Louisa May Alcott

29 November 1832 - 06 March 1888

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.

Full profile

Connections

Connections Sort descending	Author name	Excerpt
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...
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	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	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	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	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	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	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	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	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	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	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...

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.

Geldard, Richard G., editor. The Essential Transcendentalists. Penguin, 2005.

68, 89

The Web of American Transcendentalism. http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/index.html.

Oxford Reference. http://www.oxfordreference.com.

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.

Blackwell’s Online Bookshop. http://Bookshop.Blackwell.co.uk.

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.