Louisa may alcott novelist biography wikipedia

Early Years [ change change source ]. Writing [ change change source ]. Personal life [ change change source ]. References [ change change source ]. Encyclopedia of women's history in America. Infobase Publishing. ISBN Retrieved November 28, Alcott Dead". The New York Times. March 7, Retrieved September 14, The parents of the authoress removed to Boston when their daughter was 2 years old, and in Boston and its immediate vicinity she made her home ever after.

New York: W. In Chisholm, Hugh ed. Cambridge University Press. Nancy Porter Productions, Inc. Alternative Alcott. Rutgers University Press. Walt Whitman in Washington, D. New York: Citadel Press. The Guardian. Born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, on November 29, ; died in Dunreath. Place, Roxbury, Massachusetts, on March 6, ; second child of Bronson a writer, educator, and Transcendentalist and Abigail May Alcott; never married; no children.

Louisa May Alcott 's best-known work, Little Women , is often said to have its basis in the author's own life. The novel is set in Concord, Massachusetts, in the s, where a band of four sisters rally 'round their parents as all conspire to do good for their neighbors and be gentle, kind souls to one another, providing enough familial warmth to ward off even the harshest, sparsest winters.

The vision was idyllic. It was, however, far from reminiscent of Louisa May Alcott 's life, which was neither warm nor reassuring. The sights were perhaps similar, but Alcott's view was different: dominated by her father and bearing the financial weight of her sisters and mother, Louisa often disliked her life. She sequestered herself at home and journeyed out only as required to make a living for the Alcotts.

She did not enjoy many people, and in fact was afraid of men. Her journals display a disappointment in self that is both unbending and unfair. In , the newly married couple had moved to Germantown, Pennsylvania, where Bronson, a writer and educator, became principal and teacher in the Germantown Academy. Bronson was fascinated by the child and watched her keenly.

He kept a journal, starting from her first day. She was a peaceful child and he showered her with adoration. On Bronson's 33rd birthday, November 29, , Louisa May was born. Unlike her older sister, Louisa was a temperamental baby who cried often. She was instantly less favored, a fact based partially on Bronson's financial and personal reverses. He saw Louisa as less pleasant than her sister Anna and viewed her behavior clinically: "Louisa required authoritative measures in a few instances," he wrote.

His teaching methods, based in the transcendental ideal—ascension to higher being by forsaking worldly material and physical pleasures—had caused parents to withdraw their children from all his schools. Though they enjoyed a brief period of financial success Bronson was well-received and lauded in his efforts in the progressive Boston society , by his reputation and enrollment at Temple School had fallen.

The family moved to cheaper rooms in the South End and subsisted on bread and vegetables, while Bronson believed that a diet not dependent on the sacrifice of animals purified them spiritually. On the rare occasions when Abba saved enough to buy meat, Bronson either refused to run the errand or conveniently forgot and spent the money otherwise.

Abba and Bronson clashed frequently, as she tried to provide for the well-being and health of her children while he tried to further their spiritual growth. The marriage was unhappy, and Abba was forced to ask for charity from her more well-to-do family and friends. Bronson considered the arrangement mutually beneficial: while people supported him, he brought them closer to God.

On March 23, , the Temple School closed. It was to be the end of Bronson's consistent, if meager, contribution to supporting his family. Two weeks later, an Alcott son was born, but he did not live. On the encouragement of Ralph Waldo Emerson , Bronson's closest friend and often financial benefactor , the family moved in to Concord, where the cost of living was much reduced.

They continued to lean heavily on the aid of others. On July 26, , May Alcott was born. Name variations: Anna Alcott Pratt. For Louisa, the move to Concord, at age six, was a perfect fit. Her rambunctiousness and energy—traits that Bronson deemed unfeminine and therefore improper—needed space. She preferred solitude to the constant company of others, including her sisters.

She ran through the woods and explored nature. She wrote her first known poem there, in wonder of winter giving way to spring. She also met Henry David Thoreau , who was to be her lifelong, unvoiced love. Louisa adored Thoreau's withdrawn behavior. He was more like herself than anyone she had ever met. They often went on walks, exploring the woods and hillsides.

She felt she understood him. The Alcotts were journal keepers. While Bronson dedicated much of his time to recording each day's thoughts, Abba also wrote in a diary, and the couple instructed their daughters to do the same. By , Louisa kept a regular journal. She was, by her own admission, an angry child, though it is apparent that this self-denunciation was in part caused and reinforced by years of her father's chiding and shunning of his wilder, second daughter.

I made good resolutions, and felt better in my heart. If I only kept all I make, I should be the best girl in the world. But I don't and so am very bad. A note appended to the entry by Alcott at a much later date reads, " Poor little sinner! She says the same at fifty. By 11, Alcott had already taken refuge in books, frequently withdrawing to her room to read and think.

But there was much work to perform around the house, in addition to regular lessons from Bronson. He referred to his children as "living manifestations of my intellect" and insisted on keeping a heavy hand in their lessons. Both he and Abba also read their children's journals and commented on them. Abba wrote small notes to Louisa, wishing that she could be a "happier child" or praising the bits of poetry there.

Bronson noted that Anna's journal was filled with thoughts of others. Louisa's, he observed with displeasure, was almost purely self-absorbed. American artist. November 8, While studying in Paris, May Alcott wrote home and described a tea party in Mary Cassatt 's studio: "We sipped our chocalat [sic] from superior china, served on an India waiter, upon an embroidered cloth of heavy material.

Miss Cassatt was charming as usual in two shades of brown satin and rep, being very lively and a woman of real genius, she will be a first-class light as soon as her pictures get circulated and known for they are handled in a masterly way. But Alcott was just one of many fighting the art world's closed-door policy toward women artists. Writing home of the Julian academy, which charged more for women and offered less in the way of instruction, she complained, "The lower school as it is called, or male class, no longer opens its doors to women, for the price, being but one half of the upper [women's] school, attracted too many.

In the spring of , the Alcott women were briefly alone when Bronson sailed to England, a nation more receptive to his transcendental ideas. He returned in the fall buoyed by his success there, and the lives of the Alcott women grew even poorer. Bronson had been accompanied to England by Charles Lane and Henry Wright , and they had conceived a new household arrangement: communal, agricultural living.

In a home that incorporated several families, they could work the land and pool their labors without depending so heavily on money. Of course, they needed money to launch the endeavor, so Abba turned, as she had often done before, to her brother. Sam May had grown tired of supporting his sister and brother-in-law. He complained of Bronson's unwillingness to work, and grudgingly gave more money.

Lane paid the other half of the Alcott debts, and, in June , the Alcotts, Lane and his son, and Wright moved from Concord to a farmhouse in Harvard, Massachusetts. They called the house "The Fruitlands," not for the fruit grown there, since there was none, but for its spiritual promise. The experiment lasted six months. Abba and her daughters were the only women in the household, which accepted whomever chose to pass through and share Bronson's vision.

The men did little work, except occasional attention to the gardens. While the men discussed philosophy, Abba and her daughters cleaned, sewed, and prepared the food—a strictly vegetarian diet, the bulk of which was cooked or raw apples, sparse breads and grains, and any vegetables they could cultivate. Exhausted and ill, and watching her children grow sicker, Abba put forth an ultimatum: she and her children were returning to a more normal life.

Though Bronson considered staying put or moving in with a Shaker community up the road, he did not abandon the family. He did, however, hold them responsible for his spiritual stagnation and retreated even further from his wife and daughters. In the five years following The Fruitlands experiment, as the family moved from Harvard to Still River to Concord, Louisa grew to adolescence, a time that went virtually unnoticed by her parents.

Abba was overwhelmed with keeping the family together, while Bronson continued his communal ways. In , at age 13, Louisa wrote in her journal, "More people coming to live with us; I wish we could be together, and no one else. I don't see who is to clothe and feed us all, when we are so poor now. She continued to do battle with her disposition as well.

People think I'm wild and queer; but Mother understands and helps me…. Now I'm going to work really, for I feel a true desire to improve and be a help and comfort, not a care and sorrow, to my dear mother. By , Abba had grown miserable in Concord. The employment opportunities for women were few, and she was humiliated by having begged assistance for so long other children even shared their school lunches with Anna and Louisa.

That summer, the family moved to Boston. Louisa hated to leave the open expanses of Concord and found the Common, once a haven from people, no longer satisfying. Boston had grown more populated and citified, and the waters around the city were being filled in to make more space. Louisa stayed inside the dingy rooms the family rented and wrote plays that she and her sisters acted for their parents.

Anna and Louisa helped Abba teach a group of black children to read—the city provided no schools for blacks—as well as taking other teaching, nursemaid, or governess posts. They pooled their finances to be sure that daughters Beth and May could continue school. Bronson, meanwhile, offered to give "conversations" with anyone who would listen.

He occasionally traveled but never brought home more than a pocketful of change. In September of , after dreaming about fame, Louisa saw her first poem published in Peterson's Magazine. Simon and Schuster. Univ of North Carolina Press. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Irving to Irving: Author-Publisher Relations — New York: R.

Bowker Company. New York: W. James, Edward T. Harvard University Press. GRIN Verlag. Springer Publishing Company. Little Men. Chapter 2. Jo's Boys. Chapter 1. Little Women: A Family Romance. Woodbridge, CT: Twayne Publishers. Little Women. The New Yorker. ISSN X. Retrieved February 25, American Masters. December 12, Retrieved August 4, Cambridge, Massachusetts: John Wilson and Son.

Retrieved May 31, Retrieved May 13, July 7, Retrieved December 24, Shealy, Daniel ed. Little Women: An Annotated Edition. Critical Insights: Little Women. Grey House Publishing. The Portable Louisa May Alcott. University of Illinois Press. The Annotated Little Women. In Linda K. University of North Carolina Press. University of Georgia Press.

December 28, Retrieved August 22, Washington Post. Retrieved December 31, Alcott's Little Women ] M. Tampere University. Louisa May Alcott. Boston: Northeastern University Press. Boston: Applewood Books. New York, NY: W. Retrieved April 9, Retrieved October 20, A Handful of Authors. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. April Retrieved December 12, Archived from the original on July 13, Boston: Twayne Publishers. Work: A Story of Experience. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN X. Children's Literature. S2CID Amsterdam University Press, , pp. Internet Broadway Database. Retrieved December 28, Retrieved September 26, Dallas Voice.

July 26, Retrieved October 24, Retrieved October 16, Retrieved December 8, Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Little Women, a modern adaptation. Archived from the original on November 29, Retrieved February 14, Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved June 23, The New York Times. Retrieved December 27, Chicago Tribune. Retrieved February 23, The Washington Post.

Retrieved October 27, Retrieved April 16, Tatler Asia. Tatler Asia Limited Edipresse. The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved December 3, Women Opera Composers: Biographies from the s to the 21st Century. Jefferson, N. Operas in English: A Dictionary. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press. Mark Adamo Online. September 4, Retrieved November 16, Far from the Tree.

Retrieved December 2, Retrieved November 28, The Poetry of Louise May Alcott Anthony, K. Auerbach, N. Bedell, M. Bonstelle, J. DeForest, eds. Cheney, E. Clark, B. Elbert, S. Gulliver, L. Keyser, E. MacDonald, R. Meigs, C. Myerson, J. Moses, B. Papashvily, H. Peare, C. Saxton, M. Stern, M. Ullom, J. Bibliography of American Literature NAW American Literature Review Winter Bibliographical Society of America Papers 2nd Quarter, New England Quarterly June , Dec.

NYTM Dec. Louisa May Alcott is one of America's best-known writers of juvenile intended for young people fiction. She was also a reformer who worked to gain the right to vote for women and who opposed the drinking of alcohol. She was one of four daughters of Bronson Alcott , an educator and philosopher one who seeks an understanding of the world and man's place in it , and Abigail May Alcott.

Her father was unsuited for many jobs and also unwilling to take many of them, and as a result he was unable to support his family. The Alcotts were very poor. Her father moved the family to Boston, Massachusetts, in and founded the Temple School, in which he planned to use his own teaching methods. The school failed, and the family moved to Concord, Massachusetts, in Alcott's father was a strong supporter of women's rights and an early abolitionist opponent of slavery , and his friends were some of the most brilliant and famous men and women of the day.

Alcott and her sisters became friends with these visitors as well, and were even tutored by them at times. This combination of intellectual richness and actual poverty helped Alcott develop her sense of humor. Alcott soon realized that if she and her sisters did not find ways to bring money into the home, the family would be doomed to permanent poverty.

In her early years she worked at a variety of tasks to make money to help her family, including teaching, sewing, and housework. At sixteen she wrote a book, Flower Fables not published for six years , and she wrote a number of plays that were never produced. By her stories and poems were being published in the Atlantic Monthly. During the Civil War — 65; a war fought in the United States between the states in the North and the states in the South mainly over the issue of slavery , Alcott served as a nurse until her health failed.

Her description of the experience in Hospital Sketches brought her work to the attention of many people. The attention seemed to die out, however, when she published her first novel, Moods, in , and she was glad to accept a job in as the editor of the juvenile magazine Merry's Museum. The next year she produced the first volume of Little Women, a cheerful and attractive account of her childhood.

The book was an instant success, and a second volume followed in The resulting sales accomplished the goal she had worked toward for twenty-five years: the Alcott family had enough money to live comfortably. After Little Women set the direction, Alcott continued producing similar works. She wrote An Old-fashioned Girl , Little Men , and Work , an account of her early efforts to help support the family.

During this time she took an active role in speaking out about the danger of drinking alcohol, and she also campaigned for women's suffrage right to vote. She also toured Europe. In she produced Silver Pitchers, a collection containing "Transcendental Wild Oats," a description of her father's failed attempts to found a communal group where people live together and share ownership and use of property in Fruitlands, Massachusetts.

In later life she produced a book almost every year and maintained a loyal following of readers. Alcott died on March 6, , in Boston, Massachusetts. She seems never to have become bitter about the struggles of her early years or her father's flaws. She did give some indication of her feelings about him, however, when she said that a philosopher was like a man up in a balloon: he was safe, as long as three women held the ropes on the ground.

Ruth, Amy. Louisa May Alcott. Minneapolis : Lerner, Saxton, Martha. New York : Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, Louisa May Alcott is one of America's best-known writers of juvenile fiction.

Louisa may alcott novelist biography wikipedia

She was also a reformer, working in the causes of temperance and woman's suffrage. Louisa May Alcott was born in Germantown, Pa. She was the daughter of Bronson Alcott , the Concord transcendentalist philosopher and educator. She and her three sisters spent their childhood in poverty. However, they had as friends, and even as tutors, some of the most brilliant and famous men and women of the day, such as Henry David Thoreau , Ralph Waldo Emerson , Margaret Fuller , and Theodore Parker.

This combination of intellectual plenty and physical want endowed Alcott with an ironical sense of humor. She soon realized that, if she or her sisters did not find ways to bring money into the home, the family would be doomed to permanent poverty. In her early years Alcott worked at a variety of menial tasks to help financially. At 16 she wrote a book, Flower Fables not published for 6 years , and she wrote a number of plays that were never produced.

By she was publishing stories and poems in the Atlantic Monthly. During the Civil War she served as a nurse until her health failed, and her Hospital Sketches brought the first taste of widespread public attention. The attention seemed to die out, however, when she published her first novel, Moods, in , and she was glad to accept in the editorship of the juvenile magazine Merry's Museum.

The next year she produced the first volume of Little Women, a cheerful and attractive account of her childhood, portraying herself as Jo and her sisters as Amy, Beth, and Meg. The book was an instant success, so in she produced the second volume. The resulting sales accomplished the goal she had worked toward for 25 years: the Alcott family was financially secure.

Little Women had set the direction, and Alcott continued a heavy literary production in the same vein. During this time she was active in the causes of temperance and woman's suffrage, and she also toured Europe. In she produced Silver Pitchers, a collection containing "Transcendental Wild Oats," an account of her father's disastrous attempts to found a communal group at Fruitlands, Mass.

In later life she produced a book almost every year and never wanted for an audience. Alcott died on March 6, , in Boston. She seems never to have become bitter about her early years or her dreamy, improvident father, but she did go so far as to say that a philosopher was like a man up in a balloon: he was safe as long as three women held the ropes on the ground.

Ednah Cheney, ed. Also of interest are Katharine S.