Louisa May Alcott Lifetime Reading List

Complied 2022 from her Journals and Letters by Lorraine Tosiello

As a lifelong bibliophile, Louisa May Alcott’s favorite authors were Dickens, Shakespeare, and Goethe. A florid reader, Alcott peppered her Little Women with references to writers ranging from Bunyan to Scott to E.D.E.N Southworth. Though we don’t know all the books she perused at Mr. Emerson’s library, it is possible to follow a trail of literary delights that Alcott herself mentioned in her journals and letters. Using the published letters and journals edited by Joel Myerson, Daniel Shealy, and Madeline Stern, I compiled a list of all the books mentioned by Alcott. I also included the books listed in the digital record of Alcott’s year as a reader at the Boston Athenaeum.

This list was originally developed in my discussion at the Orchard House Summer Conversational Series in 2022, The Disparate Educations of Louisa May Alcott and Emily Dickinson: From Seminary to Temple. Sadly, I never looked into the possibility of Alcott’s library record existing at the Concord Library. If that information is added, this work may be added in the future! I hope readers and scholars of Alcott can use this list to generate more discussions about the influence of Alcott’s reading on her own creativity.

Date	Title	Author	Notes
1843	Rosamond	Sedgwick	“Mother read”
	Martin Luther
	Home	Bremer
1845	Kenilworth	Scott
	Philothea	Child
	Heart of Mid-Lothian	Scott
1847	Goethe’s Correspondence with a Child	Bettina von Armin
1850	Easter Offering	Fredericka Bremer
	Scarlet Letter	Nathaniel Hawthorne
1852	“List of Books I like”
	French Revolution	Carlyle
	Schhiller’s Plays	Schiller
	Goethe’s Work (unspecified)	Goethe
	Hero and Hero Worship	Carlyle
	Madame de Stael
	Plutarch’s Lives	Plutarch
	Madam Giron (?)
	Paradise Lost	Milton
	Comus	Milton
	Louis XIV
	Jane Eyre	Bronte
	Hypatia	Charles Kingsley
	Philotea	Lydia Maria Childs
	Uncle Tom’s Cabin	Stowe
	Poems	Emerson
1855	Hyperion	Longfellow
1857	Charlotte Bronte’s Life	likely Gaskell
1858	Young Knighthood	E. Foxton Herman
1859	Consuelo	George Sand
1860	Richter		“enjoyed very much”
1861	Charles Auchester	Elizabeth Sara Sheppard	“a fairy tale for grown people”
	Evelina	Frances Burney
	India	Hodson
	Sir Thomas More’s Life
	Amelia	Fielding	“coarse and queer”
1862	Margaret Howth	Harding
1863	Titan	Jean Paul Frederick Richter
1864			“read many books, several of Scott’s and Goethe’s”
		Miss Burney
	Story of the Grand Wayside Inn	Longfellow
	Bleak House	Dickens
	Oliver Twist	Dickens
	Cecil Dreeme	Wm Curtis, Theodore Winthrop
	Scarlet Letter	Hawthorne	“again” “liked them better than ever”
	The Campaner Thal	Richter
	Elective Affinities	Goethe
	Dialogues	Plato	“also a curious book on miscegenation which recalled my story of “ML”
	Emily Chester	Anne Moncure Crane Seemuller
	Richter’s Life		“a birthday gift from Nan & enjoyed it so much”
1868	The Earthly Paradise	William Morris
	Portraits of Celebrated Women	Sainte-Beuve
	A Sister’s Bye Hours	Jean Ingelow
1866	Flores de Luce	Longfellow	“received in a Christmas box from Anna and John”
1879	Mary Wollstencraft
	Dosia	Henry Greville
	Daniel Deronda	George Eliot
1880	Memoirs of Madame de Remusat
	Kings in Exile	Alphonse Daudet
1881	Duties of Women	Frances Power Cobb
	History of Suffrage in Massachusetts	Harriet Robinson
1883	Goethe
	Princess Amelie	Elizabeth Latimer
	My Wife and My Wife’s Sister	No Name Series
	The Bread Winners	John Haye
1884	Mr. Isaacs	F. Marion Crawford
	Dr. Claudius	F. Marion Crawford
	To Leeward	F. Marion Crawford
1884	Little Pilgrim	Margaret Oliphant
1885	“read C.’s last volume”	Carlyle
	George Eliot’s Life	J. W. Cross	“wonderfully interesting”
	Saxon	W. Read
	Life of St. Elizabeth	Charles de Montalembert
	“French Novels”
1886	Cleopartra	Greville
	Ordeal of Richard Fevrel	George Meredith
	Hours with German Classics	Frederick Henry Hedge
	Baldwin	Vernon Lee (Violet Paget)
	Romance of the Moon	J. A. Mitchell
	Claudian	Henry Herman,Wm Gorman Willis	“splendid”
	The Rubaiyat	Omar Khayyam	“Vedder’s Persian Poet”
	The Late Mrs. Null	Francis R. Stockton
	Anna Karenina	Tolstoy
1887	John Inglesant	Joseph Henry Shorthouse	“read it but don’t remember it”
		Balzac
	“Type” (?Typee?)	(?Melville?)
	Katia	Tolstoy
	Dean’s Daughter	Catherine Gore
	Memoir of R. W. Emerson	James Eliot Cabot
		Pundita Ramahai
	Marzio’s Crucifix	F. Marion Crawford
	Paul Patoff	F. Marion Crawford
	Royal Girls	M.E.W. Sherwood
		Browning
1888	“Dr. Lawrence read to me”
	Women and Men	Thomas Wentworth Higginson
	Winter	(from Thoreau’s Journal)
		Coleridge
		Wordsworth
	Queen Money	Ellen Warren Kirk