A trip to a warehouse bookstore in the middle of nowhere produced a great find! I had just about given up the hope of finding something interesting until this book caught my eye: Nonquitt A Summer Album, 1872-1985, edited by Anne M. Lyell. What is so significant about Nonquitt? This is where Louisa May Alcott …
Louisa May Alcott Goes to War (from the Weider History Group)
Eager to support the North, the budding author volunteered for a fledgling corps of female nurses By Robert Sattelmeyer Published Online: January 30, 2012 historynet.com For generations of Americans, Louisa May Alcott has been revered as the author of Little Women (1868), the semi-autobiographical novel about four sisters living in Concord, Massachusetts, while their father …
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Referrals in Louisa’s journal to Little Women
Following up on Jillian's post, I thought it would be fun to look back on journal entries that Louisa made that directly correlate with Little Women. I found these in Little Women (Norton Critical Edition) edited by Gregory Eiselein and Anne K. Phillips; the page citations come from this book. Note the comments Louisa makes …
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Louisa May Alcott’s Christmas Stories – “Bertie’s Box” in real life
I just picked up an e-book of Christmas stories by Louisa May Alcott from Barnes & Noble called Christmas Tales and Stories (have to love e-books for the convenience, especially since I wanted to start reading right away). "Bertie's Box" - setting up the story It includes an introduction by the editor, Laura Ciolkowski. She …
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Magazine Alert!
The Atlantic's special commemorative Civil War issue There's a Barnes & Noble on the way home that I'll be visiting . . . 🙂 UPDATE Here is a wonderful article from NPR about The Atlantic and this particular issue. I am embarrassed to say that I didn't realize that among the Atlantic's founders were Ralph …
A Long Fatal Love Chase is definitely a “guilty pleasure”
A while back I got a recommendation from a reader's blog, A Thing Called Joe, regarding one of Louisa's potboilers, a book so sensational that her publisher, James R. Elliot of The Flag of Our Union refused to run with it! It was meant to be serialized in the magazine like so many of her …
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Getting to know the women who discovered Louisa’s alias as A. M. Barnard
I discovered a wonderful article about Madeleine Stern and Leona Rostenberg in a journal for the Independent Online Bookseller's Association. This group, the IOBA, features articles about antiquarian (aka old) book collectors and sellers. Rostenberg and Stern are best known for their discovery of Louisa May Alcott's secret life as A. M. Barnard. Under that …
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Louisa May Alcott’s brand of feminism: final thoughts on “Moods,” thanks to Sarah Elbert
I finally finished reading Moods a few weeks ago but just couldn't comment on it. After reading both the 1864 and 1882 versions, I concluded that the book left me flat. The characters felt rather two-dimensional. Both versions ended differently and each ending seemed convoluted. It left me feeling the way I did after reading …
The American Library Association Louisa May Alcott Project: A DVD and Book Start a Movement
In May of 1868, a publisher asked an author to write a book specifically targeted "for girls." His plan was twofold: to capitalize on this up-and-coming author's growing popularity, and to capture a corner of a brand new genre of children's literature. The author begrudgingly obliged, and ended up producing one of the best selling, …
“Love and Self-Love,” another early success story for Louisa May Alcott
As I continue to slowly go through Susan Cheever's Louisa May Alcott A Personal Biography and read yet more background, I came upon a story of Louisa's that related to her incident at the Mill Dam where she nearly threw herself into the water in despair, to end her life. That story, "Love and Self-Love" …
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Louisa May Alcott is My Passion 