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
Reception Mary Anne Barker
The Times, reviewing Sybil's Book in late 1873, found it both delightful and thoroughly original.
Gilderdale, Betty. The Seven Lives of Lady Barker. Canterbury University Press.
185
Betty Gilderdale endorses this, calling it the first book to be published in England for teenage girls...
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.
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...
Textual Production Enid Blyton
One of EB 's publishers told her that his four children had formed themselves into a secret society on the basis of the Five books; EB made this in turn into the basis of the...
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 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...
Friends, Associates Frances Hodgson Burnett
In Washington FHB quickly made new friends, particularly the journalist Julia Schayer (who soon after they met wrote of her as the Coming Woman).
Gerzina, Gretchen. Frances Hodgson Burnett. Chatto and Windus.
68
Within a few years she made the acquaintance of...
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
Friends, Associates Frances Power Cobbe
FPC also numbered Americans among her wide circle of friends. Louisa May Alcott recalled vividly how her assumption that FPC would be a serious, severe lady, of the Cornelia Blimber school was immediately banished on...
Intertextuality and Influence Frances Power Cobbe
The book's application of the rhetoric of duty and its emphasis on the special characteristics of women made it enormously effective as an address to women who were not already committed feminists. Frances E. Willard
Friends, Associates Rebecca Harding Davis
She established a friendship with Nathaniel Hawthorne through an early, enthusiastic letter, in which she described the delight of her first encounters with his work. She nevertheless felt that he always stood somewhat aloof from...
Intertextuality and Influence Rebecca Harding Davis
When it first appeared, RHD 's story met with wide critical acclaim and broad recognition from members of the American literary community.
Davis, Rebecca Harding. “Biographical Introduction”. Life in the Iron Mills; or, the Korl Woman, edited by Tillie Olsen, The Feminist Press.
10
American National Biography. http://www.anb.org/articles/home.html.
Emily Dickinson wrote to her sister-in-law for a copy.
Olsen, Tillie. Silences. Virago.
117
Davis's publisher...
Textual Features Rebecca Harding Davis
She achieves this in Bits of Gossip in a series of scattered remembrances of my own generation which included vivid portraits of some of the most prominent men and women of the American nineteenth century...
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...

Timeline

8 September 1836: The Transcendental Club (also known as the...

Writing climate item

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...

Writing climate item

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:...

Writing climate item

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 et al., 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.