Louisa May Alcott

The Portable Louisa May Alcott

Although the publication of Little Women in 1868 earned Louisa May Alcott tremendous popularity, for a long time she was thought of as a writer of children's stories and considered--at best--a minor figure in the American literary canon. Now, at the end of the twentieth century, Alcott's vast body of work is being celebrated alongside the greatest American writers, and this collection shows why.

The Portable Louisa May Alcott samples the entire spectrum of Alcott's work: her novels, novellas, children's stories, sensationalist fiction, gothic tales, essays, letters, and journals. Presenting her more daring works, such as Moods and Behind a Mask (both reprinted in their entirety), alongside the familiar heroines of Little Women, this singular collection offers readers a rich and wide-ranging portrait of this talented, prolific, and influential writer.

About the Authors
Louisa May Alcott was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, and raised in Concord and Boston, Massachusetts. The precocious second of four daughters born to Utopian philosopher Bronson Alcott, she started supporting the family through her writing as a teenager.
  
Elizabeth Lennox Keyser is a professor of English at Hollins University and editor of the journal Children's Literature. Her book Whispers in the Dark: The Fiction of Louisa May Alcott won the 1993 Children's Literature Association Book Award.

The Louisa May Alcott Web

A. Louisa May Alcott.

Louisa May Alcott

Enjoy your "virtual" visit to the home of the Alcott family and the site where Louisa May Alcott wrote her classic, Little Women!

Come Stand Among Great Women:   Louisa May Alcott

Excerpt:

A prolific author of books for American girls, Louisa May Alcott is best remembered for Little Women, one of the 270 published works by the Pennsylvania-born woman. This endearing novel captured forever the period's ideals and values of middle class domestic life. The book has appeared continuously in print since its first serial publication in 1868-70.

In 1879, Alcott was the first woman to register in Concord when Massachusetts gave women school, tax and bond suffrage. Eventually she persuaded her publisher to publish Harriett Hanson Robinson's Massachusetts in the Woman Suffrage Movement in 1881. In her final novel, Jo's Boys (1886), Alcott made arguments for women's rights and other reforms. She said, "I can remember when anti-slavery was in just the same state that suffrage is now, and take more pride in the very small help we Alcotts could give than in all the books I ever wrote..."

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Great Quotations by Louisa May Alcott