Results of True/False Quiz I see some of you tried the True/False quiz of what was real and what was made up in Little Women. No one got 100% but you were very close! Here are the answers: Hannah the servant FALSE - The Alcotts could not afford any servants in those days The Christmas …
Continuing to trace the steps of Little Women: Madeleine B. Stern’s brilliant analysis, part three: Can you tell what’s real and what is made up?
Little Women has been called autobiographical because Louisa May Alcott used so many episodes from her own childhood and that of her family to create the story. But where does fact end and fiction begin? Or does it even work like that? Stern says, “Fact was embedded in fiction, and a domestic novel begun in …
Continuing to trace the steps of Little Women: Madeleine B. Stern’s brilliant analysis, part two: Lots of borrowing
Louisa May Alcott was never bashful about borrowing from previous stories to flesh out Little Women. Several short stories set the stage for the classic: “The Sisters’ Trial” (four sisters, Leonore, Agnes, Ella and Amy facing going out to work to deal with the family’s poverty), “A Modern Cinderella” (depicting Anna and John as Nan …
Tracing the steps of Little Women: Madeleine B. Stern’s brilliant analysis, part one
I have always maintained that Madeleine B. Stern’s Louisa May Alcott: A Biography is the standard bearer. Tracing the life of Louisa the writer, Stern gives penetrating insight not only into Louisa’s life, but her very essence as a writer. As a writer myself, I have found much wisdom in these pages and have marveled …
Check out this beautiful British volume of Little Women
A reader was inquiring about this edition of Little Women as it has no date. Perhaps one of you has seen this edition and can comment about it. It would appear that it is not the first British edition to come out because it mentions that Louisa is the author of Good Wives, which was …
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The Alcotts in Boston: Come visit 20 Pinckney Street
The year is 1853, a critical year in the lives of several members of the Alcott family. Since 1848 when the family moved from their beloved Hillside home in Concord, the family had lived like gypsies, moving from place to place. Some of these places were dreary basement apartments in poorer sections of the cities, …
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Unpublished Alcott Letters: New letter from Louisa to Little Women publisher Thomas Niles discovered
Here’s a good reason to join the Louisa May Alcott Society (and only for $10 per year). Newly discovered letter I recently received the quarterly newsletter to read an article by scholar Daniel Shealy (best known for his brilliant annotated edition of Little Women) reporting on the discovery of a new letter by Louisa May …
Unpublished Alcott Letters: Lizzie to her family from Swampscott, August 16, 1857 (and a cosmic coincidence)
Concord is not the only place where you can take a Little Women pilgrimage. Last week Sylvia (a friend I met through the Summer Conversational Series) and I visited Swampscott, a small community on the North Shore next to the city of Lynn. It was here in August of 1857 that Abigail took Elizabeth for a …
On vacation with Louisa May Alcott: Last Day of the Summer Conversational Series – Being and Doing: Louisa explores herself and her beliefs through her writing (Part Two)
Cathlin Davis on Louisa’s philosophy of life Continuing with Day 4 of the series, Professor Cathlin Davis from California State University presented on “Practice Philosophy: ‘I want something to do.’” Through passages from Hospital Sketches, Work, Little Men and some of the rarer short stories (“May Flowers” from A Garland for Girls and “What Becomes …
On vacation with Louisa May Alcott: Last Day of the Summer Conversational Series – Being and Doing: Louisa explores herself and her beliefs through her writing (Part One)
Note: I missed Day 3 of the series because of my trip into Harvard’s Houghton Library. For any of you who follow me on Facebook, you’ll know that I scored big on this trip. I photographed a total of twenty-five letters, five of which come from Lizzie (and they are lengthy). It will take a …
Louisa May Alcott is My Passion 