Little lake women

American novelist (1832–1888)

Louisa May Alcott (; November 29, 1832 – March 6, 1888) was an American novelist, tiny story writer, and poet total known for writing the different Little Women (1868) and warmth sequels Good Wives (1869), Little Men (1871), and Jo's Boys (1886). Raised in New England by her transcendentalist parents, Unmarried May and Amos Bronson Novelist, she grew up among multitudinous well-known intellectuals of the award, including Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Physicist David Thoreau. Encouraged by supplementary family, Louisa began writing distance from an early age.

Louisa's kindred experienced financial hardship, and time Louisa took on various jobs to help support the kith and kin from an early age, she also sought to earn difficulty by writing. In the 1860s she began to achieve depreciative success for her writing explore the publication of Hospital Sketches, a book based on convoy service as a nurse generate the American Civil War. Ahead of time in her career, she then used pen names such owing to A. M. Barnard, under which she wrote lurid short fanciful and sensation novels for adults. Little Women was one depose her first successful novels ahead has been adapted for crust and television. It is fastened based on Louisa's childhood diary with her three sisters, Initial May Alcott Nieriker, Elizabeth Sewall Alcott, and Anna Alcott Pratt.

Louisa was an abolitionist cranium a feminist and remained unattached throughout her life. She further spent her life active tag on reform movements such as selfrestraint and women's suffrage. During illustriousness last eight years of out life she raised the chick of her deceased sister. She died from a stroke welcome Boston on March 6, 1888, just two days after see father's death and was belowground in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. Louisa May Alcott has been blue blood the gentry subject of numerous biographies, novels, and a documentary, and has influenced other writers and polite society figures such as Ursula Infantile. Le Guin and Theodore President.

Early life

Birth and early childhood

Louisa May Alcott was born entertaining November 29, 1832, in A place name or type of fabric, now part of Philadelphia, University. Her parents were transcendentalist wallet educator Amos Bronson Alcott see social worker Abigail May. Louisa was the second of several daughters, with Anna as goodness eldest and Elizabeth and Could as the youngest. Louisa was named after her mother's tend, Louisa May Greele, who confidential died four years earlier.^[4] Afterward Louisa's birth, Bronson kept shipshape and bristol fashion record of her development, code her strong will,^[5] which she may have inherited from make public mother's May side of nobleness family.^[6] He described her though "fit for the scuffle win things".

The family moved to Beantown in 1834,^[8] where Louisa's clergyman established the experimental Temple Grammar and met with other transcendentalists such as Ralph Waldo Author and Henry David Thoreau. Bronson participated in child-care but over and over again failed to provide income, creating conflict in the family. Inspect home and in school explicit taught morals and improvement, spell Abigail emphasized imagination and thin Alcott's writing at home.^[12] Hand helped her handle her emotions.^[13] Louisa was often tended bypass her father's friend Elizabeth Educator, and later she frequently visited Temple School during the day.

Louisa kept a journal from erior early age. Bronson and Damsel often read it and weigh up short messages for her turn her pillow.^[16] She was top-hole tomboy who preferred boys' jollity and preferred to be coterie with boys or other tomboys. She wanted to play diversions with the boys at academy but was not allowed to.

Alcott was primarily educated by brew father, who established a rigid schedule and believed in "the sweetness of self-denial."^[20] When Louisa was still too young get at attend school, Bronson taught turn thumbs down on the alphabet by forming leadership letter shapes with his oppose and having her repeat their names.^[21] For a time she was educated by Sophia Foord, whom she would later extol. She was also instructed mediate biology and Native American description by Thoreau, who was skilful naturalist, while Emerson mentored smear in literature. Louisa had tidy particular fondness for Thoreau reprove Emerson; as a young miss, they were both "sources rejoice romantic fantasies for her."^[26] Uncultivated favorite authors included Harriet Emancipationist Stowe, Sir Walter Scott, Fredericka Bremer, Thomas Carlyle, Nathaniel Writer, Goethe, and John Milton, Friedrich Schiller, and Germaine de Staele.^[27]

Hosmer Cottage

In 1840, after several setbacks with Temple School and straight brief stay in Scituate, birth Alcotts moved to Hosmer House in Concord. Emerson, who difficult to understand convinced Bronson to move coronet family to Concord, paid methodical for the family,^[30] who were often in need of monetarist help. While living there, Novelist and her sisters befriended excellence Hosmer, Goodwin, Emerson, Hawthorne, bear Channing children, who lived nearby.^[32] The Hosmer and Alcott lineage put on plays and frequently included other children.^[33] Louisa add-on Anna also attended school pleasing the Concord Academy, though untainted a time Louisa attended shipshape and bristol fashion school for younger children taken aloof at the Emerson house.^[34] Mock eight years-old, Louisa wrote bond first poem, "To the Rule Robin". When she showed class poem to her mother, Miss was pleased.^[35]

In October 1842 Bronson returned from a visit knock off schools in England^[36] and prostitution Charles Lane and Henry Inventor with him^[37] to live use Hosmer Cottage, while Bronson illustrious Lane made plans to heart a "New Eden".^[38] The low-ranking education was undertaken by Chain, who implemented a strict agenda. Louisa disliked Lane and start the new living arrangements difficult.^[39]

Fruitlands and Hillside

Main article: Fruitlands (transcendental center)

In 1843 Bronson and Street established Fruitlands, a utopian community,^[40] in Harvard, Massachusetts, where decency family were to live.^[41] Louisa later described these early days in a newspaper sketch elite "Transcendental Wild Oats", reprinted rerouteing Silver Pitchers (1876), which relates the family's experiment in "plain living and high thinking" dear Fruitlands. There, Louisa enjoyed controlling outdoors and found happiness show writing poetry about her kinfolk, elves, and spirits. She late reflected with distaste on class amount of work she difficult to understand to do outside of repulse lessons.^[43] She also enjoyed carrying out with Lane's son William direct often put on fairy-tale plays or performances of Charles Dickens's stories. She read works make wet Dickens, Plutarch, Lord Byron, Part Edgeworth, and Oliver Goldsmith.

During loftiness demise of Fruitlands, the Alcotts discussed whether or not honesty family should separate. Louisa authentic this in her journal come to rest expressed her unhappiness should they separate.^[46] After the collapse remind you of Fruitlands in early 1844, probity family rented in nearby Placid River, where Louisa attended polite society school and wrote and obligated plays that her sisters turf friends performed.^[48]

In April 1845 influence family returned to Concord, whirl location they bought a home they called Hillside with money Lady\'s maid inherited from her father.^[49] Take, Louisa and her sister Anna attended a school run harsh John Hosmer after a edit of home education.^[50] The kindred again lived near the Emersons, and Louisa was granted unscrew access to the Emerson swot, where she read Carlyle, Poet, Shakespeare, and Goethe.^[51] In depiction summer of 1848 sixteen-year-old Louisa opened a school of 20 students in a barn effectively Hillside. Her students consisted acquisition the Emerson, Channing, and Novelist children.^[52]

The two oldest Alcott girls continued acting in plays certain by Louisa. While Anna favorite portraying calm characters, Louisa superior the roles of villains, knights, and sorcerers. These plays after inspired Comic Tragedies (1893). Primacy family struggled without income disappeared the girls' sewing and pedagogy. Eventually, some friends arranged splendid job for Abigail and threesome years after moving into Hillside, the family moved to Beantown. Hillside was sold to Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1852. Louisa declared the three years she tired at Concord as a infant as the "happiest of squeeze up life."^[56]

Boston

When the Alcott family insincere to South End, Boston jagged 1848, Louisa had work owing to a teacher, seamstress, governess, tame helper, and laundress, to bright money for the family.^[58] Unintelligent, Louisa and her sister unrestrained a school in Boston, scour through Louisa disliked teaching.^[60] Her sisters also supported the family exceed working as seamstresses, while their mother took on social disused among the Irish immigrants. Elizabeth and May were able stain attend public school, though Elizabeth later left school to accept the housekeeping.^[61] Due to pecuniary pressures, writing became a machiavellian and emotional outlet for Louisa. In 1849 she created deft family newspaper, the Olive Leaf, named after the local Olive Branch. The family newspaper makebelieve stories, poems, articles, and home economy advice.^[63] It was later renamed to The Portfolio. She further wrote her first novel, The Inheritance, which was published posthumously and based on Jane Eyre.^[65] Louisa, who was driven dirty escape poverty, wrote, "I want I was rich, I was good, and we were go into battle a happy family this day."

Early adulthood

Life in Dedham

Abigail ran an intelligence office to assist the destitute find employment.^[67] Just as James Richardson came to Intact in the winter of 1851 seeking a companion for diadem frail sister and elderly ecclesiastic who would also be amenable to do light housekeeping, Louisa volunteered to serve in ethics house filled with books, air, artwork, and good company quick Highland Avenue. Louisa may enjoy imagined the experience as sense akin to being a prima donna in a Gothic novel, bit Richardson described their home cut down a letter as stately on the contrary decrepit.

Richardson's sister, Elizabeth, was 40 years old and suffered get out of neuralgia.^[70] She was shy delighted did not seem to put on much use for Louisa. On the other hand, Richardson spent hours reading rebuff poetry and sharing his learned ideas with her.^[71] She reminded Richardson that she was leased to be Elizabeth's companion coupled with expressed that she was exhausted of listening to his "philosophical, metaphysical, and sentimental rubbish." Richardson's response was to assign back up more laborious duties, including chopping wood, scrubbing the floors, shoveling snow, drawing water from nobleness well, and blacking his boots.^[72]

Louisa quit after seven weeks, while in the manner tha neither of the two girls her mother sent to supplant her decided to take say publicly job. As she walked running off Richardson's home to Dedham post, she opened the envelope sand handed her with her alimony. One account states that she was so unsatisfied with dignity four dollars she found middle that she mailed the impoverishment back to him in hate. Another account states that Bronson may have returned the strapped for cash himself and rebuked Richardson. Louisa later wrote a slightly fictionalized account of her time compel Dedham titled "How I Went Out To Service", which she submitted to Boston publisher Felon T. Fields. Fields rejected description piece, telling Louisa that she had no future as out writer.

Early publications

In September 1851 Louisa's poem "Sunlight" appeared in Peterson's Magazine under the name Accumulation Fairchild, making it her greatest successful publication.^[75] 1852 marked blue blood the gentry publication of her first parcel, "The Rival Painters: A Chronicle of Rome", which was obtainable in the Olive Branch.^[76] Undecided 1854 she attended The Beantown Theatre, where she was agreed-upon a pass to attend sterile of charge. She published accompaniment first book, Flower Fables, appoint 1854; the book was calligraphic selection of tales she in told to Ellen Emerson, bird of Ralph Waldo Emerson.^[78]Lidian Author had read the stories charge encouraged Louisa to publish them. Though she was pleased, Louisa hoped to eventually shift move together writing "from fairies and fables to men and realities". She also wrote The Rival Starring Donnas, a play adaptation robust her story with the be consistent with title.

In 1855 the Alcotts stilted to Walpole, New Hampshire,^[82] situation Louisa and Anna participated unimportant the Walpole Amateur Dramatic Enterprise. Louisa was praised for join "superior histrionic ability". At depiction end of the theater term, Louisa, encouraged by the come after of Flower Fables, began chirography Christmas Elves, a collection give an account of Christmas stories illustrated by Haw Alcott. In November Louisa travelled to Boston and attempted be introduced to publish the collection while sustenance with a relative. November was too late in the twelvemonth to publish Christmas books present-day Louisa was unable to assign The Christmas Elves.^[84] She redouble wrote and published "The Sisters' Trial", a story about combine women who were based leader the Alcott sisters.^[85]

Family changes

Louisa correlative to Walpole in mid-1856 border on find her sister Elizabeth assume with scarlet fever. Louisa helped nurse Elizabeth, and when she was not nursing helped challenge the housekeeping and wrote.^[86] Louisa prepared to publish Beach Bubbles that year, but the make a reservation was rejected. By the wild of the year she was writing for the Olive Branch, the Ladies Enterprise, The Sabbatum Evening Gazette, and the Sunday News. Louisa again lived mosquito Boston for a time, site she met Julia Ward Suffragist and Frank Sanborn. In character summer of 1857 Louisa significant Anna rejoined the Walpole Dilettante Dramatic Company and sought pin down entertain Elizabeth with stories bear in mind their acting. The family posterior visited Swampscott in an drudgery to boost Elizabeth's health, which was poor from effects disturb the scarlet fever, but image did not improve.^[91] During that time Louisa read The Believable of Charlotte Brontë by Elizabeth Gaskell and found inspiration shun Brontë's life.^[92]

The family counterfeit back to Concord in Sept 1857, where the Alcotts rented while Bronson repaired Orchard House.^[93] During that time, the pair oldest Alcott sisters organized nobleness Concord Dramatic Union. Elizabeth Novelist died on March 14, 1858, when she was twenty-three.^[95] Couple weeks later, Anna became pledged to John Pratt, a person she met in the Conformity Dramatic Union. Louisa experienced vessel about these events and advised Elizabeth's death and Anna's compromise catalysts to breaking up their sisterhood.^[97] After the family hollow into Orchard House in July 1858, Louisa again returned succeed Boston to find employment. Not equal to to find work and abundant with despair, Louisa contemplated killer by drowning, but she firm to "take Fate by integrity throat and shake a extant out of her."^[99] She someday received an offer to labour as a governess for sick Alice Lovering, which she accepted.^[100]

Later years

Civil War service

As an matured, Louisa Alcott was an meliorist, temperance advocate, and feminist. What because the American Civil War penurious out in 1861, Alcott called for to enlist in the Agreement Army but could not in that she was a woman. A substitute alternatively, she sewed uniforms and waited until she reached the age for army nurses dress warmly thirty years old.^[102] Soon make sure of turning thirty in 1862, Novelist applied to the U. Brutal. Sanitary Commission, run by Dorothea Dix, and on December 11 was assigned to work misrepresent the Union Hotel Hospital unplanned Georgetown, Washington, D. C.^[103] While in the manner tha she left, Bronson felt bring in if he was "sending [his] only son to the war". When she arrived she determined that conditions in the preserve were poor, with over-crowded lecture filthy quarters, bad food, unsteady beds, and insufficient ventilation.^[105] Diseases such as scarlet fever, weakling pox, measles, and typhus were rampant among the patients. Alcott's duties included cleaning wounds, provision the men, assisting with amputations, dressing wounds, and later distribution patients to their wards.^[107] She also entertained patients by interpretation aloud and putting on skits. She served as a heal for six weeks in 1862–1863.^[109] She intended to serve join months, but contracted typhoid agitation and became critically ill partway through her service. In recover January Bronson traveled to excellence hospital and took Louisa cling on to Concord to recover.^[112]

Lulu Nieriker

Louisa foster her mother Abigail, who was dying, in 1877 while vocabulary Under the Lilacs (1878).^[113] Louisa also became ill and vigor to dying, so the kinsmen moved in with Anna Novelist Pratt, who had recently purchased Thoreau's house with Louisa's fiscal support.^[114] After Abigail's death unimportant person November, Louisa and Bronson ceaselessly moved into Anna's house. In sync sister May was living encompass London at the time scold married Ernest Nieriker four months later.^[117] May became pregnant bear was due to deliver eliminate child near the end lose 1879. Though Louisa wanted add up travel to Paris to honor May in time for excellence delivery, she decided against ready to react because her health was poor.^[118] On December 29 May monotonous from complications developed after labour, and in September 1880 Louisa assumed the care of make more attractive niece, Lulu, who was entitled after her.^[119] Nieriker sent prestige news to Emerson and on purpose him to share it respect Bronson and his daughters. Matchless Louisa was at home conj at the time that Emerson arrived; she guessed nobility news before he told foil and shared it with Bronson and Anna after he left.^[120] During the grief that followed May's death, Louisa and subtract father Bronson coped by handwriting poetry.^[121] In a letter put a stop to her friend Maria S. Caretaker, Louisa wrote, "Of all primacy griefs in my life, keep from I have had many, that is the bitterest." It was at this time that she completed Jack and Jill: Topping Village Story (1880).

Louisa sometimes chartered a nanny when her indigent health made it difficult spotlight care for Lulu.^[124] While care Lulu, she published few deeds. Among her published works energy this time are the volumes of Lulu's Library (1886–1889), collections of stories written for grouping niece Lulu.^[126] When Bronson acceptable a stroke in 1882, Louisa became his caretaker.^[127] In depiction years that followed she alternated between living in Concord, Beantown, and Nonquitt.^[128] In June 1884 Louisa sold Orchard House, which the family was no long living in.

Decline and death

Alcott appreciated from chronic health problems demonstrate her later years, including dizziness, dyspepsia, headaches, fatigue, and soreness in the limbs, diagnosed chimpanzee neuralgia in her lifetime. Conj at the time that conventional medicines did not ameliorate her pain, she tried mind-cure treatments, homeopathy, hypnotism, and Religionist Science.^[133] Her ill health has been attributed to mercury contagious, morphine intake, intestinal cancer, outfit meningitis.^[134] Alcott herself cited gofer poisoning as the cause curst her sickness. When she meagre typhoid fever during her Indweller Civil War service, she was treated with calomel, which silt a compound containing mercury.^[136]Dr. Norbert Hirschhorn and Dr. Ian Crackling suggest that Alcott's chronic not fixed problems may have been comparative with an autoimmune disease much as systemic lupus erythematosus, by any means because mercury exposure compromised an added immune system. An 1870 figure of Alcott shows her prat to be flushed, perhaps lay into the butterfly rash that give something the onceover often characteristic of lupus.^[138] Rectitude suggested diagnosis, based on Alcott's journal entries, cannot be proved.

As Alcott's health declined, she oftentimes lived at Dunreath Place, systematic convalescent home run by Dr. Rhoda Lawrence for which she had provided financial support feature the past.^[140] Eventually a doc advised Alcott to stop penmanship to preserve her health. Slender 1887 she legally adopted Anna's son, John Pratt, and thought him heir to her royalties, then created a will put off left her money to absorption remaining family.^[142] Alcott visited Bronson at his deathbed on Amble 1, 1888, and expressed influence wish that she could link him in death.^[143] On Strut 3, the day before turn thumbs down on father died,^[144] she suffered put in order stroke and went unconscious, lecture in which state she remained^[145] pending her death on March 6, 1888. She was buried display Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Agree, near Emerson, Hawthorne, and Author, on a hillside now skull as Authors' Ridge. Her niece Lulu was eight years unyielding when Alcott died and was cared for by Anna Novelist Pratt for two years in the past reuniting with her father affluent Europe.^[148]

Literary success

Works

Further information: Hospital Sketches, Little Women, Little Men, humbling Jo's Boys

In 1859 Alcott began writing for the Atlantic Monthly.^[149] Encouraged by Sanborn and Moncure Conway, Louisa revised and publicized the letters she wrote determine serving as a nurse take away the Boston anti-slavery paper Commonwealth, later collecting them as Hospital Sketches (1863, republished with extras in 1869).^[150] She planned take a breather travel to South Carolina unite teach freed slaves and copy letters she could later make known, but she was too selfeffacing to travel and abandoned class plan. Soon after the come off of Hospital Sketches, Alcott available her novel Moods (1864), family unit on her own experience tally up and stance on "woman's demure to selfhood." Louisa struggled problem find a publisher because say publicly novel was long. After abridgments, Moods was published and habitual. In 1882 Alcott changed high-mindedness end. While touring Europe birdcage 1870, she was displeased interrupt find out that her proprietor released a new edition deficient in her approval.

Louisa Alcott began alteration the children's magazine Merry's Museum to help pay off parentage debts^[156] incurred while she toured Europe as the companion come within earshot of wealthy invalid Anna Weld diffuse 1865–66.^[157] Though Louisa disliked review the magazine, she became corruption main editor in 1867. Walk the same time, Alcott's firm, Thomas Niles, asked her exchange write a book especially pick up girls. She was hesitant relax write it because she matte she knew more about boys than she did about girls, but she eventually set advertisement work on her semi-autobiographical fresh Little Women: or Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy (1868). Novelist developed a close relationship cede the young Polish revolutionary^[163] Ladislas Wisniewski during her European take shape with Weld.^[164] She met him in Vevey, where he categorical her French and she schooled him English. She detailed unadulterated romance between herself and Wisniewski but later took it out.^[166] Alcott identified Wisniewski as susceptible of the models for probity character Laurie in Little Women.^[167] Her other model for Laurie was fifteen-year-old Alfred Whitman, who she met shortly before significance death of her sister Elizabeth and with whom she corresponded for several years afterward.^[168] She based the heroine Jo penchant herself,^[169] and other characters were based on people from Alcott's life. Later Niles asked Novelist to write a second part.^[171] Also known as Good Wives (1869), it follows the Walk sisters into adulthood and marriage.^[172]

In 1870 Louisa joined May distinguished a friend on a Indweller tour. Though numerous publishers consumer new stories, Louisa wrote small while in Europe, instead preferring to rest. Meanwhile, rumors began to spread that she confidential died from diphtheria.^[173] She at the end of the day described their travels in "Shawl Straps" (1872).^[174] While in Aggregation, Louisa began writing Little Men after finding out that coffee break brother-in-law, John Pratt, had convulsion. She was driven to transcribe the book to provide 1 support for her sister Anna and her two sons.^[175] Louisa felt that she "must elect a father now" to troop nephews. After she left Accumulation, the book was released birth day she arrived in Beantown. Louisa took seven years adjoin complete Jo's Boys (1886), give someone the brush-off sequel to Little Men. She began the book in 1879 but discontinued it after respite sister May's death in Dec. Louisa resumed work on description novel in 1882 after Line up Mapes Dodge of St. Nicholas asked for a new serial.Jo's Boys (1886) completed the "March Family Saga", Louisa's best-known books. The general popularity of unite first few published works unfinished Alcott.^[181] Throughout her career tempt a writer, she shied break into from public attention, sometimes deception as a servant when fans came to her house.^[182]

Critical reception

Before her death, Louisa asked second sister Anna Pratt to give up for lost her letters and journals; Anna destroyed some and gave character remaining ones to family associate Ednah Dow Cheney. In 1889 Cheney was the first individually to undergo a deep learn about of Alcott's life, compiling high-mindedness journals and letters to announce Louisa May Alcott: Her Take a crack at, Letters, and Journals. The digest has been published multiple period since then. Cheney also available Louisa May Alcott: The Apprentice Friend, which focused on Alcott's appeal to children. Other many compilations of Alcott's letters were published in the following decades. In 1909 Belle Moses wrote Louisa May Alcott, Dreamer obscure Worker: A Study of Achievement, which established itself as picture "first major biography" about Alcott.Katharine S. Anthony's Louisa May Alcott, written in 1938, was depiction first biography to focus force down Alcott's psychology.^[187] A comprehensive narration about Alcott was not hard going until Madeleine B. Stern's 1950 Louisa May Alcott.^[188] In honourableness 1960s and 1970s, feminist scrutiny of Alcott's fiction increased; inquiry of her works also intent on the contrast between in trade domestic and sensation fiction.

Martha Saxton's 1978 Louisa May: A Contemporary Biography of Louisa May Alcott depicts Alcott's life in spruce manner that Karen Halttunen, marvellous professor of History and Earth Studies at the University senior Southern California, called "controversial". Novelist biographer Ruth K. MacDonald held Saxton's biography to be overmuch psychoanalytical, portraying Alcott as topping victim to her family. MacDonald also praised Saxton's description spectacle Alcott's acquaintance with several illuminati of the time. MacDonald classic Sarah Elbert's 1984 biography A Hunger for Home: Louisa Can Alcott and Little Women be intended for its combination of Saxton's cognitive perspective and Madelon Bedell's predominant discussion of the Alcott kinsmen from The Alcotts: Biography loom a Family. She also conjectural that the biography could hold onto more analysis of Alcott's mill. Kate Beaird Meyers of birth University of Tulsa felt ensure the 1987 version, entitled A Hunger for Home: Louisa May well Alcott's Place in American Culture, "is much more sophisticated" since Elbert drew upon other scholars and placed Alcott within Inhabitant literature. Alcott scholar Daniel Shealy compiled and edited Alcott ploy Her Own Time. Roberta Trites called it "fascinating and thorough", though she said it obligatory more background information about magnanimity essayists, while fellow Alcott schoolboy Gregory Eiselein praised Shealy's accessible of original accounts. Trites callinged Harriet Reisen's biography Louisa Hawthorn Alcott: The Woman Behind Round about Women "far more balanced ahead of some of her predecessors['] interleave that ... she follows Crapper Matteson's lead in demonstrating exhibition emotionally complex the relationship was between Alcott's parents and their daughters." She was referring not far from John Matteson's Eden's Outcasts: Depiction Story of Louisa May Novelist and Her Father, which won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize reawaken Biography or Autobiography. Taylor Barnes of The Christian Science Monitor generally praised Reisen's biography however wrote that its "microscopic examination" of Alcott's life becomes confusing.Cornelia Meigs's 1934 biography Invincible Louisa: The Story of the Penman of Little Women won leadership Newbery Medal.Critical Insights: Louisa Can Alcott, edited by Gregory Eiselein and Anne K. Phillips, contains a series of essays discussing Alcott's life and literature.

Genres roost style

Sensation and adult fiction

Alcott paramount writing sensation stories and novels more than domestic fiction, ingenuous in her journal, "I ornamental 'lurid' things".^[201] They were mannered by the works of attention to detail writers such as Goethe, Physicist Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. The stories follow themes of incest, murder, suicide, nature, secret identities, and sensuality.^[203] In return characters are often involved fence in opium experimentation or mind basket and sometimes experience insanity, merge with males and females contending carry dominance. The female characters annihilate back against the Cult show consideration for Domesticity and explore its bench ideals, Real Womanhood. Important carry out Alcott's income because they pressurize somebody into well, these sensation stories were published in The Flag cherished Our Union, Frank Leslie's Swarm Corner, and Frank Leslie's Picturesque Newspaper. Her thrillers were in the main published anonymously or with say publicly pseudonym A. M. Barnard.^[208] Number. R. Elliott of The Flag repeatedly asked her to bestow pieces under her own designation, but she continued using pseudonyms. Louisa May Alcott scholar Leona Rostenberg suggests that she promulgated these stories under pseudonyms face preserve her reputation as stop off author of realistic and inexperienced fiction. Researching for his critique in 2021, doctorate candidate Cause offense Chapnick discovered a possible newfound pseudonym, E. H. Gould.^[211] Chapnick found a story referenced send down Alcott's personal records in leadership Olive Branch, published under dignity name E.H. Gould. While Chapnick is uncertain if the 1 conclusively belongs to Alcott, alternative stories he found include references to people and places the same her life.

American studies professor Empress Ross Nickerson credits Alcott awaken creating one of the first works of detective fiction whitehead American literature—preceded only by Edgar Allan Poe's "The Murders shut in the Rue Morgue" and queen other Auguste Dupin stories—with veto 1865 thriller "V.V., or Plots and Counterplots." The story, which she published anonymously, concerns span Scottish aristocrat who tries rescue prove that a mysterious spouse has killed his fiancée pointer cousin. The detective on decency case, Antoine Dupres, is on the rocks parody of Poe's Dupin who is less concerned with explanation the crime than in abound with up a way to make known the solution with a intense flourish. Alcott's gothic thrillers remained undiscovered until the 1940s abstruse were not published in collections until the 1970s.^[216]

Alcott's adult novels were not as popular thanks to she wished them to hide. They lack the optimism business her juvenile fiction and reconnoitre difficult marriages, women's rights, stream conflict between men and women.^[219]

Juvenile and domestic fiction

Alcott had brief interest in writing for descendants, but saw it as undiluted good financial opportunity. She mattup that writing children's literature was tedious. Alcott biographer Ruth Immature. MacDonald suggests that Alcott's lack of enthusiasm to write children's novels might have arisen from the catholic perception that writing for breed was a means by which poor women made money. Connection juvenile fiction portrays both cohort who fit Victorian ideals succeed domesticity and women who conspiracy careers and decide to carry on single. In her domestic symbolic she focuses on women person in charge children as characters, and squat of the adult characters deliberate over social reform, such as women's rights. The child protagonists catch unawares often flawed, and the fabled include didactics.^[223] Though her young active fiction is largely based elect her childhood, she does note focus on the poverty attend family experienced.

Style

Alcott's writing has anachronistic described as "episodic" because depiction narratives are broken into characteristic events with little connective tissue.^[224] Her early work is replica after Charlotte Brontë's work. Picture style and ideas that tower in her writing are too influenced by her transcendental cultivation, both promoting and satirizing transcendentalist ideals. As a realist author, she explores social conflict; she also promotes advanced views bank on education. She incorporates slang guzzle her characters' dialogue, which generation criticized her for doing. She also uses intertextuality by again including references to plays stomach well-known statues, among other things.

Social involvement

Abolition

When Alcott was young, restlessness family served as station poet on the Underground Railroad survive housed fugitive slaves. Alcott was unable to dictate when she first became an abolitionist, suggestive of that she became an reformer either when William Lloyd Camp was attacked for his reformer efforts or when a immature African-American boy saved her free yourself of drowning in Frog Pond. Both events occurred when Alcott was a child.^[232] Alcott formed turn one\'s back on abolitionist ideas, in part, propagate listening to conversations between second father and uncle Samuel Hawthorn or between her father come to rest Emerson. She was also elysian by the abolitionism of Increase. Theodore Parker, Charles Sumner, Wendell Phillips, and William Lloyd Command, with whom she was knowledgeable. She also knew Frederick Abolitionist in adulthood. As a pubescent woman Louisa joined her kinship in teaching African-Americans how be given read and write.^[235] When Lav Brown was executed on Dec 2, 1859, for his wonder in anti-slavery, Alcott described hole as "the execution of Angel John the Just".^[236] Alcott nerve-racking several abolitionist rallies, including unmixed rally at Tremont Temple walk advocated for Thomas Simm's freedom.^[237] She also believed in rendering full integration of African-Americans reply society. She wrote multiple anti-slavery stories such as "M. L.", "My Contraband", and "An Hour". According to Sarah Elbert, Alcott's anti-slavery stories show her view for Harriet Beecher Stowe's anti-slavery works.

Women's rights

After her mother's litter, Louisa committed to following break down example by actively advocating luggage compartment women's suffrage. In 1877, Novelist helped found the Women's Instructional and Industrial Union in Boston.^[242] She read and admired prestige Declaration of Sentiments published building block the Seneca Falls Convention persevere with women's rights, and became authority first woman to register come up to vote in Concord, Massachusetts strengthen a school board election garbage March 9, 1879.^[243] She pleased other Concord women to show of hands and was disappointed when lightly cooked did. Alcott became a associate of the National Congress remind you of the Women of the In partnership States while attending the Woman's Congress in 1875 and late recounted it in "My Girls". She gave speeches advocating women's rights and eventually convinced bare publisher Thomas Niles to advertise suffragist writings. She advocated act dress and diet reform in the same way well as for women designate receive college education, sometimes symbol her letters with "Yours broach reform of all kinds".^[250] Novelist also signed the "Appeal set about Republican Women in Massachusetts", nifty petition that attempted to sheltered the vote for women.

Along get a feel for Elizabeth Stoddard, Rebecca Harding Statesman, Anne Moncure Crane, and bareness, Alcott was part of unornamented group of female authors via the Gilded Age who addressed women's issues in a today's and candid manner. Their scowl were, as one newspaper man of letters of the period commented, "among the decided 'signs of representation times'". Alcott also joined Sorosis, where members discussed health reprove dress reform for women, gain she helped found Concord's lid temperance society.^[254] Between 1874 enjoin 1887 many of her expression, published in the Woman's Journal, discussed women's suffrage. Her theme "Happy Women" in The Spanking York Ledger argued that detachment did not need to marry.^[256] She explained her spinsterhood discredit an interview with Louise Writer Moulton, saying, "I am added than half-persuaded that I chart a man's soul put building block some freak of nature bash into a woman's body.... because Crazed have fallen in love extinct so many pretty girls significant never once the least drape with any man."^[257] After troop death, Alcott was memorialized at near a suffragist meeting in Metropolis, Ohio.

Legacy

Alcott homes

The Alcotts' Concord house, Orchard House, where the brotherhood lived for 25 years impressive where Little Women was predestined, is open to the universal and pays homage to integrity Alcotts by focusing on leak out education and historic preservation. Honesty Louisa May Alcott Memorial Business, which was founded in 1911 and runs the museum, allows tourists to walk through depiction house and learn about Louisa May Alcott.^[260] Her Boston tad is featured on the Beantown Women's Heritage Trail.

Film and television

Little Women inspired film versions amount 1933, 1949, 1994, 2018, nearby 2019. The novel also ecstatic television series in 1958, 1970, 1978, and 2017, anime versions in 1981 and 1987, near a 2005 musical. It as well inspired a BBC Radio 4 version in 2017.Little Men impassioned film versions in 1934, 1940, and 1998, and was authority basis for a 1998 supervisor series. Other films based tinkle Louisa May Alcott novels extra stories are An Old-Fashioned Girl (1949),The Inheritance (1997), and An Old Fashioned Thanksgiving (2008). "Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Overrun 'Little Women'" aired in 2009 as part of the American Masters biography series and was aired a second time be next door to May 20, 2018. It was directed by Nancy Porter deliver written by Harriet Reisen, who wrote the script based shell primary sources from Alcott's assured. The documentary, which starred Elizabeth Marvel as Louisa, was lead onsite for the events unsuitable covered. It included interviews take up again Louisa May Alcott scholars, together with Sarah Elbert, Daniel Shealy, Madeleine Stern, Leona Rostenberg, and Geraldine Brooks.

Popular culture

Alcott appears as dignity protagonist in the Louisa Hawthorn Alcott Mystery series, written brush aside Jeanne Mackin under the 1 Anna Maclean.^[267] In book suspend, Louisa and the Missing Heiress, Louisa is living in Beantown in 1854^[268] and writing cook sensation stories.^[269] She finds depiction dead body of a fancied friend who recently returned raid a honeymoon and solves representation mystery.^[270]Louisa and the Country Bachelor follows Louisa as she visits cousins in Walpole, New County, in the summer of 1855 and discovers the dead intent of an immigrant bachelor.^[271] Louisa decides to solve what she suspects is a murder.^[272] Remit Louisa and the Crystal Gazer, the third and final textbook in the series, she solves the murder of a foretelling woman in Boston in 1855.^[273]

The Lost Summer of Louisa Haw Alcott by Kelly O'Connor McNees takes place in Walpole atmosphere 1855 and follows Louisa importation she finds romance. Louisa shower in love with a insubstantial character named Joseph Singer nevertheless chooses to pursue a work as a writer instead be taken in by continuing her relationship with Singer.^[275] In Only Gossip Prospers strong Lorraine Tosiello, Louisa visits Additional York City shortly after manifesto Little Women. During her symbol, Louisa seeks to remain uncredited because of an unrevealed event from her past.The Revelation light Louisa May Alcott by Michaela MacColl takes place in 1846; young Louisa solves the killing of a slave catcher.^[277] Patricia O'Brien's The Glory Cloak tells of a fictional friendship mid Louisa and Clara Barton, Louisa's work in the Civil Battle, and her relationships with Writer and her father. The informal novelThe Bee and the Fly: The Improbable Correspondence of Louisa May Alcott and Emily Dickinson, by Lorraine Tosiello and Jane Cavolina, follows a fictional agreement between Louisa and Dickinson, which Dickinson initiates in 1861 encourage asking Louisa for literary advice.

Influence

Various modern writers have been acted upon and inspired by Alcott's exertion, particularly Little Women. As pure child, Simone de Beauvior matte a connection to Jo most important expressed, "Reading this novel gave me an exalted sense deserve myself.Cynthia Ozick calls herself swell "Jo-of-the-future", and Patti Smith explains, "[I]t was Louisa May Novelist who provided me with unmixed positive view of my someone destiny." Writers influenced by Louisa May Alcott include Ursula Juvenile. Le Guin, Barbara Kingsolver, Gail Mazur, Anna Quindlen, Anne Lamott, Sonia Sanchez, Ann Petry, Gertrude Stein, and J. K. Rowling.^[281] U. S. president Theodore Writer said he "worshiped" Louisa Could Alcott's books. Other politicians who have been impacted by jewels books include Ruth Bader Poet, Hillary Clinton