Exciting new project announcement, and we need your help to make it happen!

I am pleased to announce a partnership with independent Alcott scholar and author Lorraine Tosiello for a fantastic new project known as “Alcott’s Hidden Critics: The Secret Reviews of Little Women.”

Through this unique and important undertaking, we seek to locate and collect reader responses to Little Women over its 150-year history and archive them on The Louisa May Alcott Society website. Here, scholars, teachers, and fans will be able to peruse the collection for research, class discussions, or just for fun. The Spring 2021 issue of Discover Concord magazine, available as of today, is featuring an article on this project. 

We are asking for your help to find and preserve
readers’ responses to
“Little Women” by Louisa May Alcott.

Our hope is to find as many letters, journal entries, school projects, online writings such as fan fiction, and other manifestations from Little Women fans  — from 1868 to the present time — as we can.

More than 150 years after Little Women’s publication, people are still writing to each other in private letters and on social media about their love of Little Women. To this day, Louisa’s grave is adorned with pens and pencils, cards, and letters.

So go ahead, ransack that trunk in the attic or the musty boxes in the basement — you may find your own journals or letters, or ones from another generation which make mention of Little Women. You may have a school project. The goal is to collect them for posterity and share them with the world.

Your entry, if accepted, would be placed in the internet archive of the Louisa May Alcott Society website, to be made available to scholars for their research on Louisa May Alcott.

Do you have something you’d like to submit? Please follow the directions below.

Submit through Google Forms. (you will need a gmail address)

or

Copy all of the information below and paste them into an email; send it to louisamayalcottismypassion@gmail.com

Information:

• Your full name
• Full name of the author of the submission (if the submission was not authored by you)
• Indicate your preference for attrition:
  • Please use my full name in the archive: YES or NO
    OR
  • Please use anonymous in the archive: YES or NO
• We need the following information in order to contact you, but it will never be added to the archive collection or shared with anyone else.
  • Your Address
  • City, State, Zip Code
  • Phone Number
  • Email

Please describe what you are submitting:

• Type of entry
  • Diary or journal entry(s)
  • Letter(s) to family and/or friends
  • School project
  • Other (please identify)
• Date of entry (month, day, year)
• Where did you/the author live when you wrote your entry?  (city, state, country)
• Please give a short description of your entry(s).

Attach the following to your email:

• High-resolution (300 dpi) scan or clear photo of the entry.
• Transcription of the entry. 
  • If your submission is in a language other than English, please submit a transcription in the original language plus English, if you can. If you cannot translate it into English, we will find a translator.

Your entry, if accepted, would be placed in the internet archive of the Louisa May Alcott Society website, to be made available to scholars for their research on Louisa May Alcott.

We will need your permission to do so and to allow Alcott scholars to quote from your entry for articles, books, lectures, blogs, videos, and other online media. Scholars would be required to cite your entry in their footnotes.

Permission

“I grant permission for my entry to be included in the internet archive of the Louisa May Alcott Society, with the expectation that it could be used by Alcott scholars for their research including articles, books, lectures, blogs, videos, and other online media. I understand that the scholar will be required to cite my entry in their sourcing.” TYPE YOUR FULL NAME IN CAPS TO GRANT PERMISSION.

Remember to submit your entry including attachments to louisamayalcottismypassion@gmail.com

Questions?

If you have any concerns or difficulties submitting the attachments or would prefer to mail us your entry,  please write to the above email address and we will assist you.

Please share with family, friends, and on social media. This needs to go viral.

We need to attract as many submissions as we can. Please reblog if you are on WordPress, or share on Facebook, Twitter,  Instagram, etc.

Please share this post with your local schools, libraries, and historical societies, and any other places where people can find out about this project. Thanks for your help.

We can’t wait to see your submissions!