Here are links to interesting sites about Louisa May Alcott.
Links and photos of Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House
and Sleepy Hollow Cemetery
The Louisa May Alcott Resource Page
Lesson plans, free ebooks, poetry, photos . . . this site has a treasure trove of resources.
Louisa May Alcott Filmography
Any and all films from the big and little screen related to Louisa’s books
Louisa May Alcott website in French (use your browser to translate)
Louisa May’s recipe for Apple Slump
(courtesy of Miss Party’s Blog)
Take a tour of Louisa May Alcott’s Beacon Hill in Boston
Brief Biographical Accounts
- The Literature Network
- Unitarian Universalist Historical Society
- Empireszine.com
- Enotes.com – biography and links to resources and criticism
List of Louisa May Alcott’s Works
Commentary
- Enotes.com Louisa May Alcott 1832-1888 – literary criticism
- Enotes.com Louisa May Alcott 1832-1888 – short story criticism
- Smothered Fire
Behind her cheerfulness and sentimentality, the author of Little Women hid searing anger and a wicked wit
by Jane Hamilton - Plots and counterplots: the defense of sensational fiction in Louisa May Alcott’s “Behind a Mask”
by Sara Hackenberg
Reviews from Contemporaries
Critical Essays
- BookRags – 17 Critical Essays on Louisa May Alcott
by Madeleine Stern, Daniel Shealy, Angela M. Estesa and Katheen M. Lant, Sarah Elbert and more - Literary History – Louisa May Alcott Literary Criticism
- Bringing Up Jo: Little Women, Female Rhetorical Activity, and the Nineteenth Century American Conduct Book
Tradition essay examining how Jo Alcott’s behavior in Little Women fits into the 19th century genre of the Etiquette conduct manual - Transcendental Actress: Louisa May Alcott And The Roles of a Lifetime.
This is a Master’s Thesis, and as such, is a rather long piece. It has chapters on Alcott’s most pivotal work, Little Women,as well as a chapter on “Transcendental Wild Oats” and four of Alcott’s pseudonymously published gothic thrillers. The final chapter is a discussion of the various film versions of Little Women. - “Like a Wild Creature in its Cage, Paced that Handsome Woman”: The Struggle Between Sentiment and Sensation in the Writings of Louisa May Alcott.
Paper explores Alcott’s two types of writing. Concludes that her subversive sensational stories not only defied nineteenth-century values of womanhood, but also rebelled against the teachings of her father, Bronson Alcott, who believed in traditional “femininity” and sentimentalism, in a search for human perfectionism. - The Makings Of A Mom: The Maternal Voice Of Louisa May Alcott.
This paper examines Alcott’s handling and perceptions of motherhood– in various works as well as in her personal life. A biographical critique that sheds light on how a “spinster” like Alcott could write such great mothering roles. - Blood, Guts And Glory: Soldiers And Nurses in The Civil War.
This paper deals briefly with Alcott’s Civil War story, “Hospital Sketches.” It has a number of excellent quotations from soldier & nurse’s personal accounts of the war, and though it isn’t totally about one of our Domestic Goddesses, it makes good reading for an understanding of the context that many of these writers were writing in. - A Guide to Research: Louisa May Alcott a research/bibliographic guide to works by and about Louisa May Alcott.
An excellent place to start any research project on Alcott, this lists major critical works on LMA, plus sources for texts online. - Critical essays on Louisa May Alcott and other women authors (Domestic Goddesses)
News Articles
Sites for scholarly research
- Google Scholar
- JSTOR (you need to be affiliated with a participating university or public library in order to be able to access – if you’re not part of a university or library, applying for an online library card could give you access. Here’s their list of participating colleges, universities and public libraries.
- Harvard University Library Search (Houghton Library has the Alcott materials) – you need to sign up in order to use this search, but you can see what is available at Houghton (or any of the other Harvard libraries)
Emerson and Thoreau
- How to properly teach Thoreau to students of all ages
- An Online Exhibition of Walden Pond Images – Offered by the Concord Free Public Library in Celebration of the 150th Anniversary of the Publication of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden in 1854
Miscellaneous sites of interest
- List of books and articles related to dress and fashion reform
- The Literary Ladies Guide to the Writing Life – some of my posts on Louisa appear on this terrific site featuring prominent women authors and their advice on writing
