Louisa May Alcott

Abstract

Louisa May Alcott (b. 1832–d. 1888) is among the most enduring of 19th-century American authors. Publishing in diverse genres, including fantasy, realism, gothic fiction, sketches, and poetry, she found favor with broad audiences. Her first notable success, Hospital Sketches (1863), reflected her experiences as a nurse during the Civil War. In the same period, she won a $100 prize from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper for “Pauline’s Passion and Punishment,” one of the sensation stories featuring drug use, murder, and other illicit activities that she published anonymously or pseudonymously. Having also placed her work in respected literary magazines such as the Atlantic Monthly, Alcott built relationships with the leading editors of her era. In 1867, editor Thomas Niles of the Boston publishing firm Roberts Brothers invited Alcott to write a novel for girls that might compete with books for boys produced by authors such as Horatio Alger and “Oliver Optic” (William T. Adams). Alcott demurred for months until driven by her family’s chronic poverty to accept Niles’ offer. Volume 1 of Little Women (1868) introduces adolescent sisters Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy March as well as Theodore “Laurie” Laurence, their wealthy, attractive neighbor. Encouraged by the girls’ wise, loving mother Marmee, they nurture artistic aspirations despite social, economic, and gender constraints. Readers immediately demanded a sequel. In the subsequent volume (1869), Alcott’s protagonists maintain to varying degrees their artistic ambitions and dreams while moving beyond the boundaries of family and home. Little Women spawned two sequels, Little Men (1871) and Jo’s Boys (1886), among other fiction. Although she later famously dismissed such work as “moral pap for the young,” Alcott nonetheless offered in it distinctive, lively representations of American youth and domestic life. Her work contrasts with other writings for young readers of the era, which was far more pious and lachrymose. The rediscovery of her lurid sensation stories in the 1940s and their republication in the 1970s provided scholars with new insights into Alcott’s life and writings, highlighting layers of anger, satire, and subversion in her work. Alcott advocated in her writings progressive causes such as educational reform, dress reform, temperance, suffrage, and racial equality. Among other works, An Old-Fashioned Girl (1869), Eight Cousins (1875), and Rose in Bloom (1876), as well as Alcott’s novels for adults Moods (1864) and Work: A Story of Experience (1873), continue to attract avid interest from scholars and enduring enthusiasm from fans.