Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
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.
At about nine Mary Flannery O'Connor
gathered a small group of friends to whom, in a wooden play-house among the chickens, she would read from her pages and pages of handwritten stories about a family...
Family and Intimate relationships
Tillie Olsen
Their next child (also, as the nurses said, just a girl) was born on 17 November 1943. She was named Katherine Jo Olsen for Käthe Kollwitz
, Katherine Mansfield
, Kate Kennedy
(a pioneer of...
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. ....
Material Conditions of Writing
Helen Oyeyemi
HO
reports having experimented with literary activity at an early age. She mentions rewriting Alcott
's Little Women as a child, and she wrote plays while a student at Cambridge.
Intertextuality and Influence
Helen Oyeyemi
HO
identifies more as a reader than as a writer: she cites, alludes to, and rewrites a large number and variety of authors: Emily Dickinson
, Nella Larsen
, Louisa May Alcott
, and Simi Bedford
Intertextuality and Influence
Helen Oyeyemi
As an avid reader, HO
often cites other women writers—as well as men—as influential on her writing. She frequently cites and mentions both Louisa May Alcott
's Little Women and Emily Dickinson
, of whom...
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
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...
Literary responses
Evelyn Sharp
Beverly Lyon Clark
, who wrote an introduction to this book and thought extremely highly of it, argued that the neglect of it stemmed from its belonging not just to one but to several under-appreciated...
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...
Textual Production
G. B. Stern
Her next play was For Husbands Only, written jointly with Mrs D. C. F. Harding
and staged at the Ambassadors Theatre
in 1920. After that came the great success of her dramatised novel, The...
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...
Education
Susan Tweedsmuir
She was, however, always reading as a child: she and her sister had few books, but knew by heart whole chapters of the ones they did have. As a child Susan hated Mrs Mortimer
's...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Alison Uttley
Rather stiff and formal in style, it advises somewhat predictable texts like Anna Sewell
's Black Beauty (which AU
calls well-nigh forgotten by this generation), Louisa May Alcott
's Little Women, and other classics.
