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.
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. …
I have two articles I'd like to share with you regarding utopian communities involving the Alcotts. The first is a list, compiled by Alcott scholar Joel Myerson, of the archives at the Fruitlands Museum. You will see that there are several unpublished papers from Abba and Anna along with a list of books the museum …
Continue reading "Fruitlands and Brook Farm – a closer look"
Louisa's yearning for private space and her glorious room at Hillside/Wayside always made me crave a special space too. I never dreamed it could be portable! Here's a picture of where her room was in the house at Wayside. Nathaniel Hawthorne changed the house after he bought it from Bronson and Louisa's little room no …
Continue reading "A room of one’s own: what if your “room” could be portable?"
I just found an article from the Rauner Library Blog from Dartmouth College detailing the story behind the calling card. The article features the calling cards of such luminaries as Louisa May Alcott, Mark Twain, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Charles Dickens among others. These cards all have pictures. I never knew anything about the nature of …
It's vacation time again with more opportunities to visit Concord. The more times I visit, the more I want to see. A trip down the Sudbury River to Great Meadows I enjoy kayaking very much and so took a trip down the Sudbury River, launching from the bridge off of Lowell Road, just off of …
Continue reading "Tapping into my inner Thoreau; play-acting as Sylvia Yule"
I would like to read some basic books on Transcendentalism and its famous writers (Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Fuller, etc.) that are not too scholarly (for now) just to get a better, objective idea of what the tenants of it are. I had started reading American Bloomsbury by Susan Cheever and was enjoying it but after …
Continue reading "Need book recommendations about Transcendentalism"
I am so glad I went on that buying spree a few months ago for books by and about Louisa because now as I plough through Susan Cheever's book, I actually have at my fingertips the vast majority of sources and stories she mentions. Chapter 4 talks in part about Louisa's foray into being a …
Continue reading "“How I Went Out to Service” – Louisa May Alcott’s humiliation"
Louisa May Alcott is My Passion 