Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Louisa May Alcott
-
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.
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.
Judd, Denis. Alison Uttley. Michael Joseph.
91
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Monica Furlong
Writing of Bunyan's near-universal appeal, MR cites the many remarkable men
Furlong, Monica. Puritan’s Progress, A Study of John Bunyan. Hodder and Stoughton.
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...
Textual Production
Flannery O'Connor
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...
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...
The stories here deal with all kinds of complexity and nuance in the sisterly relationship. The collection ends, as the introduction begins, with Christina Rossetti
's Goblin Market. The nineteenth century is further represented...
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...
Reception
Queen Victoria
Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands outsold many books that appeared in 1868, including Wilkie Collins
's The Moonstone, Robert Browning
's Ring and the Book, and Louisa May Alcott
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...
Publishing
Susan Hill
SH
has successfully self-published, and makes extensive use of new media. She is active as both a blogger and a tweeter. In 2013 both Printer's Devil Court, her latest ghost story, and Crystal...
Occupation
Amy Levy
AL
was an accomplished draughtswoman. She drew vivid sketches and scenes. Her topics at an early age included a feminist on a soapbox, and characters from Louisa May Alcott
's Little Women and Germaine de Staël
Occupation
Margaret Fuller
Following her father's sudden death in 1835, MF
abandoned her plans for travel, and turned to teaching as a means of supplementing the family's income (she had initially attempted to make money through writing, but...
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.
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.
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.