Louisa May Alcott

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Standard Name: Alcott, Louisa May
Birth Name: Louisa May Alcott
Pseudonym: Flora Fairfield
Pseudonym: A. M. Barnard
Used Form: Louisa Alcott
United States novelist LMA published during the later nineteenth century more than three hundred writings, including works for children, short stories, letters, poetry, novels, plays, sensation fiction, and journalism. Little Women, her best-known work, remains a classic among fiction for young adults.
Sepia head-and-shoulders photograph of Louisa May Alcott by Warren's Portraits, c. 1870. She looks pensively away from the camera, wearing a dark dress with two frills up the front, her wavy hair tied back in a bun at the nape of her neck.
Black and white, three-quarter length photo of Louisa May Alcott by J. Notman, c. 1865. She sits by a table covered with books and writing implements, slightly turned and seen in profile. She wears a dark dress with large bow at the neck; her hair is waved and pulled back in a bun.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Education Dervla Murphy
DM was a passionate reader as a child, devouring children's adventure books (especially series like W. E. Johns 's Biggles and Arthur Ransome 's Swallows and Amazons), rejecting classical stories like those of Louisa Alcott
Education Elizabeth De la Pasture
Though almost nothing is known of EDP 's education, she wrote later that her early favourite reading was American. The heroines of Louisa May Alcott 's Little Women were her oldest and dearest friends. She...
Education Helen Oyeyemi
HO reports having been an avid reader and beginning to write at an early age. She recounts that reading Louisa May Alcott 's Little Women as a child turned me into a writer. ....
Education Simone de Beauvoir
SB knew her alphabet at three, and learned to read quickly once she suddenly perceived that the letters were symbols.
Beauvoir, Simone de. Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter. Translator Kirkup, James, Penguin, 2001.
20
Later, the scanty resources of my city childhood could not compete with the riches...
Education Malorie Blackman
MB was shaped by her reading outside school. She never entered a bookshop until she was fourteen, but relied on libraries. Early favourites were C. S. Lewis 's Narnia books, Johanna Spyri 's Heidi books...
Education Enid Blyton
Enid later recalled in vivid detail the first school she went to, Tresco, which was run by the Misses Read in their private house. She recalled, too, the most important texts among her early reading:...
Education H. D.
HD's father encouraged her education, although he refused to allow her to attend art school. Instead, she was encouraged to study mathematics and was tutored by her brother Eric . Eric also provided his sister...
Education Beatrix Potter
Beatrix, educated at home and six years older than her brother, was a solitary child. She had few toys; but she became deeply interested in science, and was also, from an early age, devoted to...
Education Patricia Highsmith
PH went to various schools. She was removed from her first NewYork public school because her grandmother objected to her making friends with black children. Then came a small and select private school which she...
Education Anne Ridler
Her education began with her mother and a governess. At six she began attending a class run by the sister of another Rugby master. Later came visits to a piano teacher, and at home a...
Education Muriel Box
MB early learned to read for herself (with some help from Reading Without Tears, a mid-Victorian textbook by Favell Lee Bevan, later Mrs Mortimer ) because her parents were often too busy to satisfy...
Education Constance Smedley
With her sister, CS began her education at home with her mother as teacher. She read Shakespeare at four years old, and later learned the violin. She and Ida were concert-goers from an early age...
Education Agatha Christie
By the time Agatha was born, Clara Miller believed that girls ought not to learn to read before the age of eight. Defiantly, Agatha taught herself to read at five. She eagerly devoured Lewis Carroll
Education Kate Clanchy
As a child KC loved Victorian stories for girls—Frances Hodgson Burnett 's A Little Princess and The Secret Garden, Sarah Chauncey Woolsey (or Susan Coolidge)'s What Katy Did, and Louisa May Alcott
Education Mary Stewart
The village of Trimdon was so isolated that there was little to do but play games and read. By the time she was four Mary could read, having begged to be included in the reading...

Timeline

8 September 1836
The Transcendental Club (also known as the Hedge Club and the Symposium ) was formed in Cambridge, Massachusetts; it brought together various thinkers who were at the forefront of Transcendentalism.
1861
A company in Salem, Massachusetts, issued what seems to be the earliest version of a game called Authors, whose object was to collect sets of cards bearing the names of writers and the...
26 September 1991
Elaine Showalter published Sister's Choice: Traditions and Change in American Women's Writing , complement or sequel to her book of British women's literary history, A Literature of Their Own, 1977.

Texts

Alcott, Louisa May. Flower Fables. H. M. Caldwell, 1854.
Alcott, Louisa May. Hospital Sketches. Redpath, 1863.
Stern, Madeleine B., and Louisa May Alcott. “Introduction”. The Journals of Louisa May Alcott, edited by Joel Myerson, Daniel Shealy, Joel Myerson, and Daniel Shealy, Little, Brown, 1989, pp. 3-39.
Alcott, Louisa May. “Introduction”. Louisa May Alcott Unmasked: Collected Thrillers, edited by Madeleine B. Stern, Northeastern University Press, 1995, p. xi - xxix.
Alcott, Louisa May. Jo’s Boys. Roberts Brothers, 1886.
Alcott, Louisa May, and May Alcott Nieriker. Little Women. Roberts Brothers, 1868.
Alcott, Louisa May. Louisa May Alcott Unmasked: Collected Thrillers. Editor Stern, Madeleine B., Northeastern University Press, 1995.
Alcott, Louisa May, and Madeleine B. Stern. The Journals of Louisa May Alcott. Editors Myerson, Joel and Daniel Shealy, Little, Brown, 1989.