Sophia Foord (1802-1885) was an American schoolteacher and abolitionist from Dedham, Massachusetts .
144-521: Louisa May Alcott ( / ˈ ɔː l k ə t , - k ɒ t / ; 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
288-428: A 2005 musical . It also inspired a BBC Radio 4 version in 2017. Little Men inspired film versions in 1934 , 1940 , and 1998 , and was the basis for a 1998 television series . Other films based on Louisa May Alcott novels and stories are An Old-Fashioned Girl (1949), The Inheritance (1997), and An Old Fashioned Thanksgiving (2008). "Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind 'Little Women'" aired in 2009 as part of
432-465: A mansion in Plumfield. Beth, too timid for school, is content to stay at home and help with housework; and Amy is still at school. Meg is beautiful and traditional, Jo is a tomboy who writes, Beth is a peacemaker and a pianist , and Amy is an artist who longs for elegance and fine society . The sisters strive to help their family and improve their characters, as Meg is vain, Jo is hotheaded, Beth
576-572: A "New Eden". The children's education was undertaken by Lane, who implemented a strict schedule. Louisa disliked Lane and found the new living arrangements difficult. In 1843 Bronson and Lane established Fruitlands , a utopian community, in Harvard, Massachusetts , where the family were to live. Louisa later described these early years in a newspaper sketch titled "Transcendental Wild Oats", reprinted in Silver Pitchers (1876), which relates
720-419: A "hearth and home" children's story. Women's literature historians and juvenile fiction historians have agreed that Little Women was the beginning of this "downward spiral". But Elbert says that Little Women did not "belittle women's fiction" and that Alcott stayed true to her "Romantic birthright". Little Women ' s popular audience was responsive to ideas of social change as they were shown "within
864-559: A "hot" temper that often leads her into trouble. With the help of her own misguided sense of humor, her sister, Beth, and her mother, she works on controlling it. It has been said that much of Louisa May Alcott shows through in these characteristics of Jo. In her essay, "Recollections of My Childhood," Alcott refers to herself as a tomboy who enjoyed boys' activities, like running foot-races and climbing trees. Jo loves literature, both reading and writing. She composes plays for her sisters to perform and writes short stories. She initially rejects
1008-414: A baby daughter, Josephine "Josie" Brooke, who is 14, at the beginning of the final book. According to Sarah Elbert, "democratic domesticity requires maturity, strength, and above all, a secure identity that Meg lacks". Others believe Alcott does not intend to belittle Meg for her ordinary life and writes her with loving detail, suffused with sentimentality. The principal character, Jo, 15 years old at
1152-496: A barn near Hillside. Her students consisted of the Emerson, Channing, and Alcott children. The two oldest Alcott girls continued acting in plays written by Louisa. While Anna preferred portraying calm characters, Louisa preferred the roles of villains, knights, and sorcerers. These plays later inspired Comic Tragedies (1893). The family struggled without income beyond the girls' sewing and teaching. Eventually, some friends arranged
1296-687: A brief stay in Scituate , the Alcotts moved to Hosmer Cottage in Concord . Emerson, who had convinced Bronson to move his family to Concord, paid rent for the family, who were often in need of financial help. While living there, Alcott and her sisters befriended the Hosmer, Goodwin, Emerson, Hawthorne , and Channing children, who lived nearby. The Hosmer and Alcott children put on plays and often included other children. Louisa and Anna also attended school at
1440-508: A brother and that she could not love him in a romantic way. Jo decides she wants a bit of adventure and to put distance between herself and Laurie, hoping he will forget his feelings. She spends six months with a friend of her mother who runs a boarding house in New York City, serving as governess for her two children. Jo takes German lessons with another boarder, Professor Friedrich Bhaer. He has come to America from Berlin to care for
1584-731: A child, Simone de Beauvior felt a connection to Jo and expressed, "Reading this novel gave me an exalted sense of myself. 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." Writers influenced by Louisa May Alcott include Ursula K. Le Guin , Barbara Kingsolver , Gail Mazur , Anna Quindlen , Anne Lamott , Sonia Sanchez , Ann Petry , Gertrude Stein , and J. K. Rowling . U. S. president Theodore Roosevelt said he "worshiped" Louisa May Alcott's books. Other politicians who have been impacted by her books include Ruth Bader Ginsberg , Hillary Clinton , and Sandra Day O'Connor . Louisa May Alcott
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#17327726214091728-562: A copy of Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship Bhaer is also representative of Alcott's reverence for German culture . In 2003 Little Women was ranked number 18 in The Big Read , a survey of the British public by the BBC to determine the "Nation's Best-loved Novel" (not children's novel); it is fourth-highest among novels published in the U.S. on that list. Based on a 2007 online poll,
1872-490: A creative and emotional outlet for Louisa. In 1849 she created a family newspaper, the Olive Leaf, named after the local Olive Branch. The family newspaper included stories, poems, articles, and housekeeping advice. It was later renamed to The Portfolio . She also wrote her first novel, The Inheritance, which was published posthumously and based on Jane Eyre . Louisa, who was driven to escape poverty, wrote, "I wish I
2016-636: A decision, based on her limited artistic talent, how to direct her adult life. She encounters "Laurie" Laurence and his grandfather, during the extended visit. Amy is the least inclined of the sisters to sacrifice and self-denial. She behaves well, in upper-class society, and she is at ease, with herself. Critic Martha Saxton observes the author was never fully at ease with Amy's moral development, and her success, in life, seemed relatively accidental. However, Amy's morality does appear to develop, throughout her adolescence and early adulthood, and she can confidently and justly put Laurie in his place, when she believes he
2160-459: A fictional character named Joseph Singer but chooses to pursue a profession as a writer instead of continuing her relationship with Singer. In Only Gossip Prospers by Lorraine Tosiello, Louisa visits New York City shortly after publishing Little Women . During her trip, Louisa seeks to remain anonymous because of an unrevealed circumstance from her past. The Revelation of Louisa May Alcott by Michaela MacColl takes place in 1846; young Louisa solves
2304-559: A girl's book. I said I'd try." Alcott set her novel in an imaginary Orchard House modeled on her residence of the same name, where she wrote the novel. She, later, recalled that she did not think she could write a successful book for girls and did not enjoy writing it. "I plod away," she wrote in her diary, "although, I don't enjoy this sort of things." By June, Alcott had sent the first dozen chapters to Niles, and both agreed that they were dull. But Niles's niece, Lillie Almy, read them and said she enjoyed them. The completed manuscript
2448-521: A good financial opportunity. She felt that writing children's literature was tedious. 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. Her juvenile fiction portrays both women who fit Victorian ideals of domesticity and women who have careers and decide to remain single. In her domestic stories she focuses on women and children as characters, and some of
2592-793: A hillside now known as Authors' Ridge. 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. In 1859 Alcott began writing for the Atlantic Monthly . Encouraged by Sanborn and Moncure Conway , Louisa revised and published the letters she wrote while serving as a nurse in the Boston anti-slavery paper Commonwealth, later collecting them as Hospital Sketches (1863, republished with additions in 1869). She planned to travel to South Carolina to teach freed slaves and write letters she could later publish, but she
2736-480: A home they called Hillside with money Abigail inherited from her father. Here, Louisa and her sister Anna attended a school run by John Hosmer after a period of home education. The family again lived near the Emersons, and Louisa was granted open access to the Emerson library, where she read Carlyle, Dante , Shakespeare , and Goethe. In the summer of 1848 sixteen-year-old Louisa opened a school of twenty students in
2880-676: A house and be ready, when he marries Meg. Laurie goes off to college. On Christmas Day, a year after the book's opening, the girls' father returns home. (Published separately in the United Kingdom as Good Wives ) Three years later, Meg and John marry and learn how to live together. When they have twins , Meg is a devoted mother, but John begins to feel neglected and left out. Meg seeks advice from Marmee, who helps her find balance in her married life by making more time for wifely duties and encouraging John to become more involved with child rearing. Laurie graduates from college, having put in
3024-456: A job for Abigail and three years after moving into Hillside, the family moved to Boston. Hillside was sold to Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1852. Louisa described the three years she spent at Concord as a child as the "happiest of her life." When the Alcott family moved to South End , Boston in 1848, Louisa had work as a teacher, seamstress, governess, domestic helper, and laundress, to earn money for
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#17327726214093168-473: 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." After her death, Alcott was memorialized during a suffragist meeting in Cincinnati, Ohio . The Alcotts' Concord home, Orchard House, where the family lived for 25 years and where Little Women was written, is open to the public and pays homage to
3312-419: A new edition without her approval. Louisa Alcott began editing the children's magazine Merry's Museum to help pay off family debts incurred while she toured Europe as the companion of wealthy invalid Anna Weld in 1865–66. Though Louisa disliked editing the magazine, she became its main editor in 1867. Around the same time, Alcott's publisher, Thomas Niles, asked her to write a book especially for girls. She
3456-577: A new form of literature, one that took elements from romantic children's fiction and combined it with others from sentimental novels, resulting in a totally new genre. Elbert argues that within Little Women can be found the first vision of the " All-American girl " and that her various aspects are embodied in the differing March sisters. The book has been translated into numerous languages, and frequently adapted for stage and screen. In 1868, Alcott's publisher, Thomas Niles, recommended that she write
3600-641: A new neighborhood (loosely based on Concord ) in Massachusetts in genteel poverty . Having lost all his money, their father is serving as a chaplain for the Union Army in the American Civil War , far from home. The mother and daughters face their first Christmas without him. When Marmee asks them to give their Christmas breakfast away to an impoverished family, the girls and their mother venture into town, laden with baskets, to feed
3744-504: A novel about girls that would have widespread appeal. Alcott resisted, preferring to publish a collection of short stories, instead. Niles pressed her to write the girls' book first, however, and he was aided by her father, Amos Bronson Alcott , who also urged her to do so. Louisa confided to a friend, "I could not write a girls' story knowing little about any but my sisters and always preferring boys". In May 1868, Alcott wrote in her journal: "Niles, partner of Roberts, asked me to write
3888-728: A nurse for six weeks in 1862–1863. She intended to serve three months, but contracted typhoid fever and became critically ill partway through her service. In late January Bronson traveled to the hospital and took Louisa to Concord to recover. Louisa nursed her mother Abigail, who was dying, in 1877 while writing Under the Lilacs (1878). Louisa also became ill and close to dying, so the family moved in with Anna Alcott Pratt, who had recently purchased Thoreau's house with Louisa's financial support. After Abigail's death in November, Louisa and Bronson permanently moved into Anna's house. Her sister May
4032-432: A pass to attend free of charge. She published her first book, Flower Fables , in 1854; the book was a selection of tales she originally told to Ellen Emerson , daughter of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Lidian Emerson had read the stories and encouraged Louisa to publish them. Though she was pleased, Louisa hoped to eventually shift her writing "from fairies and fables to men and realities". She also wrote The Rival Prima Donnas ,
4176-575: A play adaptation of her story with the same title. In 1855 the Alcotts moved to Walpole, New Hampshire , where Louisa and Anna participated in the Walpole Amateur Dramatic Company. Louisa was praised for her "superior histrionic ability". At the end of the theater season, Louisa, encouraged by the success of Flower Fables , began writing Christmas Elves , a collection of Christmas stories illustrated by May Alcott. In November Louisa traveled to Boston and attempted to publish
4320-466: A possible new pseudonym, E. H. Gould. Chapnick found a story referenced in Alcott's personal records in the Olive Branch, published under the name E.H. Gould. While Chapnick is uncertain if the pseudonym conclusively belongs to Alcott, other stories he found include references to people and places in her life. American studies professor Catherine Ross Nickerson credits Alcott with creating one of
4464-411: A proper young lady. She is the artist of the family. Often coddled, because she is the youngest, Amy can behave in a vain and self-centered way, though she does still love her family. She has the middle name Curtis, and is the only March sister to use her full name, rather than a diminutive. Amy is chosen by her aunt to travel to Europe with her, instead of her sister, Jo. There, she matures and makes
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4608-477: A romance between herself and Wisniewski but later took it out. Alcott identified Wisniewski as one of the models for the character Laurie in Little Women . Her other model for Laurie was fifteen-year-old Alfred Whitman , who she met shortly before the death of her sister Elizabeth and with whom she corresponded for several years afterward. She based the heroine Jo on herself, and other characters were based on people from Alcott's life. Later Niles asked Alcott to write
4752-593: A second part. Also known as Good Wives (1869), it follows the March sisters into adulthood and marriage. In 1870 Louisa joined May and a friend on a European tour. Though numerous publishers requested new stories, Louisa wrote little while in Europe, instead preferring to rest. Meanwhile, rumors began to spread that she had died from diphtheria . She eventually described their travels in "Shawl Straps" (1872). While in Europe, Louisa began writing Little Men after finding out that her brother-in-law, John Pratt, had died. She
4896-425: A single novel titled Little Women . Alcott subsequently wrote two sequels to her popular work, both also featuring the March sisters: Little Men (1871) and Jo's Boys (1886). The novel has been said to address three major themes: "domesticity, work, and true love, all of them interdependent and each necessary to the achievement of its heroine's individual identity." According to Sarah Elbert , Alcott created
5040-760: A stroke in 1882, Louisa became his caretaker. In the years that followed she alternated between living in Concord, Boston, and Nonquitt . In June 1884 Louisa sold Orchard House, which the family was no longer living in. Alcott suffered from chronic health problems in her later years, including vertigo , dyspepsia , headaches, fatigue, and pain in the limbs, diagnosed as neuralgia in her lifetime. When conventional medicines did not alleviate her pain, she tried mind-cure treatments, homeopathy , hypnotism , and Christian Science . Her ill health has been attributed to mercury poisoning , morphine intake, intestinal cancer , or meningitis . Alcott herself cited mercury poisoning as
5184-432: A successfully completed adolescence". Beth, 13 when the story starts, is described as kind, gentle, sweet, shy, quiet, honest, and musical. She is the shyest March sister and the pianist of the family. Infused with quiet wisdom, she is the peacemaker of the family, and she gently scolds her sisters, when they argue. As her sisters grow up, they begin to leave home, but Beth has no desire to leave her house or family. She
5328-467: A time of high immigration to the United States. Through the March sisters, women could relate and dream where they may not have before. "Both the passion Little Women has engendered in diverse readers and its ability to survive its era and transcend its genre point to a text of unusual permeability." At the time, young girls perceived that marriage was their end goal. After the publication of
5472-418: A victim to her family. MacDonald also praised Saxton's description of Alcott's acquaintance with several intellectuals of the time. MacDonald praised Sarah Elbert's 1984 biography A 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 from The Alcotts: Biography of a Family . She also stated that
5616-486: A will that left her money to her remaining family. Alcott visited Bronson at his deathbed on March 1, 1888, and expressed the wish that she could join him in death. On March 3, the day before her father died, she suffered a stroke and went unconscious, in which state she remained until her death on March 6, 1888. She was buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, near Emerson, Hawthorne, and Thoreau, on
5760-421: Is an idealized one. For instance, Mr. March is portrayed as a hero of the American Civil War , a gainfully employed chaplain , and, presumably, a source of inspiration to the women of the family. He is absent for most of the novel. In contrast, Bronson Alcott was very present in his family's household, due in part to his inability to find steady work. While he espoused many of the educational principles touted by
5904-458: Is cripplingly shy, and Amy is materialistic. The neighbor boy, Laurie, the orphaned grandson of Mr. Laurence, becomes close friends with the sisters, particularly the tomboyish Jo. The girls keep busy, as the war goes on. Jo writes a novel that gets published but is frustrated to have to edit it down and can't comprehend the conflicting critical response. Meg is invited to spend two weeks with rich friends, where there are parties and cotillions for
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6048-441: Is deferred, until her unexpected inheritance of her Aunt March's home, a year later. According to critic Barbara Sicherman , "The crucial first point is that the choice is hers, its quirkiness another sign of her much-prized individuality." They have two sons, Robert "Rob" Bhaer and Theodore "Ted" Bhaer. Jo also writes the first part of Little Women during the second portion of the novel. According to Elbert, "her narration signals
6192-488: Is especially close to Jo: when Beth develops scarlet fever , after visiting the Hummels, Jo does most of the nursing and rarely leaves her side. Beth recovers from the acute disease, but her health is permanently weakened. As she grows, Beth begins to realize that her time with her loved ones is coming to an end. Finally, the family accepts that Beth will not live much longer. They make a special room for her, filled with all
6336-531: Is modeled after Charlotte Brontë's work. The style and ideas that appear in her writing are also influenced by her transcendental upbringing, both promoting and satirizing transcendentalist ideals. As a realist writer, she explores social conflict; she also promotes advanced views on education. She incorporates slang into her characters' dialogue, which contemporaries criticized her for doing. She also uses intertextuality by frequently including references to plays and well-known statues, among other things. When Alcott
6480-406: Is more a brotherly love, rather than romantic love, the difference between which he was unable to understand, because he was "just a boy," as said by Alcott in the book. After Beth dies, Professor Bhaer woos Jo at her home, when "they decide to share life's burdens, just as they shared the load of bundles on their shopping expedition". She is 25 years old when she accepts his proposal. The marriage
6624-419: Is prominently featured". Adult elements of women's fiction in Little Women included "a change of heart necessary" for the female protagonist to evolve in the story. In the late 20th century, some scholars criticized the novel. Sarah Elbert, for instance, wrote that Little Women was the beginning of "a decline in the radical power of women's fiction", partly because women's fiction was being idealized with
6768-439: Is sent to live with Aunt March and replaces Jo as her companion and helper. Jo, who already had scarlet fever, tends to Beth. After many days of illness, the family doctor advises that Marmee be sent for, immediately. Beth recovers, but never fully regains her health and energy. While Brooke waits for Meg to come of age to marry, he joins the military and serves in the war. After he is wounded, he returns to find work, so he can buy
6912-414: Is the death of beloved Beth. Her "self-sacrifice is ultimately the greatest in the novel. She gives up her life, knowing that it has had only private, domestic meaning." Amy is the youngest sister and baby of the family; she's 12, when the story begins. Interested in art, she is described as a "regular snow-maiden," with curly golden hair and blue eyes, "pale and slender" and "always carrying herself" like
7056-408: Is wasting his life on pleasurable activities. Ultimately, Amy is shown to work very hard to gain what she wants and to make the most of her success, when she has it. For her books, Alcott was often inspired by familiar elements. The characters in Little Women are recognizably drawn from family members and friends. Her married sister Anna was Meg, the family beauty. Lizzie, Alcott's beloved sister,
7200-562: The American Masters biography series and was aired a second time on May 20, 2018. It was directed by Nancy Porter and written by Harriet Reisen, who wrote the script based on primary sources from Alcott's life. The documentary, which starred Elizabeth Marvel as Louisa, was shot onsite for the events it covered. It included interviews with Louisa May Alcott scholars, including Sarah Elbert , Daniel Shealy, Madeleine Stern , Leona Rostenberg , and Geraldine Brooks. Alcott appears as
7344-616: The American Civil War broke out in 1861, Alcott wanted to enlist in the Union 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. Soon after turning thirty in 1862, Alcott applied to the U. S. Sanitary Commission , run by Dorothea Dix , and on December 11 was assigned to work in the Union Hotel Hospital in Georgetown, Washington, D. C. When she left, Bronson felt as if he
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#17327726214097488-621: The Concord Academy , though for a time Louisa attended a school for younger children held at the Emerson house. At eight years-old, Louisa wrote her first poem, "To the First Robin". When she showed the poem to her mother, Abigail was pleased. In October 1842 Bronson returned from a visit to schools in England and brought Charles Lane and Henry Wright with him to live at Hosmer Cottage, while Bronson and Lane made plans to establish
7632-857: The Cult of Domesticity and explore its counter ideals, Real Womanhood . Important to Alcott's income because they paid well, these sensation stories were published in The Flag of Our Union , Frank Leslie's Chimney Corner , and Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper . Her thrillers were usually published anonymously or with the pseudonym A. M. Barnard. J. R. Elliott of The Flag repeatedly asked her to contribute pieces under her own name, but she continued using pseudonyms. Louisa May Alcott scholar Leona Rostenberg suggests that she published these stories under pseudonyms to preserve her reputation as an author of realistic and juvenile fiction. Researching for his dissertation in 2021, doctorate candidate Max Chapnick discovered
7776-584: The Women's Educational and Industrial Union in Boston. She read and admired the Declaration of Sentiments published by the Seneca Falls Convention on women's rights , and became the first woman to register to vote in Concord, Massachusetts in a school board election on March 9, 1879. She encouraged other Concord women to vote and was disappointed when few did. Alcott became a member of
7920-487: The butterfly rash that is often characteristic of lupus . The suggested diagnosis, based on Alcott's journal entries, cannot be proved. 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. Eventually a doctor advised Alcott to stop writing to preserve her health. In 1887 she legally adopted Anna's son, John Pratt, and made him heir to her royalties , then created
8064-527: The "Appeal to Republican Women in Massachusetts", a petition that attempted to secure the vote for women. 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
8208-589: 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. Martha Saxton's 1978 Louisa 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". Alcott biographer Ruth K. MacDonald considered Saxton's biography to be excessively psychoanalytical, portraying Alcott as
8352-577: The Alcotts by focusing on public education and historic preservation. 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. Her Boston home is featured on the Boston Women's Heritage Trail . 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
8496-541: The Alcotts rented while Bronson repaired Orchard House . During that time, the two oldest Alcott sisters organized the Concord Dramatic Union. Elizabeth Alcott died on March 14, 1858, when she was twenty-three. Three weeks later, Anna became engaged to John Pratt , a man she met in the Concord Dramatic Union. Louisa experienced depression about these events and considered Elizabeth's death and Anna's engagement catalysts to breaking up their sisterhood. After
8640-901: The Author of Little Women won the Newbery Medal . Critical Insights: Louisa May Alcott , edited by Gregory Eiselein and Anne K. Phillips, contains a series of essays discussing Alcott's life and literature. Alcott preferred writing sensation stories and novels more than domestic fiction , confiding in her journal, "I fancy 'lurid' things". They were influenced by the works of other writers such as Goethe , Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. The stories follow themes of incest , murder, suicide, psychology, secret identities, and sensuality. Her characters are often involved in opium experimentation or mind control and sometimes experience insanity , with males and females contending for dominance. The female characters push back against
8784-554: The Feminist Imagination: Criticism, Controversy, Personal Essays . Ruth MacDonald argued that "Louisa May Alcott stands as one of the great American practitioners of the girls' novel and the family story". In the 1860s, gendered separation of children's fiction was a newer division in literature. This division signaled a beginning of polarization of gender roles as social constructs "as class stratification increased". Joy Kasson wrote, "Alcott chronicled
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#17327726214098928-461: 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 . The first volume of Little Women was published in 1868 by Roberts Brothers. The first edition included illustrations by Abigail May Alcott , the sister commonly called "May" who inspired
9072-400: The March family, he was loud and dictatorial. His lack of financial independence was a source of humiliation to his wife and daughters. The March family is portrayed as living in genteel penury, but the Alcott family, dependent on an improvident, impractical father, suffered real poverty and occasional hunger. In addition to her own childhood and that of her sisters, scholars who have examined
9216-616: The National Congress of the Women of the United States while attending the Woman's Congress in 1875 and later recounted it in "My Girls". She gave speeches advocating women's rights and eventually convinced her publisher Thomas Niles to publish suffragist writings. She advocated for dress and diet reform as well as for women to receive college education, sometimes signing her letters with "Yours for reform of all kinds". Alcott also signed
9360-571: The Professor is poor, the wedding must wait, while he establishes a good income by going out west to teach. A year goes by without much success; later, Aunt March dies and leaves her large estate, Plumfield, to Jo, who marries Friedrich and turns the house into a school. They have two sons of their own, and Amy and Laurie have a daughter. At apple-picking time, Marmee celebrates her 60th birthday at Plumfield, with her husband, her three surviving daughters, their husbands, and her five grandchildren. Meg,
9504-483: The U.S. National Education Association listed it as one of its "Teachers' Top 100 Books for Children". In 2012 it was ranked number 47 among all-time children's novels in a survey published by School Library Journal , a monthly with primarily US audience. Little Women has been one of the most widely read novels, noted by Stern from a 1927 report in The New York Times and cited in Little Women and
9648-595: The United States who wanted to assimilate into the middle-class culture. Sophia Foord Foord was the daughter of James Ford, the clerk of Norfolk County . She lived nearby James Richardson . She was the first depositor at Dedham Savings . While living with the Alcott family in Concord, Massachusetts , she met Henry David Thoreau . Despite being 15 years older than him, she fell in love with him. She proposed marriage to him, but he declined. She had feelings for him for many years, which she would write about in letters to Louisa May Alcott . Foord spent
9792-562: The Walpole Amateur Dramatic Company and sought to entertain Elizabeth with stories about their acting. The family later visited Swampscott in an effort to boost Elizabeth's health, which was poor from effects of the scarlet fever, but it did not improve. During this time Louisa read The Life of Charlotte Brontë by Elizabeth Gaskell and found inspiration from Brontë 's life. The family moved back to Concord in September 1857, where
9936-422: The adult characters discuss social reform, such as women's rights. The child protagonists are often flawed, and the stories include didactics . Though her juvenile fiction is largely based on her childhood, she does not focus on the poverty her family experienced. Alcott's writing has been described as "episodic" because the narratives are broken into distinctive events with little connective tissue. Her early work
10080-520: The audiobook versions. Editions are shown in continuous print from many publishers, as hardback, paperback, audio, and e-book versions, from the 1980s to 2015. This split of the two volumes also shows at Goodreads, which refers to the books as the Little Women series, including Little Women , Good Wives , Little Men and Jo's Boys . G. K. Chesterton believed Alcott in Little Women , "anticipated realism by twenty or thirty years", and that Fritz's proposal to Jo, and her acceptance, "is one of
10224-449: The author and her three sisters, it is classified as an autobiographical or semi-autobiographical novel. Little Women was an immediate commercial and critical success, and readers were eager for more about the characters. Alcott quickly completed a second volume (titled Good Wives in the United Kingdom, though the name originated with the publisher and not Alcott). It was also met with success. The two volumes were issued in 1880 as
10368-421: The beginning of the book, is a strong and willful young woman, struggling to subdue her fiery temper and stubborn personality. Second oldest of the four sisters, Jo is masculine, the smartest, most creative one in the family; her father has referred to her as his "son Jo," and her best friend and neighbour, Theodore "Laurie" Laurence, sometimes calls her "my dear fellow," while she, alone, calls him Teddy. Jo has
10512-756: The biography could use more analysis of Alcott's works. Kate Beaird Meyers of the University of Tulsa felt that the 1987 version, entitled A 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. Alcott scholar Daniel Shealy compiled and edited Alcott in Her Own Time . Roberta Trites called it "fascinating and thorough", though she said it needed more background information about
10656-562: 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. Alcott's gothic thrillers remained undiscovered until the 1940s and were not published in collections until the 1970s. Alcott's adult novels were not as popular as she wished them to be. They lack the optimism of her juvenile fiction and explore difficult marriages, women's rights, and conflict between men and women. Alcott had little interest in writing for children, but saw it as
10800-499: The cause of her sickness. When she contracted typhoid fever during her American Civil War service, she was treated with calomel , which is a compound containing mercury . Dr. Norbert Hirschhorn and Dr. Ian Greaves suggest that Alcott's chronic health problems may have been associated with an autoimmune disease such as systemic lupus erythematosus , possibly because mercury exposure compromised her immune system. An 1870 portrait of Alcott shows her cheeks to be flushed, perhaps with
10944-415: The collection while living with a relative. November was too late in the year to publish Christmas books and Louisa was unable to publish The Christmas Elves . She then wrote and published "The Sisters' Trial", a story about four women who were based on the Alcott sisters. Louisa returned to Walpole in mid-1856 to find her sister Elizabeth ill with scarlet fever . Louisa helped nurse Elizabeth, and when she
11088-417: The coming of age of young girls, their struggles with issues such as selfishness and generosity, the nature of individual integrity, and, above all, the question of their place in the world around them." Girls related to the March sisters in Little Women , along with following the lead of their heroines, by assimilating aspects of the story into their own lives. After reading Little Women, some women felt
11232-424: The day, including Margaret Fuller , Ralph Waldo Emerson , Nathaniel Hawthorne , and Henry David Thoreau . Encouraged by her family, Louisa began writing from an early age. Louisa's family experienced financial hardship, and while Louisa 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
11376-628: The decided 'signs of the times'". Alcott also joined Sorosis , where members discussed health and dress reform for women, and she helped found Concord's first temperance society. Between 1874 and 1887 many of her works, published in the Woman's Journal , discussed women's suffrage. Her essay "Happy Women" in The New York Ledger argued that women did not need to marry. She explained her spinsterhood in an interview with Louise Chandler Moulton , saying, "I am more than half-persuaded that I am
11520-440: The demise of Fruitlands, the Alcotts discussed whether or not the family should separate. Louisa recorded this in her journal and expressed her unhappiness should they separate. After the collapse of Fruitlands in early 1844, the family rented in nearby Still River , where Louisa attended public school and wrote and directed plays that her sisters and friends performed. In April 1845 the family returned to Concord, where they bought
11664-544: The diaries of Louisa Alcott's mother, Abigail Alcott, have surmised that Little Women was also heavily inspired by Abigail Alcott's own early life. Originally, Alcott did not want to publish Little Women , claiming she found it boring, and wasn't sure how to write girls as she knew few beyond her sisters. However, encouraged by her editor Thomas Niles, she wrote it within 10 weeks. Also, Little Women has several textual and structural references to John Bunyan's novel The Pilgrim's Progress . Jo and her sisters read it at
11808-460: 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 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
11952-499: The effort to do well in his last year, with Jo's prompting. Amy is chosen over Jo to go on a European tour with her aunt. Beth's health is weak, due to complications from scarlet fever, and her spirits are down. While trying to uncover the reason for Beth's sadness, Jo realizes that Laurie has fallen in love. At first she believes it's with Beth, but soon senses it's with herself. Jo confides in Marmee, telling her that she loves Laurie like
12096-434: The eldest and Elizabeth and May as the youngest. Louisa was named after her mother's sister, Louisa May Greele, who had died four years earlier. After Louisa's birth, Bronson kept a record of her development, noting her strong will, which she may have inherited from her mother's May side of the family. He described her as "fit for the scuffle of things". The family moved to Boston in 1834, where Louisa's father established
12240-406: The essayists, while fellow Alcott scholar Gregory Eiselein praised Shealy's use of original accounts. Trites called Harriet Reisen's biography Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women "far more balanced than some of her predecessors['] in that ... she follows John Matteson 's lead in demonstrating how emotionally complex the relationship was between Alcott's parents and their daughters." She
12384-413: 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. Richardson's sister, Elizabeth, was 40 years old and suffered from neuralgia . She was shy and did not seem to have much use for Louisa. Instead, Richardson spent hours reading her poetry and sharing his philosophical ideas with her. She reminded Richardson that she
12528-411: The experimental Temple School and met with other transcendentalists such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau . Bronson participated in child-care but often failed to provide income, creating conflict in the family. At home and in school he taught morals and improvement, while Abigail emphasized imagination and supported Alcott's writing at home. Writing helped her handle her emotions. Louisa
12672-498: The familiar construct of domesticity". While Alcott had been commissioned to "write a story for girls", her primary heroine, Jo March, became a favorite of many different women, including educated women writers through the 20th century. The girl story became a "new publishing category with a domestic focus that paralleled boys' adventure stories". One reason the novel was so popular was that it appealed to different classes of women along with those of different national backgrounds, at
12816-511: The family moved into Orchard House in July 1858, Louisa again returned to Boston to find employment. Unable to find work and filled with despair, Louisa contemplated suicide by drowning, but she decided to "take Fate by the throat and shake a living out of her." She eventually received an offer to work as a governess for invalid Alice Lovering, which she accepted. As an adult, Louisa Alcott was an abolitionist, temperance advocate, and feminist. When
12960-521: The family's experiment in "plain living and high thinking" at Fruitlands. There, Louisa 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. She also enjoyed playing with Lane's son William and often put on fairy-tale plays or performances of Charles Dickens 's stories. She read works by Dickens, Plutarch , Lord Byron , Maria Edgeworth , and Oliver Goldsmith . During
13104-451: The family. Together, Louisa and her sister taught a school in Boston, though Louisa disliked teaching. Her sisters also supported the family by working as seamstresses, while their mother took on social work among the Irish immigrants . Elizabeth and May were able to attend public school, though Elizabeth later left school to undertake the housekeeping. Due to financial pressures, writing became
13248-555: The fictional Amy March. She "struggled" with her illustrative additions to her sister's book, but later improved her skills and found some success as an artist. The first printing of 2,000 copies sold out quickly, and the company had trouble keeping up with the demand for additional printings. They announced: "The great literary hit of the season is undoubtedly Miss Alcott's Little Women , the orders for which continue to flow in upon us to such an extent as to make it impossible to answer them with promptness." The last line of Chapter 23 in
13392-437: The first volume states: "So the curtain falls upon Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy. Whether it ever rises again, depends upon the reception given the first act of the domestic drama called Little Women." Alcott delivered the manuscript for the second volume on New Year's Day 1869, just three months after publication of part one. Versions in the late 20th and 21st centuries combine both Little Women and Good Wives into one book under
13536-647: The first volume, many girls wrote to Alcott asking her "who the little women marry". Sicherman said that the ending, which she personally characterizes as "unsatisfying", worked to "keep the story alive" as if the reader might find it ended differently upon different readings. Anne E. Boyd contends that "Alcott particularly battled the conventional marriage plot in writing Little Women ". Alcott did not have Jo accept Laurie's hand in marriage; rather, when she arranged for Jo to marry, she portrayed an unconventional man as her husband. In Sicherman's opinion, Alcott used Friedrich to "subvert adolescent romantic ideals" because he
13680-416: The following decades. 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. Katharine S. Anthony 's Louisa May Alcott, written in 1938, was the first biography to focus on Alcott's psychology. A comprehensive biography about Alcott was not written until Madeleine B. Stern 's 1950 Louisa May Alcott . In
13824-556: The girls to dance with boys and improve their social skills. Laurie is invited to one of the dances, and Meg's friends incorrectly think she is in love with him. Meg is more interested in John Brooke, Laurie's young tutor. Word comes that Mr. March is very ill with pneumonia and Marmee is called away to nurse him in Washington, DC . Mr. Laurence offers to accompany her, but she declines, knowing travel would be uncomfortable for
13968-445: The griefs in my life, and I have had many, this is the bitterest." It was at this time that she completed Jack and Jill: A Village Story (1880). Louisa sometimes hired a nanny when her poor health made it difficult to care for Lulu. While raising Lulu, she published few works. Among her published works at this time are the volumes of Lulu's Library (1886–1889), collections of stories written for her niece Lulu. When Bronson suffered
14112-404: The hungry children. When they return, they discover their wealthy, elderly neighbor, Mr. Laurence, has sent over a decadent surprise dinner, to make up for their breakfast. The two families become acquainted, following these acts of kindness. Meg and Jo must work to support the family: Meg tutors a nearby family of four children; Jo assists her aged great-aunt March, a wealthy widow living in
14256-402: The idea of marriage and romance, feeling that it would break up her family and separate her from the sisters whom she adores. While pursuing a literary career in New York City, she meets Friedrich Bhaer, a German professor. On her return home, Laurie proposes marriage to Jo, which she rejects, thus confirming her independence. Another reason for the rejection is that the love that Laurie has for Jo
14400-589: The job. As she walked from Richardson's home to Dedham station , she opened the envelope he handed her with her pay. 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. Another account states that Bronson may have returned the money himself and rebuked Richardson. Louisa later wrote a slightly fictionalized account of her time in Dedham titled "How I Went Out To Service", which she submitted to Boston publisher James T. Fields . Fields rejected
14544-729: The last years of her life in Dedham, living with her sister, Esther. She died in 1885 and was buried in Brookdale Cemetery . Foord taught in the Dedham Middle School in 1833 before moving the Northhampton, Massachusetts to join the Transcendentalist Northampton Association of Education and Industry. It was likely there that she met Amos Bronson Alcott , who convinced her to move to Concord, Massachusetts to join
14688-428: The lasting results of Beth's scarlet fever slowly begin to kill her. Jo devotes her time to the care of her dying sister. Laurie encounters Amy in Europe, and he slowly falls in love with her, as he begins to see her in a new light. She is unimpressed by the aimless, idle, and forlorn attitude he has adopted, since being rejected by Jo, and she inspires him to find his purpose and do something worthwhile with his life. With
14832-772: The murder of a slave catcher . Patricia O'Brien's The Glory Cloak tells of a fictional friendship between Louisa and Clara Barton , Louisa's work in the Civil War, and her relationships with Thoreau and her father. The epistolary novel The 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 Louisa and Dickinson, which Dickinson initiates in 1861 by asking Louisa for literary advice. Various modern writers have been influenced and inspired by Alcott's work, particularly Little Women . As
14976-562: The need to "acquire new and more public identities," however dependent on other factors, such as financial resources. While Little Women showed the regular lives of American middle-class girls, it also "legitimized" their dreams to do something different and allowed them to consider the possibilities. More young women started writing stories that had adventurous plots and "stories of individual achievement—traditionally coded male—challenged women's socialization into domesticity". Little Women also influenced contemporary European immigrants to
15120-464: The news of Beth's death, they meet for consolation, and their romance grows. Amy's aunt will not allow Amy to return, unchaperoned, with Laurie and his grandfather, so, they marry, before returning home from Europe. Friedrich is in Massachusetts on business and visits the Marches, daily, for two weeks. On his last day, he proposes to Jo, and the two become engaged, as she realizes she loves him. Because
15264-494: The novel in 1882 after Mary Mapes Dodge of St. Nicholas asked for a new serial. Jo's Boys (1886) completed the "March Family Saga", Louisa's best-known books. The general popularity of her first few published works surprised Alcott. Throughout her career as a writer, she shied away from public attention, sometimes acting as a servant when fans came to her house. Before her death, Louisa asked her sister Anna Pratt to destroy her letters and journals; Anna destroyed some and gave
15408-471: The old man. Mr. Laurence, instead, sends John Brooke to do his business in Washington and help the Marches. While in Washington, Brooke confesses his love for Meg to her parents. They are pleased but consider Meg too young to marry, so, Brooke agrees to wait. While Marmee is in Washington, Beth contracts scarlet fever , after spending time with a poor family, where three children die. As a precaution, Amy
15552-533: The oldest sister, is 16, when the story starts. She is described as a beauty, and she manages the household, when her mother is absent. She has long brown hair and blue eyes and particularly beautiful hands, and she is seen as the prettiest one of the sisters. Meg fulfils expectations for women of the time; from the start, she is already a nearly perfect "little woman," in the eyes of the world. Before her marriage to John Brooke, while still living at home, she often lectures her younger sisters to ensure they grow to embody
15696-552: The original text annotated for the reader (explaining terms of 1868–69 that are less common now), the original text modernized and abridged, or the original text abridged. The British influence, giving Part 2 its own title, Good Wives , has the book still published in two volumes, with Good Wives beginning three years after Little Women ends, especially in the UK and Canada, but also with some US editions. Some editions listed under Little Women appear to include both parts, especially in
15840-569: The orphaned sons of his sister. For extra money, Jo writes salacious romance stories, anonymously, for sensational newspapers. Suspecting her secret, Friedrich mentions such writing is unprincipled and base. Jo is persuaded to give up that type of writing, as her time in New York comes to an end, unaware that Friedrich has fallen in love with her. When she returns to Massachusetts, Laurie proposes marriage, and she declines. Laurie travels to Europe with his grandfather, to escape his heartbreak. At home,
15984-545: The outset of the book and try to follow the good example of Bunyan's Christian. Throughout the novel, the main characters refer many times to The Pilgrim's Progress and liken the events in their own lives to the experiences of the pilgrims. Several chapter titles directly reference characters and places from The Pilgrim's Progress . 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
16128-406: The period in a young woman's life where childhood and elder childhood are "overlapping" with young womanhood. Each of the March sister heroines has a harrowing experience that alerts them and the reader that "childhood innocence" is of the past, and that "the inescapable woman problem" is all that remains. The March sisters – Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy – and their mother, whom they call Marmee, live in
16272-463: The piece, telling Louisa that she had no future as a writer. In September 1851 Louisa's poem "Sunlight" appeared in Peterson's Magazine under the name Flora Fairchild, making it her first successful publication. 1852 marked the publication of her first story, "The Rival Painters: A Tale of Rome", which was published in the Olive Branch . In 1854 she attended The Boston Theatre , where she was given
16416-711: The protagonist in the Louisa May Alcott Mystery series, written by Jeanne Mackin under the pseudonym Anna Maclean. In book one, Louisa and the Missing Heiress , Louisa is living in Boston in 1854 and writing her sensation stories. She finds the dead body of a fictional friend who recently returned from a honeymoon and solves the mystery. Louisa and the Country Bachelor follows Louisa as she visits cousins in Walpole, New Hampshire, in
16560-529: The publication of Hospital Sketches , a book based on her service as a nurse in the American Civil War . 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. Little Women was one of her first successful novels and has been adapted for film and television. It is loosely based on Louisa's childhood experiences with her three sisters, Abigail May Alcott Nieriker , Elizabeth Sewall Alcott , and Anna Alcott Pratt . Louisa
16704-523: The really human things in human literature". Gregory S. Jackson said that Alcott's use of realism belongs to the American Protestant pedagogical tradition, which includes a range of religious literary traditions with which Alcott was familiar. He has copies in his book of nineteenth-century images of devotional children's guides which provide background for the game of "pilgrims progress" that Alcott uses in her plot of Book One. Little Women
16848-472: The remaining ones to family friend Ednah Dow Cheney . 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. Cheney also published Louisa May Alcott: The Children's Friend, which focused on Alcott's appeal to children. Other various compilations of Alcott's letters were published in
16992-496: The subject of numerous biographies, novels, and a documentary, and has influenced other writers and public figures such as Ursula K. Le Guin and Theodore Roosevelt . Louisa May Alcott was born on November 29, 1832, in Germantown , now part of Philadelphia , Pennsylvania. Her parents were transcendentalist and educator Amos Bronson Alcott and social worker Abigail May . Louisa was the second of four daughters, with Anna as
17136-494: The summer of 1855 and discovers the dead body of an immigrant bachelor. Louisa decides to solve what she suspects is a murder. In Louisa and the Crystal Gazer , the third and final book in the series, she solves the murder of a divination woman in Boston in 1855. The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott by Kelly O'Connor McNees takes place in Walpole in 1855 and follows Louisa as she finds romance. Louisa falls in love with
17280-471: The things she loves best: her kittens, her piano, Father's books, Amy's sketches, and her beloved dolls. She is never idle; she knits and sews things for the children who pass by on their way to and from school. But eventually, she puts down her sewing needle, saying it grew "heavy." Beth's final sickness has a strong effect on her sisters, especially Jo, who resolves to live her life with more consideration and care for everyone. The main loss during Little Women
17424-417: The title Little Women , with the latter marked as Part 2 (chapters 24 to 47). Each chapter is numbered and has a title as well. Part 2, Chapter 24 opens with: "In order that we may start afresh and go to Meg's wedding with free minds, it will be well to begin with a little gossip about the Marches." Editions published in the 21st century may be the original text unaltered, the original text with illustrations,
17568-498: The title of "little women". Meg is employed as a governess for the Kings, a wealthy local family. Because of their father's family's social standing, Meg makes her debut into high society, but she is lectured by her friend and neighbor, Theodore "Laurie" Laurence, for behaving like a snob. Meg marries John Brooke, Laurie's tutor. They have twins, Margaret "Daisy" Brooke and John Laurence "Demi" Brooke. The sequel, Little Men, mentions
17712-549: Was "sending [his] only son to the war". 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. Diseases such as scarlet fever, chicken pox , measles , and typhus were rampant among the patients. Alcott's duties included cleaning wounds, feeding the men, assisting with amputations , dressing wounds, and later assigning patients to their wards . She also entertained patients by reading aloud and putting on skits. She served as
17856-461: Was a naturalist , while Emerson mentored her in literature. Louisa had a particular fondness for Thoreau and Emerson; as a young girl, they were both "sources of romantic fantasies for her." Her favorite authors included Harriet Beecher Stowe , Sir Walter Scott , Fredericka Bremer , Thomas Carlyle , Nathaniel Hawthorne, Goethe , and John Milton , Friedrich Schiller , and Germaine de Staele . In 1840, after several setbacks with Temple School and
18000-496: Was a child. Alcott formed her abolitionist ideas, in part, from listening to conversations between her father and uncle Samuel May or between her father and Emerson. She was also inspired by the abolitionism of Rev. Theodore Parker , Charles Sumner , Wendell Phillips , and William Lloyd Garrison, with whom she was acquainted. She also knew Frederick Douglass in adulthood. As a young woman Louisa joined her family in teaching African-Americans how to read and write. When John Brown
18144-481: 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 . During the last eight years of her life she raised the daughter of her deceased sister. She died from a stroke in Boston on March 6, 1888, just two days after her father's death and was buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery . Louisa May Alcott has been
18288-483: Was driven to write the book to provide financial support for her sister Anna and her two sons. Louisa felt that she "must be a father now" to her nephews. After she left Europe, the book was released the day she arrived in Boston. Louisa took seven years to complete Jo's Boys (1886), her sequel to Little Men . She began the book in 1879 but discontinued it after her sister May's death in December. Louisa resumed work on
18432-749: Was executed on December 2, 1859, for his involvement in anti-slavery, Alcott described it as "the execution of Saint John the Just". Alcott attended several abolitionist rallies , including a rally at Tremont Temple that advocated for Thomas Simm 's freedom. She also believed in the full integration of African-Americans into society. She wrote multiple anti-slavery stories such as "M. L.", "My Contraband", and "An Hour". According to Sarah Elbert , Alcott's anti-slavery stories show her regard for Harriet Beecher Stowe's anti-slavery works. After her mother's death, Louisa committed to following her example by actively advocating for women's suffrage . In 1877, Alcott helped found
18576-482: Was hesitant to write it because she felt she knew more about boys than she did about girls, but she eventually set to work on her semi-autobiographical novel Little Women: or Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy (1868). Alcott developed a close relationship with the young Polish revolutionary Ladislas Wisniewski during her European tour with Weld. She met him in Vevey , where he taught her French and she taught him English. She detailed
18720-437: Was hired to be Elizabeth's companion and expressed that she was tired of listening to his "philosophical, metaphysical , and sentimental rubbish." 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. Louisa quit after seven weeks, when neither of the two girls her mother sent to replace her decided to take
18864-464: Was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1996. Little Women Little Women is a coming-of-age novel written by American novelist Louisa May Alcott , originally published in two volumes, in 1868 and 1869. The story follows the lives of the four March sisters—Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy—and details their passage from childhood to womanhood. Loosely based on the lives of
19008-479: Was living in London at the time and married Ernest Nieriker four months later. May became pregnant and was due to deliver her child near the end of 1879. Though Louisa wanted to travel to Paris to see May in time for the delivery, she decided against it because her health was poor. On December 29 May died from complications developed after childbirth, and in September 1880 Louisa assumed the care of her niece, Lulu, who
19152-405: Was much older and seemingly unsuited for Jo. However, the character was partially based upon older men Alcott was attracted to, such as Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson , or admired, such as German writers Charles Follen and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe . In particular, Alcott had considered Goethe her "chief idol" since the day Emerson had introduced her to Goethe and handed her
19296-413: Was named after her. Nieriker sent the news to Emerson and asked him to share it with Bronson and his daughters. Only Louisa was at home when Emerson arrived; she guessed the news before he told her and shared it with Bronson and Anna after he left. During the grief that followed May's death, Louisa and her father Bronson coped by writing poetry. In a letter to her friend Maria S. Porter, Louisa wrote, "Of all
19440-465: Was not allowed to. Alcott was primarily educated by her father, who established a strict schedule and believed in "the sweetness of self-denial." When Louisa 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. For a time she was educated by Sophia Foord , whom she would later eulogize. She was also instructed in biology and Native American history by Thoreau, who
19584-546: Was not nursing helped with the housekeeping and wrote. Louisa prepared to publish Beach Bubbles that year, but the book was rejected. By the end of the year she was writing for the Olive Branch , the Ladies Enterprise , The Saturday Evening Gazette , and the Sunday News . Louisa again lived in Boston for a time, where she met Julia Ward Howe and Frank Sanborn . In the summer of 1857 Louisa and Anna rejoined
19728-400: Was often tended by her father's friend Elizabeth Peabody , and later she frequently visited Temple School during the day. Louisa kept a journal from an early age. Bronson and Abigail often read it and left short messages for her on her pillow. She was a tomboy who preferred boys' games and preferred to be friends with boys or other tomboys. She wanted to play sports with the boys at school but
19872-406: Was referring to John Matteson's Eden's Outcasts : The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father , which won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography. Taylor Barnes of The Christian Science Monitor generally praised Reisen's biography but wrote that its "microscopic examination" of Alcott's life becomes confusing. Cornelia Meigs 's 1934 biography Invincible Louisa: The Story of
20016-452: Was rich, I was good, and we were all a happy family this day." Abigail ran an intelligence office to help the destitute find employment. When James 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, Louisa volunteered to serve in the house filled with books, music, artwork, and good company on Highland Avenue. Louisa may have imagined
20160-410: Was shown to several girls who agreed it was "splendid." Alcott wrote, "they are the best critics, so, I should definitely be satisfied." She wrote Little Women "in record time for money", but the book's immediate success surprised both her and her publisher. According to literary critic Sarah Elbert, when using the term "little women" Alcott was drawing on its Dickensian meaning; it represented
20304-505: Was the model for Beth. Like Beth, Lizzie was quiet and retiring. Like Beth as well, she died tragically at age twenty-three from the lingering effects of scarlet fever. May, Alcott's strong-willed sister, was portrayed as Amy, whose pretentious affectations cause her occasional downfalls. Alcott portrayed herself as Jo. Alcott readily corresponded with readers who addressed her as "Miss March" or "Jo", and she did not correct them. However, Alcott's portrayal, even if inspired by her family,
20448-451: Was too ill to travel and abandoned the plan. Soon after the success of Hospital Sketches, Alcott published her novel Moods (1864), based on her own experience with and stance on "woman's right to selfhood." Louisa struggled to find a publisher because the novel was long. After abridgments, Moods was published and popular. In 1882 Alcott changed the end. While touring Europe in 1870, she was displeased to find out that her publisher released
20592-413: Was well received upon first publication. According to 21st-century critic Barbara Sicherman there was, during the 19th century, a "scarcity of models for nontraditional womanhood", which led more women to look toward "literature for self-authorization. This is especially true during adolescence." Little Women became "the paradigmatic text for young women of the era and one in which family literary culture
20736-538: Was young, her family served as station masters on the Underground Railroad and housed fugitive slaves . Alcott was unable to dictate when she first became an abolitionist, suggesting that she became an abolitionist either when William Lloyd Garrison was attacked for his abolitionist efforts or when a young African-American boy saved her from drowning in Frog Pond . Both events occurred when Alcott
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