Louisa May Alcott is My Passion
Begun in 2010, this blog offers analysis and reflection by Susan Bailey on the life, works and legacy of Louisa May Alcott and her family. Susan is an active member and supporter of the Louisa May Alcott Society, the Fruitlands Museum and Louisa May Alcott's Orchard House.
There's a terrific article on the Concord Patch written by a licensed Concord tour guide, Harry Beyer. He takes you on a tour of the Alcott family plot at Sleepy Hollow cemetery. Here's a teaser from the article: Louisa May was an active abolitionist, helping to shelter runaway slaves on the Underground Railroad. She was also an early …
Continue reading "Take a tour of the final resting place of the Alcotts"
Here's a great essay by Klara Stephanie Szlezák where she concludes that staging is critical to the success of an historical homestead. Kudos to Orchard House for the brilliance of its staging which so beautifully captures not just the era Louisa May Alcott lived in, but her home, her family and her classic, Little Women. …
Continue reading "What makes Orchard House such a compelling historical site?"
I wanted to share a wonderful post I found on Dawn's "She's Too Fond of Books" blog where she describes an outing with her girl scout troop to Hapgood Wright Town Forest in Concord, where Louisa May Alcott roamed with Henry David Thoreau. As you may recall, Thoreau had a magical way of teaching nature …
This article from Nurse.com provided some excellent background for the emergence of women in nursing during the Civil War. It was truly new and Louisa May Alcott was right in the forefront, volunteering her services. She of course wrote about those experiences in Hospital Sketches. The Civil War and Nursing By Cathryn Domrose Friday April …
Continue reading "Here’s some good background for “Hospital Sketches”"
Here’s an interesting article about Dorothea Dix, the powerhouse behind the organizatio of women nurses for the Civil War (the first time women were allowed to serve as nurses). Louisa May Alcott served under Dix: “ . . . Thirty-year-old Louisa May Alcott, the author of Little Women who nursed at Union Hospital in Washington, …
Continue reading "Why Louisa May Alcott has Dorothea Dix to thank for her nursing career"
My book arrived yesterday in the mail and I was so happy to have it back in my library! I look forward to reading this book. It seems so appropriate to have an 85 year-old copy of a book with the title, An Old-Fashioned Girl. I've assembled all the illustrations into a slide show; they …
I found something wonderful today and it makes up for something dumb that I did last year, before I started this blog, and before I knew just how passionate I was about Louisa May Alcott. My sister, brother and I spent last spring cleaning out our parents' house and in the course of things, we …
1. What inspired you to write a fictional account of Lidian and Waldo Emerson? It took me a long time to decide to write a nocel about Lidian and Waldo. At first, I just had a lot of questions about Lidian, especially about why she was relatively absent from so many biographies of her husband, …
Continue reading "An interview with Amy Belding Brown, author of Mr. Emerson’s Wife"
I just ordered a bunch of new books and needed to rearrange my book shelves to get everything to fit. In the midst of the rearranging, I pulled out my copy of The Alcotts Biography of a Family and discovered a promotional photo of the author, Madelon Bedell, and an interview released by the publisher’s …
Reading the last few words, I slowly closed Mr. Emerson’s Wife and felt a welling up inside of emotion. I was so tied to the character of Lidian Jackson Emerson that I felt they were her emotions too. This is how Amy Belding Brown's book hit me. I lived inside of Mr. Emerson's Wife for …
Louisa May Alcott is My Passion 