LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
Louisa May Alcott was born on November 29, 1832, in Germantown, Pennsylvania, the second of four daughters of Amos Bronson and Abigail Alcott. Her mother, known in the family as “Abba,” was from a distinguished Boston family. Her father, a self-educated son of farmers, was an educator and reformer; his controversial and often unpopular teaching philosophies kept him from steady employment and the family (Louisa called it the “Pathetic Family”) continually on the edge of poverty. The Alcotts often relied upon the generosity of family and friends, including American essayist and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, who frequently provided financial support.
When Louisa was two, the family moved to Boston to be near Abba’s family and Emerson. They would move frequently between Boston and Concord for the rest of Louisa’s life. Bronson Alcott became part of a group
of writers and philosophers known as the Transcendentalist Club, which included Emerson and writer Henry David Thoreau, both of whom Louisa idolized. Throughout her life Louisa was brash and moody, with a quick tongue that often angered her father.
Alcott wrote her first stories at age fifteen, during what she called her “sentimental period.” As a teenager, she pursued many dramatic and literary endeavors: producing and acting in family theatricals; creating a series of tales for Emerson’s young daughter, Ellen, which she called Flower Fables; and founding a family newspaper, the Olive Leaf. Her first published work was the poem “Sunlight,” which appeared pseud onymously in Peterson’s Magazine in 1851.
Louisa’s father didn’t earn sufficient income to support the family, so Louisa, her mother, and her sisters worked—Abba as one of the nation’s first social workers, the girls at sewing and teaching. Alcott viewed herself as a pillar of financial and emotional support to her female relatives. She was devastated in 1858 when her younger sister, Elizabeth, died of scarlet fever and her elder sister, Anna, announced her engagement.
During the American Civil War, Alcott moved briefly to Washington, D.C., to work as a Union Army nurse, until a bout with typhoid cut her service short. While convalescing, she reworked her letters to her family into a series called Hospital Sketches; published in 1863, it brought her favorable notice as a writer. Over the next several years she published a number of children’s collections and anonymously wrote fantastic and gothic tales. In 1867 she was offered the editorship of the children’s magazine Merry’s Museum. The following year, commissioned by the publisher Roberts Brothers, she wrote Little Women in six weeks. With the publication of Little Women, Alcott gained immense fame and achieved long-sought financial security for herself and her family. The sequel Little Men: Life at Plumfield with Jo’s Boys was published in 1871.
Always active in the suffrage movement, in 1879 Alcott became the first woman to vote in Concord. When her sister May died in childbirth the same year, Alcott adopted the baby, a girl named Lulu. Alcott’s health declined greatly during this period, due to the lingering effects of mercury in the treatment she had received for typhoid fever during the Civil War. Too weak to write extensively, Alcott would publish and republish her children’s story collections until her death. The feminist-leaning Jo’s Boys was also published during this period, in 1886. Louisa May Alcott died March 6, 1888, two days after the death of her father. She is buried with her parents.
THE WORLD OF LOUISA MAY
ALCOTT AND LITTLE WOMEN
1832 Louisa May Alcott is born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, on November 29, her father’s birthday; she is the second of four children of Abigail “Abba” Alcott and Amos Bronson, a teacher and educational reformer. Also born this year are Horatio Alger and Lewis Carroll; Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who will become one of Alcott’s favorite authors, dies.
1834 Struggling financially and in search of work, Bronson moves his family to Boston, nearer the support of longtime friend Ralph Waldo Emerson and Abba’s family. Bronson opens the Temple School, based on his controversial teaching methods.
1835 5 Abba gives birth to her third child, Elizabeth Sewall Alcott. Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known as Mark Twain, is born.
1836 Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, and other philosophical and literary scholars in the area form what becomes known as the Transcendentalist Club. Emerson pub lishes Nature, an essay explaining the philosophy of transcen dentalism, which asserts God’s existence in man and nature, and individual intuition as the highest source of knowledge.
1837 Victoria becomes queen of England.
1838 Charles Dickens’s novels Oliver Twist (1837-1839) and Nicholas Nickleby (1838-1839) attain great popularity.
1840 Forced to close the Temple School—parents alarmed by Bronson’s teaching methods and his admittance of a mulatto child have withdrawn their children—Bronson Alcott moves his family to Concord, Massachusetts, where Emerson and Thoreau live. Louisa attends the Concord Academy, run by Thoreau and his brother. The fourth and final Alcott child, Abigail May (called May), is born.
1841 Emerson publishes Essays.
1843 Bronson cofounds a utopian communal farm, Fruitlands, in the rural town of Harvard, Massachusetts; he and his family live there until the experiment fails in 1844.
1844 Emerson publishes Essays: Second Series.
1845 With an inheritance left to Abba, the family purchases a house in Concord, named Hillside, where Alcott finally has a room of her own.
1847 The novels Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë and Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë are published.
1848 Alcott creates the Flower Fables stories for Emerson’s young daughter Ellen. Later in the year Alcott writes her first adult story, “The Rival Painters: A Tale of Rome.” The Alcotts move back to Boston, where Abba finds employment as one of the nation’s first social workers.
1849 Alcott creates a family newspaper called the Olive Leaf Pub lication begins of Dickens’s novel David Copperfield. Alcott writes her first novel, The Inheritance, which is not published until 1996.
1850 Emerson’s Representative Men and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter are published.
1851 Peterson’s Magazine publishes Alcott’s poem “Sunlight” under the pseudonym Flora Fairfield; it is her first published work. To help support their family, Alcott and her sisters find jobs teaching and sewing. Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables and Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick are published.
1852 The Boston periodical the Olive Branch publishes “The Rival Painters: A Tale of Rome.” Hawthorne purchases Hillside, giv ing the Alcotts some financial security. Alcott and her sister Anna open a school in the parlor of their home in Boston. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin is published.
1853 Bronson goes on a lecture tour in the Midwest.
1854 Alcott’s Flower Fables, dedicated to Ellen Emerson, is pub lished; her short story “The Rival Prima Donnas” appears in the Saturday Evening Gazette. Thoreau’s Walden; or, Life in the Woods is published.
1855 The family moves to Walpole, New Hampshire, although Alcott remains in Boston, teaching; she attends lectures by the liberal clergyman and reformer Theodore Parker. She spends the summer in Walpole, where she organizes the Wal pole Amateur Dramatic Company. The first edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass appears.
1857 The Alcott family returns to Concord; with money from friends, including Emerson, they purchase Orchard House (where Alcott will later write Little Women).
1858 Elizabeth Alcott dies of scarlet fever. Anna announces her engagement to John Pratt, whom she will marry in 1860. Alcott is greatly unsettled by the loss of her two sisters.
1859 Bronson becomes superintendent of schools in Concord, receiving a salary of $100 per year. Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species is published.
1860 Alcott writes her novel Moods. The Boston Theater Company produces her play Nat Bachelor’s Pleasure Trip. Abraham Lin coln becomes president of the United States. Publication begins of Dickens’s Great Expectations.
1861 Alcott starts work on an autobiographical novel, tentatively titled Success (it will be published in 1873 as Work: A Story of Experience). The American Civil War begins.
1862 Henry David Thoreau dies, and Alcott writes the poem “Thoreau’s Flute” in his honor. At the end of the year she trav els to Washington, D.C., to serve as a Union Army nurse.
1863 Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1. Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper anonymously serializes Alcott’s story, “Pauline’s Passion and Punishment,” and awards her a prize of $100. After working as a nurse for only six weeks, Alcott becomes seriously ill with typhoid; she returns to Con cord where she receives treatment with calomel, a medicine containing mercury that permanently damages her health. While convalescing, Alcott reworks her wartime letters to her family into a collection titled Hospital Sketches; it is serialized in the Boston Commonwealth, an abolitionist paper, and
pub lished in book form later in the year to great praise. Alcott receives almost $600 from writing this year. Over the next sev eral years she will write many gothic stories, either anony mously or under a pseudonym.
1864 The Rose Family: A Fairy Tale and On Picket Duty, and Other Tales are published in January. In December Moods is pub lished but is not well received. Horatio Alger publishes his first boys’ book, Frank’s Campaign.
1865 Bronson leaves his superintendent post. Anna and John give birth to a child, who will become Alcott’s heir. Alcott travels to Europe as an assistant to an invalid, Anna Weld; there she meets Ladislas Wisniewski, the inspiration for Laurie in Little Women. The Confederates surrender at Appomattox, marking the end of the Civil War. Lincoln is assassinated on
April 14. Lewis Carroll publishes Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
1867 Alcott accepts editorship of the children’s magazine Merry’s Museum for $500 per year.
1868 She moves from Boston to Concord to care for her family while continuing her editorship; she will continue to move back and forth between the two cities until her death. Thomas Niles of the publisher Roberts Brothers commissions Alcott to write a book for girls; she completes the first part of Little Women in six weeks, and it is published to great acclaim. Bolstered by its suc cess, she writes an equally popular second part at the rate of a chapter per day.
1869 The second part of Little Women is published under the title Good Wives. Alcott travels to Canada and Maine to recover her health, compromised by the rapid pace with which she wrote Little Women. She receives $8,500 in royalties and pays all her family’s debts.