Louisa May Alcott

Louisa May Alcott (November 29, 1832 – March 6, 1888) was an American novelist, best known for the novel Little Women (1868).

Childhood and Early Works

Alcott was the daughter of noted Transcendentalist Amos Bronson Alcott and Abigail May the third, and though of New England parentage and residence, was born in Germantown, now part of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She began work at an early age as an occasional teacher, seamstress, governess, and writer — her first book was Flower Fables (1854), tales originally written for Ellen Emerson, daughter of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Related Topics:
Transcendentalist - Amos Bronson Alcott - New England - Germantown - Philadelphia - Pennsylvania - Teacher - Seamstress - Governess - Writer - Book - 1854 - Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Alcott's early education had included lessons from the naturalist Henry David Thoreau but had chiefly been in the hands of her father. During her girlhood and early womanhood, she shared in her family's poverty and Transcendentalist ideals. She later narrated this time in a newspaper sketch entitled "Transcendental Wild Oats", afterwards reprinted in the volume Silver Pitchers (1876), which relates the experiences of her family during an experiment towards Utopian "plain living and high thinking" at "Fruitlands" in the town of Harvard, Massachusetts in 1843.

Related Topics:
Henry David Thoreau - Newspaper - 1876 - Utopian - Harvard, Massachusetts - 1843

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In 1860, Alcott began writing for the Atlantic Monthly, and she was nurse in the Union Hospital at Georgetown, D.C., for six weeks in 1862-1863. Her letters home, revised and published in the Commonwealth and collected as Hospital Sketches (1863, republished with additions in 1869), garnered her first critical recognition for her observations and humor. Her novel Moods (1864), was also considered promising.

Related Topics:
1860 - Atlantic Monthly - Georgetown, D.C. - 1862 - 1863 - 1869 - 1864

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A lesser-known part of her work are the passionate, fiery novels and stories she wrote, usually under the pseudonym A. M. Barnard. These works, such as A Long Fatal Love Chase and Pauline's Passion and Punishment, were known in the Victorian Era as "potboilers" or "blood-and-thunder tales" and were later referred to as "dangerous for little minds" in Alcott's own novel Little Women. Their protagonists are willful and relentless in their pursuit of their own aims, which often include revenge on those who have humiliated or thwarted them. These works achieved immediate commercial success and remain highly readable today.

Related Topics:
Victorian Era - Protagonist

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In contrast, Alcott also produced moralistic and wholesome stories for children, and, with the exceptions of the semi-autobiographical tale Work (1873), and the anonymous novelette A Modern Mephistopheles (1877), which attracted suspicion that it was authored by Julian Hawthorne, she did not return to creating works for adults.

Related Topics:
1873 - 1877 - Julian Hawthorne

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