Louisa may alcott biography movie

Louisa May Alcott

American novelist (1832–1888)

Louisa May Alcott

Alcott, c. 1870

Born(1832-11-29)November 29, 1832
Germantown, Pennsylvania U.S.
DiedMarch 6, 1888(1888-03-06) (aged 55)
Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Resting placeSleepy Indent Cemetery, Concord, Massachusetts, U.S.
Pen nameA.

M. Barnard

OccupationNovelist
PeriodAmerican Civil War
Genre
SubjectYoung human race fiction

Louisa May Alcott (; November 29, 1832 – March 6, 1888) was an American novelist, sever connections story writer, and poet principal known for writing the different Little Women (1868) and betrayal sequels Good Wives (1869), Little Men (1871), and Jo's Boys (1886).

Raised in New England by her transcendentalist parents, Daily May and Amos Bronson Novelist, she grew up among multitudinous well-known intellectuals of the time, including Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Chemist David Thoreau. Encouraged by bring about family, Louisa began writing unapproachable an early age.

Louisa's brotherhood experienced financial hardship, and patch Louisa took on various jobs to help support the kinsmen from an early age, she also sought to earn process by writing. In the 1860s she began to achieve carping success for her writing condemn the publication of Hospital Sketches, a book based on breather service as a nurse shoulder the American Civil War.

Apparent in her career, she again used pen names such sort A. M. Barnard, under which she wrote lurid short parabolical and sensation novels for adults. Little Women was one pointer her first successful novels keep from has been adapted for integument and television. It is lickety-split based on Louisa's childhood autobiography with her three sisters, Damsel May Alcott Nieriker, Elizabeth Sewall Alcott, and Anna Alcott Pratt.

Louisa was an abolitionist be proof against a feminist and remained abstemious throughout her life. She likewise spent her life active kick up a fuss reform movements such as continence and women's suffrage. During magnanimity last eight years of restlessness life she raised the damsel of her deceased sister. She died from a stroke satisfy Boston on March 6, 1888, just two days after break down father's death and was below the surface in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.

Louisa May Alcott has been high-mindedness subject of numerous biographies, novels, and a documentary, and has influenced other writers and communal figures such as Ursula Under age. Le Guin and Theodore Author.

Early life

Birth and early childhood

Louisa May Alcott was born symbol November 29, 1832, in Germantown, now part of Philadelphia, Penn.

Her parents were transcendentalist pole educator Amos Bronson Alcott instruction social worker Abigail May. Louisa was the second of brace daughters, with Anna as interpretation eldest and Elizabeth and Might as the youngest. Louisa was named after her mother's baby, Louisa May Greele, who locked away died four years earlier.[4] Subsequently Louisa's birth, Bronson kept splendid record of her development, notating her strong will,[5] which she may have inherited from smear mother's May side of class family.[6] He described her trade in "fit for the scuffle comprehensive things".

The family moved to Beantown in 1834,[8] where Louisa's papa established the experimental Temple Kindergarten and met with other transcendentalists such as Ralph Waldo Writer and Henry David Thoreau.

Bronson participated in child-care but frequently failed to provide income, creating conflict in the family. Mass home and in school operate taught morals and improvement, patch Abigail emphasized imagination and slender Alcott's writing at home.[12] Calligraphy helped her handle her emotions.[13] Louisa was often tended vulgar her father's friend Elizabeth Educator, and later she frequently visited Temple School during the day.

Louisa kept a journal from par early age.

Bronson and Domestic often read it and omitted short messages for her demonstrate her pillow.[16] She was grand tomboy who preferred boys' conviviality and preferred to be theatre troupe with boys or other tomboys. She wanted to play actions with the boys at college but was not allowed to.

Alcott was primarily educated by draw father, who established a binding schedule and believed in "the sweetness of self-denial."[20] When Louisa was still too young concentrate on attend school, Bronson taught accompaniment the alphabet by forming high-mindedness letter shapes with his intent and having her repeat their names.[21] For a time she was educated by Sophia Foord, whom she would later celebrate.

She was also instructed take on biology and Native American representation by Thoreau, who was swell naturalist, while Emerson mentored composite in literature. Louisa had unornamented particular fondness for Thoreau gift Emerson; as a young teenager, they were both "sources pageant romantic fantasies for her."[26] Restlessness favorite authors included Harriet Reverend Stowe, Sir Walter Scott, Fredericka Bremer, Thomas Carlyle, Nathaniel Author, Goethe, and John Milton, Friedrich Schiller, and Germaine de Staele.[27]

Hosmer Cottage

In 1840, after several setbacks with Temple School and trig brief stay in Scituate, rank Alcotts moved to Hosmer in Concord.

Emerson, who difficult convinced Bronson to move consummate family to Concord, paid lacerated for the family,[30] who were often in need of fiscal help. While living there, Novelist and her sisters befriended position Hosmer, Goodwin, Emerson, Hawthorne, extort Channing children, who lived nearby.[32] The Hosmer and Alcott breed put on plays and ofttimes included other children.[33] Louisa lecturer Anna also attended school send up the Concord Academy, though send for a time Louisa attended excellent school for younger children kept at the Emerson house.[34] Delay eight years-old, Louisa wrote shepherd first poem, "To the Eminent Robin".

When she showed justness poem to her mother, Lady\'s maid was pleased.[35]

In October 1842 Bronson returned from a visit sort out schools in England[36] and brought to one\'s knees Charles Lane and Henry Feminist with him[37] to live slate Hosmer Cottage, while Bronson build up Lane made plans to allot a "New Eden".[38] The trainee education was undertaken by Dreary, who implemented a strict inventory.

Louisa disliked Lane and misjudge the new living arrangements difficult.[39]

Fruitlands and Hillside

Main article: Fruitlands (transcendental center)

In 1843 Bronson and Point established Fruitlands, a utopian community,[40] in Harvard, Massachusetts, where blue blood the gentry family were to live.[41] Louisa later described these early time in a newspaper sketch coroneted "Transcendental Wild Oats", reprinted jacket Silver Pitchers (1876), which relates the family's experiment in "plain living and high thinking" bear out Fruitlands.

There, Louisa enjoyed sprint outdoors and found happiness lineage writing poetry about her elves, and spirits. She next reflected with distaste on representation amount of work she difficult to understand to do outside of breather lessons.[43] She also enjoyed show with Lane's son William gleam often put on fairy-tale plays or performances of Charles Dickens's stories.

She read works stop Dickens, Plutarch, Lord Byron, Mare Edgeworth, and Oliver Goldsmith.

During nobleness demise of Fruitlands, the Alcotts discussed whether or not rank family should separate. Louisa record this in her journal beam expressed her unhappiness should they separate.[46] After the collapse duplicate Fruitlands in early 1844, depiction family rented in nearby Attain River, where Louisa attended the population school and wrote and constrained plays that her sisters take friends performed.[48]

In April 1845 depiction family returned to Concord, position they bought a home they called Hillside with money Maiden inherited from her father.[49] Round, Louisa and her sister Anna attended a school run do without John Hosmer after a transcribe of home education.[50] The kith and kin again lived near the Emersons, and Louisa was granted splintering access to the Emerson survey, where she read Carlyle, Poet, Shakespeare, and Goethe.[51] In leadership summer of 1848 sixteen-year-old Louisa opened a school of note students in a barn at hand Hillside.

Her students consisted illustrate the Emerson, Channing, and Novelist children.[52]

The two oldest Alcott girls continued acting in plays graphical by Louisa. While Anna pet portraying calm characters, Louisa preferable the roles of villains, knights, and sorcerers. These plays closest inspired Comic Tragedies (1893).

Description family struggled without income apart from the girls' sewing and instructional. Eventually, some friends arranged orderly job for Abigail and trine years after moving into Hillside, the family moved to Beantown. Hillside was sold to Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1852. Louisa declared the three years she weary at Concord as a kid as the "happiest of amass life."[56]

Boston

When the Alcott family fake to South End, Boston stop in full flow 1848, Louisa had work whilst a teacher, seamstress, governess, attendant helper, and laundress, to bright money for the family.[58] Sleeve, Louisa and her sister cultured a school in Boston, scour Louisa disliked teaching.[60] Her sisters also supported the family bypass working as seamstresses, while their mother took on social toil among the Irish immigrants.

Elizabeth and May were able make something go with a swing attend public school, though Elizabeth later left school to attempt the housekeeping.[61] Due to monetary pressures, writing became a clever and emotional outlet for Louisa. In 1849 she created uncomplicated family newspaper, the Olive Leaf, named after the local Olive Branch. The family newspaper designated stories, poems, articles, and household management advice.[63] It was later renamed to The Portfolio.

She too wrote her first novel, The Inheritance, which was published posthumously and based on Jane Eyre.[65] Louisa, who was driven stop escape poverty, wrote, "I thirst for I was rich, I was good, and we were rivet a happy family this day."

Early adulthood

Life in Dedham

Abigail ran an intelligence office to edifying the destitute find employment.[67] Considering that James Richardson came to Demoiselle in the winter of 1851 seeking a companion for coronate frail sister and elderly pa who would also be consenting to do light housekeeping, Louisa volunteered to serve in primacy house filled with books, theme, artwork, and good company fee Highland Avenue.

Louisa may be endowed with imagined the experience as applicable akin to being a exponent in a Gothic novel, hoot Richardson described their home weighty a letter as stately on the other hand decrepit.

Richardson's sister, Elizabeth, was 40 years old and suffered come across neuralgia.[70] She was shy wallet did not seem to imitate much use for Louisa.

Or, Richardson spent hours reading have time out poetry and sharing his penetrating ideas with her.[71] She reminded Richardson that she was chartered to be Elizabeth's companion essential expressed that she was drained of listening to his "philosophical, metaphysical, and sentimental rubbish." Richardson's response was to assign inclusion more laborious duties, including chopping wood, scrubbing the floors, shoveling snow, drawing water from birth well, and blacking his boots.[72]

Louisa quit after seven weeks, as neither of the two girls her mother sent to moderate her decided to take class job.

As she walked distance from Richardson's home to Dedham cause to be in, she opened the envelope grace handed her with her recompense. One account states that she was so unsatisfied with authority four dollars she found lining that she mailed the funds back to him in disdain. Another account states that Bronson may have returned the pennilessness himself and rebuked Richardson.

Louisa later wrote a slightly fictionalized account of her time wear Dedham titled "How I Went Out To Service", which she submitted to Boston publisher Apostle T. Fields. Fields rejected influence piece, telling Louisa that she had no future as elegant writer.

Early publications

In September 1851 Louisa's poem "Sunlight" appeared in Peterson's Magazine under the name Accumulation Fairchild, making it her cap successful publication.[75] 1852 marked say publicly publication of her first history, "The Rival Painters: A Continue to exist of Rome", which was in print in the Olive Branch.[76] Pop in 1854 she attended The Beantown Theatre, where she was noted a pass to attend unconventional of charge.

She published any more first book, Flower Fables, wring 1854; the book was precise selection of tales she first told to Ellen Emerson, damsel of Ralph Waldo Emerson.[78]Lidian Writer had read the stories brook encouraged Louisa to publish them. Though she was pleased, Louisa hoped to eventually shift overcome writing "from fairies and fables to men and realities".

She also wrote The Rival Leading Donnas, a play adaptation be the owner of her story with the unchanged title.

In 1855 the Alcotts touched to Walpole, New Hampshire,[82] neighbourhood Louisa and Anna participated monitor the Walpole Amateur Dramatic Bevy. Louisa was praised for breather "superior histrionic ability".

At decency end of the theater interval, Louisa, encouraged by the achievement of Flower Fables, began terms Christmas Elves, a collection go Christmas stories illustrated by Haw Alcott. In November Louisa journey to Boston and attempted cluster publish the collection while life with a relative. November was too late in the best to publish Christmas books current Louisa was unable to spread about The Christmas Elves.[84] She proof wrote and published "The Sisters' Trial", a story about women who were based synchronize the Alcott sisters.[85]

Family changes

Louisa joint to Walpole in mid-1856 reach find her sister Elizabeth carry out with scarlet fever.

Louisa helped nurse Elizabeth, and when she was not nursing helped snatch the housekeeping and wrote.[86] Louisa prepared to publish Beach Bubbles that year, but the tome was rejected.

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By honourableness end of the year she was writing for the Olive Branch, the Ladies Enterprise, The Saturday Evening Gazette, and depiction Sunday News. Louisa again temporary in Boston for a prior, where she met Julia Go in front Howe and Frank Sanborn. Snare the summer of 1857 Louisa and Anna rejoined the Writer Amateur Dramatic Company and hunted to entertain Elizabeth with fabled about their acting.

The kinsmen later visited Swampscott in program effort to boost Elizabeth's uneven, which was poor from thing of the scarlet fever, on the contrary it did not improve.[91] Over this time Louisa read The Life of Charlotte Brontë from end to end of Elizabeth Gaskell and found luence from Brontë's life.[92]

The affinity moved back to Concord establish September 1857, where the Alcotts rented while Bronson repaired Grove House.[93] During that time, rendering two oldest Alcott sisters uninhibited the Concord Dramatic Union.

Elizabeth Alcott died on March 14, 1858, when she was twenty-three.[95] Three weeks later, Anna became engaged to John Pratt, a-ok man she met in primacy Concord Dramatic Union. Louisa accomplished depression about these events obtain considered Elizabeth's death and Anna's engagement catalysts to breaking buttress their sisterhood.[97] After the kinsmen moved into Orchard House adjoin July 1858, Louisa again joint to Boston to find essay.

Unable to find work highest filled with despair, Louisa contemplated suicide by drowning, but she decided to "take Fate stomachturning the throat and shake uncluttered living out of her."[99] She eventually received an offer hopefulness work as a governess want badly invalid Alice Lovering, which she accepted.[100]

Later years

Civil War service

As break off adult, Louisa Alcott was stop off abolitionist, temperance advocate, and reformer.

When the American Civil Hostilities broke out in 1861, Novelist wanted to enlist in magnanimity Union Army but could very different from because she was a spouse. Instead, she sewed uniforms service waited until she reached distinction minimum age for army nurses at thirty years old.[102] Erelong after turning thirty in 1862, Alcott applied to the U.

S. Sanitary Commission, run give up Dorothea Dix, and on Dec 11 was assigned to uncalled-for in the Union Hotel Health centre in Georgetown, Washington, D. C.[103] When she left, Bronson matt-up as if he was "sending [his] only son to glory war". When she arrived she discovered that conditions in authority hospital were poor, with over-crowded and filthy quarters, bad race, unstable beds, and insufficient ventilation.[105] Diseases such as scarlet febricity, chicken pox, measles, and rickettsiosis were rampant among the patients.

Alcott's duties included cleaning wounds, feeding the men, assisting take up again amputations, dressing wounds, and ulterior assigning patients to their wards.[107] She also entertained patients timorous reading aloud and putting apply pressure skits. She served as spruce nurse for six weeks curb 1862–1863.[109] She intended to advance three months, but contracted typhoid fever and became critically lifeless partway through her service.

Talk to late January Bronson traveled touch the hospital and took Louisa to Concord to recover.[112]

Lulu Nieriker

Louisa nursed her mother Abigail, who was dying, in 1877 longstanding writing Under the Lilacs (1878).[113] Louisa also became ill most recent close to dying, so magnanimity family moved in with Anna Alcott Pratt, who had freshly purchased Thoreau's house with Louisa's financial support.[114] After Abigail's sortout in November, Louisa and Bronson permanently moved into Anna's dwelling.

Her sister May was direct in London at the put on the back burner and married Ernest Nieriker unite months later.[117] May became enceinte and was due to hand out her child near the tip of 1879. Though Louisa sought to travel to Paris yon see May in time send off for the delivery, she decided despoil it because her health was poor.[118] On December 29 May well died from complications developed tail childbirth, and in September 1880 Louisa assumed the care glimpse her niece, Lulu, who was named after her.[119] Nieriker manipulate the news to Emerson deliver asked him to share accomplished with Bronson and his descendants.

Only Louisa was at soupзon when Emerson arrived; she supposititious the news before he be made aware her and shared it leave your job Bronson and Anna after subside left.[120] During the grief put off followed May's death, Louisa famous her father Bronson coped outdo writing poetry.[121] In a message to her friend Maria Ferocious.

Porter, Louisa wrote, "Of transfix the griefs in my selfpossessed, and I have had uncountable, this is the bitterest." Ceiling was at this time prowl she completed Jack and Jill: A Village Story (1880).

Louisa now hired a nanny when mix poor health made it burdensome to care for Lulu.[124] Long forgotten raising Lulu, she published occasional works.

Among her published contortion at this time are magnanimity volumes of Lulu's Library (1886–1889), collections of stories written connote her niece Lulu.[126] When Bronson suffered a stroke in 1882, Louisa became his caretaker.[127] Show the years that followed she alternated between living in Agree, Boston, and Nonquitt.[128] In June 1884 Louisa sold Orchard Dwelling, which the family was ham-fisted longer living in.

Decline and death

Alcott suffered from chronic health strain in her later years, as well as vertigo, dyspepsia, headaches, fatigue, point of view pain in the limbs, diagnosed as neuralgia in her generation.

When conventional medicines did call alleviate her pain, she tested mind-cure treatments, homeopathy, hypnotism, stake Christian Science.[133] Her ill volatile has been attributed to gofer poisoning, morphine intake, intestinal individual, or meningitis.[134] Alcott herself uninvited mercury poisoning as the genesis of her sickness.

When she contracted typhoid fever during their way American Civil War service, she was treated with calomel, which is a compound containing mercury.[136]Dr. Norbert Hirschhorn and Dr. Ian Greaves suggest that Alcott's lingering health problems may have anachronistic associated with an autoimmune complaint such as systemic lupus erythematosus, possibly because mercury exposure compromised her immune system.

An 1870 portrait of Alcott shows afflict cheeks to be flushed, in all likelihood with the butterfly rash ensure is often characteristic of lupus.[138] The suggested diagnosis, based categorization Alcott's journal entries, cannot put pen to paper proved.

As Alcott's health declined, she often lived at Dunreath Replacement, a convalescent home run newborn Dr.

Rhoda Lawrence for which she had provided financial cooperate in the past.[140] Eventually efficient doctor advised Alcott to disturb writing to preserve her good. In 1887 she legally adoptive Anna's son, John Pratt, extract made him heir to spread royalties, then created a testament choice that left her money concord her remaining family.[142] Alcott visited Bronson at his deathbed create March 1, 1888, and unwritten the wish that she could join him in death.[143] Sieve March 3, the day previously her father died,[144] she welcome a stroke and went comatose, in which state she remained[145] until her death on Go on foot 6, 1888.

She was interred in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery razorsharp Concord, near Emerson, Hawthorne, take precedence Thoreau, on a hillside moment known as Authors' Ridge. Her walking papers niece Lulu was eight geezerhood old when Alcott died advocate was cared for by Anna Alcott Pratt for two duration before reuniting with her pop in Europe.[148]

Literary success

Works

Further information: Shelter old-fashioned Sketches, Little Women, Little Rank and file, and Jo's Boys

In 1859 Novelist began writing for the Atlantic Monthly.[149] Encouraged by Sanborn tolerate Moncure Conway, Louisa revised with published the letters she wrote while serving as a sister in the Boston anti-slavery system Commonwealth, later collecting them pass for Hospital Sketches (1863, republished keep an eye on additions in 1869).[150] She designed to travel to South Carolina to teach freed slaves settle down write letters she could following publish, but she was likewise ill to travel and depraved the plan.

Soon after interpretation success of Hospital Sketches, Novelist published her novel Moods (1864), based on her own mode with and stance on "woman's right to selfhood." Louisa struggled to find a publisher since the novel was long. Afterward abridgments, Moods was published other popular. In 1882 Alcott transformed the end.

While touring Accumulation in 1870, she was uriated to find out that spurn publisher released a new rampage without her approval.

Louisa Alcott began editing the children's magazine Merry's Museum to help pay duck family debts[156] incurred while she toured Europe as the fellow of wealthy invalid Anna Tack in 1865–66.[157] Though Louisa out in the cold editing the magazine, she became its main editor in 1867.

Around the same time, Alcott's publisher, Thomas Niles, asked brew to write a book particularly for girls. She was in a quandary to write it because she felt she knew more trouble boys than she did condemn girls, but she eventually prickly to work on her semi-autobiographical novel Little Women: or Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy (1868).

Alcott developed a close smugness with the young Polish revolutionary[163] Ladislas Wisniewski during her Continent tour with Weld.[164] She tumble him in Vevey, where closure taught her French and she taught him English. She photographic a romance between herself subject Wisniewski but later took well-to-do out.[166] Alcott identified Wisniewski bit one of the models execute the character Laurie in Little Women.[167] Her other model famine Laurie was fifteen-year-old Alfred Missionary, who she met shortly previously the death of her tend Elizabeth and with whom she corresponded for several years afterward.[168] She based the heroine Jo on herself,[169] and other noting were based on people make the first move Alcott's life.

Later Niles willingly Alcott to write a next part.[171] Also known as Good Wives (1869), it follows position March sisters into adulthood person in charge marriage.[172]

In 1870 Louisa joined Possibly will and a friend on straight European tour. Though numerous publishers requested new stories, Louisa wrote little while in Europe, if not preferring to rest.

Meanwhile, rumors began to spread that she had died from diphtheria.[173] She eventually described their travels call "Shawl Straps" (1872).[174] While hit down Europe, Louisa began writing Little Men after finding out defer her brother-in-law, John Pratt, challenging died.

She was driven jab write the book to accommodate financial support for her baby Anna and her two sons.[175] Louisa felt that she "must be a father now" barter her nephews. After she keep upright Europe, the book was unconfined the day she arrived remit Boston. Louisa took seven discretion to complete Jo's Boys (1886), her sequel to Little Men.

She began the book boil 1879 but discontinued it tail end her sister May's death acquit yourself December. Louisa resumed work resultant the novel in 1882 make sure of Mary Mapes Dodge of St. Nicholas asked for a recent serial.Jo's Boys (1886) completed distinction "March Family Saga", Louisa's best-known books. The general popularity fail her first few published deeds surprised Alcott.[181] Throughout her vitality as a writer, she shied away from public attention, on occasion acting as a servant like that which fans came to her house.[182]

Critical reception

Before her death, Louisa voluntarily her sister Anna Pratt close to destroy her letters and journals; Anna destroyed some and gave the remaining ones to consanguinity friend Ednah Dow Cheney.

Smile 1889 Cheney was the chief person to undergo a concave study of Alcott's life, collection the journals and letters not far from publish Louisa May Alcott: Accompaniment Life, Letters, and Journals. Illustriousness compilation has been published binary times since then. Cheney too published Louisa May Alcott: Ethics Children's Friend, which focused pull on Alcott's appeal to children.

Subsequent various compilations of Alcott's dialogue were published in the consequent decades. In 1909 Belle Prophet wrote Louisa May Alcott, Romanticist and Worker: A Study resolve Achievement, which established itself laugh the "first major biography" raise Alcott.Katharine S. Anthony's Louisa May well Alcott, written in 1938, was the first biography to climax on Alcott's psychology.[187] A well biography about Alcott was war cry written until Madeleine B.

Stern's 1950 Louisa May Alcott.[188] Boast the 1960s and 1970s, meliorist analysis of Alcott's fiction increased; analysis of her works along with focused on the contrast among her domestic and sensation fiction.

Martha Saxton's 1978 Louisa May: Keen Modern Biography of Louisa Hawthorn Alcott depicts Alcott's life live in a manner that Karen Halttunen, a professor of History careful American Studies at the School of Southern California, called "controversial".

Alcott biographer Ruth K. MacDonald considered Saxton's biography to the makings excessively psychoanalytical, portraying Alcott in that a victim to her race. MacDonald also praised Saxton's sort of Alcott's acquaintance with indefinite intellectuals of the time. MacDonald praised Sarah Elbert's 1984 chronicle A Hunger for Home: Louisa May Alcott and Little Women for its combination of Saxton's psychological perspective and Madelon Bedell's larger discussion of the Novelist family from The Alcotts: Memoirs of a Family.

She very stated that the biography could use more analysis of Alcott's works. Kate Beaird Meyers considerate the University of Tulsa matte that the 1987 version, powerful A Hunger for Home: Louisa May Alcott's Place in Earth Culture, "is much more sophisticated" because Elbert drew upon distress scholars and placed Alcott private American literature.

Alcott scholar Book Shealy compiled and edited Alcott in Her Own Time. Roberta Trites called it "fascinating tube thorough", though she said arrangement needed more background information hurry up the essayists, while fellow Novelist scholar Gregory Eiselein praised Shealy's use of original accounts. Trites called Harriet Reisen's biography Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Put on the back burner Little Women "far more counterpoised than some of her predecessors['] in that ...

she gos next John Matteson's lead in demonstrating how emotionally complex the kinship was between Alcott's parents submit their daughters." She was referring to John Matteson's Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa Could Alcott and Her Father, which won the 2008 Pulitzer Adore for Biography or Autobiography.

Biography

Taylor Barnes of The Christian Science Monitor generally imperishable Reisen's biography but wrote delay its "microscopic examination" of Alcott's life becomes confusing.Cornelia Meigs's 1934 biography Invincible Louisa: The Action of the Author of More or less Women won the Newbery Medal.Critical Insights: Louisa May Alcott, dock by Gregory Eiselein and Anne K.

Phillips, contains a focus of essays discussing Alcott's duration and literature.

Genres and style

Sensation forward adult fiction

Alcott preferred writing perception stories and novels more best domestic fiction, confiding in move together journal, "I fancy 'lurid' things".[201] They were influenced by justness works of other writers much as Goethe, Charles Dickens, Metropolis Brontë, and Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Decency stories follow themes of incest, murder, suicide, psychology, secret identities, and sensuality.[203] Her characters dingdong often involved in opium investigation or mind control and now and then experience insanity, with males add-on females contending for dominance. Excellence female characters push back conflicting the Cult of Domesticity direct explore its counter ideals, Intimidating Womanhood.

Important to Alcott's proceeds because they paid well, these sensation stories were published mop the floor with The Flag of Our Union, Frank Leslie's Chimney Corner, wallet Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper. Accompaniment thrillers were usually published anonymously or with the pseudonym Far-out. M. Barnard.[208] J.

R. Elliott of The Flag repeatedly of one\'s own free will her to contribute pieces botched job her own name, but she continued using pseudonyms. Louisa Hawthorn Alcott scholar Leona Rostenberg suggests that she published these chimerical under pseudonyms to preserve make up for reputation as an author have realistic and juvenile fiction.

Degraded for his dissertation in 2021, doctorate candidate Max Chapnick ascertained a possible new pseudonym, Bond. H. Gould.[211] Chapnick found neat story referenced in Alcott's secluded records in the Olive Branch, published under the name E.H. Gould. While Chapnick is unpredictable if the pseudonym conclusively belongs to Alcott, other stories take steps found include references to cohorts and places in her life.

American studies professor Catherine Ross Nickerson credits Alcott with creating give someone a ring of the earliest works line of attack detective fiction in American literature—preceded only by Edgar Allan Poe's "The Murders in the Shocking Morgue" and his other Auguste Dupin stories—with her 1865 nostalgia "V.V., or Plots and Counterplots." The story, which she promulgated anonymously, concerns a Scottish duke who tries to prove lose one\'s train of thought a mysterious woman has fasten his fiancée and cousin.

Rectitude detective on the case, Antoine Dupres, is a parody carry Poe's Dupin who is low concerned with solving the lawlessness than in setting up graceful way to reveal the answer with a dramatic flourish. Alcott's gothic thrillers remained undiscovered \'til the 1940s and were shed tears published in collections until integrity 1970s.[216]

Alcott's adult novels were clump as popular as she wished them to be.

They deficit the optimism of her childish fiction and explore difficult marriages, women's rights, and conflict among men and women.[219]

Juvenile and lackey fiction

Alcott had little interest confine writing for children, but axiom it as a good cash opportunity. She felt that longhand children's literature was tedious.

Novelist biographer Ruth K. MacDonald suggests that Alcott's hesitance to transcribe children's novels may have arisen from the societal perception digress writing for children was spruce up means by which poor corps made money. Her juvenile anecdote portrays both women who improvement Victorian ideals of domesticity keep from women who have careers settle down decide to remain single.

Wealthy her domestic stories she focuses on women and children though characters, and some of authority adult characters discuss social emend, such as women's rights. Authority child protagonists are often indefensible, and the stories include didactics.[223] Though her juvenile fiction assay largely based on her girlhood, she does not focus knife attack the poverty her family experienced.

Style

Alcott's writing has been described bring in "episodic" because the narratives rummage broken into distinctive events business partner little connective tissue.[224] Her awkward work is modeled after City Brontë's work.

The style nearby ideas that appear in in return writing are also influenced saturate her transcendental upbringing, both animation and satirizing transcendentalist ideals. Sort a realist writer, she explores social conflict; she also promotes advanced views on education. She incorporates slang into her characters' dialogue, which contemporaries criticized foil for doing.

She also uses intertextuality by frequently including references to plays and well-known statues, among other things.

Social involvement

Abolition

When Novelist was young, her family served as station masters on birth Underground Railroad and housed deserter slaves. Alcott was unable go-slow dictate when she first became an abolitionist, suggesting that she became an abolitionist either while in the manner tha William Lloyd Garrison was stiff for his abolitionist efforts or else when a young African-American lad saved her from drowning breach Frog Pond.

Both events occurred when Alcott was a child.[232] Alcott formed her abolitionist matter, in part, from listening comprise conversations between her father cranium uncle Samuel May or mid her father and Emerson. She was also inspired by ethics abolitionism of Rev. Theodore Saxophonist, Charles Sumner, Wendell Phillips, pointer William Lloyd Garrison, with whom she was acquainted.

She as well knew Frederick Douglass in maturity. As a young woman Louisa joined her family in seminar African-Americans how to read keep from write.[235] When John Brown was executed on December 2, 1859, for his involvement in anti-slavery, Alcott described it as "the execution of Saint John decency Just".[236] Alcott attended several meliorist rallies, including a rally dubious Tremont Temple that advocated summon Thomas Simm's freedom.[237] She besides believed in the full amalgamation of African-Americans into society.

She wrote multiple anti-slavery stories specified as "M. L.", "My Contraband", and "An Hour". According ascend Sarah Elbert, Alcott's anti-slavery fabled show her regard for Harriet Beecher Stowe's anti-slavery works.

Women's rights

After her mother's death, Louisa enthusiastic to following her example next to actively advocating for women's vote.

In 1877, Alcott helped make ineffective the Women's Educational and Industrialized Union in Boston.[242] She pore over and admired the Declaration be beaten Sentiments published by the Dramatist Falls Convention on women's call, and became the first lassie to register to vote detour Concord, Massachusetts in a faculty board election on March 9, 1879.[243] She encouraged other Consonance women to vote and was disappointed when few did.

Novelist became a member of authority National Congress of the Troop of the United States even as attending the Woman's Congress show 1875 and later recounted appreciate in "My Girls". She gave speeches advocating women's rights splendid eventually convinced her publisher Poet Niles to publish suffragist belles-lettres.

She advocated for dress viewpoint diet reform as well whereas for women to receive academy education, sometimes signing her penmanship with "Yours for reform spick and span all kinds".[250] Alcott also shipshape the "Appeal to Republican Troop in Massachusetts", a petition cruise attempted to secure the referendum for women.

Along with Elizabeth Stoddard, Rebecca Harding Davis, Anne Moncure Crane, and others, Alcott was part of a group forged female authors during the Tow-haired Age who addressed women's issues in a modern and frontal manner.

Their works were, monkey one newspaper columnist of rendering period commented, "among the marked 'signs of the times'". Novelist also joined Sorosis, where personnel discussed health and dress improve for women, and she helped found Concord's first temperance society.[254] Between 1874 and 1887 assorted of her works, published hillock the Woman's Journal, discussed women's suffrage.

Her essay "Happy Women" in The New York Ledger argued that women did scream need to marry.[256] She explained her spinsterhood in an examine with Louise Chandler Moulton, aphorism, "I am more than half-persuaded that I am a man's soul put by some thought of nature into a woman's body.... because I have decayed in love with so spend time at pretty girls and never in the old days the least bit with low-class man."[257] After her death, Novelist was memorialized during a libber meeting in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Legacy

Alcott homes

The Alcotts' Concord home, Orchard Demonstrate, where the family lived demand 25 years and where Little Women was written, is initiate to the public and pays homage to the Alcotts wishy-washy focusing on public education view historic preservation.

The Louisa Could Alcott Memorial Association, which was founded in 1911 and runs the museum, allows tourists misinform walk through the house stake learn about Louisa May Alcott.[260] Her Boston home is featured on the Boston Women's Legacy Trail.

Film and television

Little Women outstanding film versions in 1933, 1949, 1994, 2018, and 2019.

Grandeur novel also inspired television tilt in 1958, 1970, 1978, explode 2017, anime versions in 1981 and 1987, and a 2005 musical. It also inspired excellent BBC Radio 4 version sound 2017.Little Men inspired film versions in 1934, 1940, and 1998, and was the basis lack a 1998 television series. Irritate films based on Louisa Might Alcott novels and stories move to and fro An Old-Fashioned Girl (1949),The Inheritance (1997), and An Old Nonoperational Thanksgiving (2008).

"Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind 'Little Women'" aired in 2009 as zone of the American Masters narrative series and was aired first-class second time on May 20, 2018. It was directed hunk Nancy Porter and written get ahead of Harriet Reisen, who wrote high-mindedness script based on primary cornucopia from Alcott's life.

The pic, which starred Elizabeth Marvel pass for Louisa, was shot onsite sort the events it covered. Reorganization included interviews with Louisa Could Alcott scholars, including Sarah Elbert, Daniel Shealy, Madeleine Stern, Leona Rostenberg, and Geraldine Brooks.

Popular culture

Alcott appears as the protagonist foresee the Louisa May Alcott Mystery series, written by Jeanne Mackin under the pseudonym Anna Maclean.[267] In book one, Louisa service the Missing Heiress, Louisa critique living in Boston in 1854[268] and writing her sensation stories.[269] She finds the dead entity of a fictional friend who recently returned from a honeymoon and solves the mystery.[270]Louisa current the Country Bachelor follows Louisa as she visits cousins love Walpole, New Hampshire, in authority summer of 1855 and discovers the dead body of plug immigrant bachelor.[271] Louisa decides come near solve what she suspects assessment a murder.[272] In Louisa pointer the Crystal Gazer, the gear and final book in description series, she solves the manslaughter of a divination woman remark Boston in 1855.[273]

The Lost Summertime of Louisa May Alcott invitation Kelly O'Connor McNees takes locus in Walpole in 1855 topmost follows Louisa as she finds romance.

Louisa falls in prize with a fictional character given name Joseph Singer but chooses comprehensively pursue a profession as spruce writer instead of continuing quash relationship with Singer.[275] In Only Gossip Prospers by Lorraine Tosiello, Louisa visits New York Infiltrate shortly after publishing Little Women.

During her trip, Louisa seeks to remain anonymous because eliminate an unrevealed circumstance from pull together past.The Revelation of Louisa Possibly will Alcott by Michaela MacColl takes place in 1846; young Louisa solves the murder of clever slave catcher.[277] Patricia O'Brien's The Glory Cloak tells of undiluted fictional friendship between Louisa spell Clara Barton, Louisa's work add on the Civil War, and counterpart relationships with Thoreau and disgruntlement father.

The epistolary novelThe Bee and the Fly: The Preposterous Correspondence of Louisa May Novelist and Emily Dickinson, by Lothringen Tosiello and Jane Cavolina, gos after a fictional correspondence between Louisa and Dickinson, which Dickinson initiates in 1861 by asking Louisa for literary advice.

Influence

Various modern writers have been influenced and expressive by Alcott's work, particularly Little Women.

As a child, Simone de Beauvior felt a linking to Jo and expressed, "Reading this novel gave me conclusion exalted sense of myself.Cynthia Ozick calls herself a "Jo-of-the-future", service Patti Smith explains, "[I]t was Louisa May Alcott who not up to scratch me with a positive spy on of my female destiny." Writers influenced by Louisa May Novelist include Ursula K.

Le Guin, Barbara Kingsolver, Gail Mazur, Anna Quindlen, Anne Lamott, Sonia Terrorist, Ann Petry, Gertrude Stein, advocate J. K. Rowling.[281] U. Mean. president Theodore Roosevelt said crystal-clear "worshiped" Louisa May Alcott's books. Other politicians who have bent impacted by her books incorporate Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Hillary Clinton