892)". In Shealy, Daniel (ed.).Alcott in Her Own Time. Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press. pp. 58–73.ISBN0-87745-937-1.
Reisen, Harriet (2009).Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women. Henry Holt and Company.ISBN978-0-8050-8299-9.
Rosetenberg, Leona (1998). "Some Anonymous and Pseudonymous Thrillers of Louisa M. Alcott". In Stern, Madeleine B. (ed.).Louisa May Alcott: From Blood & Thunder to Hearth & Home. Northeastern University Press. pp. 73–82.ISBN1-55553-349-3.
Sander, Kathleen Waters (1998).The Business of Charity: The Woman's Exchange Movement, 1832–1900. University of Illinois Press. p. 66.ISBN0252067037.
Saxton, Martha (1995).Louisa May Alcott: A Modern Biography. USA: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.ISBN0374524602.
Stern, Madeleine B. (2000). "Louisa May Alcott (29 November 1832-6 March 1888)". In Mott, Wesley T. (ed.).Dictionary of Literary Biography: The American Renaissance in New England. Vol. 223. USA: The Gale Group.ISBN0-7876-3132-9.
Thomas, Amy M. (2016). "Looking for Louisa: authors, Audiences, and Literatures in Alcott's Critical Reception". In Eiselein, Gregory; Phillips, Anne K. (eds.).Critical Insights: Louisa May Alcott. Ipswich, MA, USA: Salem Press. pp. 39–51.ISBN978-1-61925-521-0.
Sneller, Judy E. (2013). "Lurid Louisa or Angelic Alcott?: Humor, Irony, and Identity in Louisa May Alcott's Stories of the 1860s".The International Journal of Literary Humanities.10 (3). Common Ground Research Networks:41–50.doi:10.18848/2327-7912/CGP/v10i03/43874.
Alcott, Alcott May, May Alcott, and Daniel Shealy.Little Women Abroad : The Alcott Sisters' Letters from Europe, 1870-1871. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2008.ISBN9780820330099
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.ISBN978-0-7432-6461-7.
Eiselein, Gregory; Phillips, Anne K., eds. (2001).The Louisa May Alcott Encyclopedia. Greenwood Press; online in ebrary, also available in print ed.ISBN0-313-30896-9.OCLC44174106.
Eiselein, Gregory & Anne K. Phillips (2016).Critical Insights: Louisa May Alcott. Grey House Publishing.ISBN978-1-61925-521-0.
Peck, Garrett (2015).Walt Whitman in Washington, D.C.: The Civil War and America's Great Poet. Charleston, SC: The History Press. pp. 73–76.ISBN978-1626199736.
Seiple, Samantha (2019).Alcott on the Front Lines: Louisa May Alcott in the Civil War. New York: Seal Press, Hachette Book Group.ISBN978-1-58005-804-9.
