Louisa May Alcott
People best know American writer Louisa May Alcott for
Little Women
(1868), her largely autobiographical novel.
As A.M. Barnard:
Behind a Mask, or a Woman's Power
(1866)
The Abbot's Ghost, or Maurice Treherne's Temptation
(1867)
A Long Fatal Love Chase
(1866 – first published 1995)
First published anonymously:
A Modern Mephistopheles
(1877)
Philosopher-teacher Amos Bronson Alcott, educated his four daughters, Anna, Louisa, Elizabeth and May and Abigail May, wife of Amos, reared them on her practical Christianity.
Louisa spent her childhood in Boston and Concord, Massachusetts, where visits to library of Ralph Waldo Emerson, excursions into nature with Henry David Thoreau, and theatricals in the barn at Hillside (now "Wayside") of Nathaniel Hawthorne enlightened her days.
Like Jo March, her character in Little Women, young Louisa, a tomboy, claimed: "No boy could be my friend till I had beaten him in a race, ... and no girl if she refused to climb trees, leap fences...."
Louisa wrote early with a passion. She and her sisters often acted out her melodramatic stories of her rich imagination for friends. Louisa preferred to play the "lurid" parts in these plays, "the villains, ghosts, bandits, and disdainful queens."
At 15 years of age in 1847, the poverty that plagued her family troubled her, who vowed: "I will do something by and by. Don’t care what, teach, sew, act, write, anything to help the family; and I’ll be rich and famous and happy before I die, see if I won’t!"
Confronting a society that offered little opportunity to women, seeking employment, Louisa determined "...I will make a battering-ram of my head and make my way through this rough and tumble world." Whether as a teacher, seamstress, governess, or household servant, Louisa ably found work for many years.
Career of Louisa as an author began with poetry and short stories in popular magazines. In 1854, people published Flower Fables, her first book, at 22 years of age. From her post as a nurse in Washington, District of Columbia, during the Civil War, she wrote home letters that based Hospital Sketches (1863), a milestone along her literary path.
Thomas Niles, a publisher in Boston, asked 35-year-old Louisa in 1867 to write "a book for girls." She wrote Little Women at Orchard House from May to July 1868. Louisa and her sisters came of age in the novel, set in New England during Civil War. From her own individuality, Jo March, the first such American juvenile heroine, acted as a living, breathing person rather than the idealized stereotype that then prevailed in fiction of children.
Louisa published more than thirty books and collections of stories. Only two days after her father predeceased her, she died, and survivors buried her body in Sleepy Hollow cemetery in Concord.
“…marriage, they say, halves one's rights and doubles one's duties.”
“I am lonely, sometimes, but I dare say it's good for me…”
“…tomorrow was her birthday, and she was thinking how fast the years went by, how old she was getting, and how little she seemed to have accomplished. Almost twenty-five and nothing to show for it.”
“…I can't help seeing that you are very lonely, and sometimes there is a hungry look in your eyes that goes to my heart.”
“Some people seemed to get all sunshine, and some all shadow…”
“…nothing remained but loneliness and grief…”
“…nothing seemed impossible in the beginning…”
“Amy's lecture did Laurie good, though, of course, he did not own it till long afterward; men seldom do,—for when women are the advisers, the lords of creation don't take the advice till they have persuaded themselves that it is just what they intended to do; then they act upon it, and, if it succeeds, they give the weaker vessel half the credit of it; if it fails, they generously give her the whole.”
“…because talent isn't genius, and no amount of energy can make it so. I want to be great, or nothing.”
“In her secret soul, however, she decided that politics were as bad as mathematics, and that the mission of politicians seemed to be calling each other names…”
“Love covers a multitude of sins…”
“I'd rather take coffee than compliments just now.”
“The dirt is picturesque, so I don't mind.”
“…often between ourselves and those nearest and dearest to us there exists a reserve which it is very hard to overcome.”
“I'm afraid I couldn't like him without a spice of human naughtiness.”
“I hate ordinary people!”
“Jo had learned that hearts, like flowers, cannot be rudely handled, but must open naturally…”
“I think she is growing up, and so begins to dream dreams, and have hopes and fears and fidgets, without knowing why or being able to explain them.”
“When we make little sacrifices we like to have them appreciated, at least…”
“…to the inspiration of necessity, we owe half the wise, beautiful, and useful blessings of the world.”
“…Jo valued the letter more than the money, because it was encouraging, and after years of effort it was so pleasant to find that she had learned to do something…”
“Six weeks is a long time to wait, and a still longer time for a girl to keep a secret…”
“By the time the lecture ended and the audience awoke, she had built up a splendid fortune for herself (not the first founded on paper)…”
“…she was one of those happily created beings who please without effort, make friends everywhere, and take life so gracefully and easily that less fortunate souls are tempted to believe that such are born under a lucky star.”
“It takes people a long time to learn the difference between talent and genius, especially ambitious young men and women.”
“…possessed of that indescribable charm called grace.”
“life and love are very precious when both are in full bloom.”
“…Jo loved a few persons very dearly and dreaded to have their affection lost or lessened in any way.”
“…Jo vanished without a word. Rushing upstairs, she startled the invalids by exclaiming tragically as she burst into the room, 'Oh, do somebody go down quick; John Brooke is acting dreadfully, and Meg likes it!”
“Now and then, in this workaday world, things do happen in the delightful storybook fashion, and what a comfort that is.”
“…she'll go and fall in love, and there's an end of peace and fun, and cozy times together.”
“such hours are beautiful to live, but very hard to describe…”
“If life is often so hard as this, I don't see how we ever shall get through it…”
“I wish I had no heart, it aches so…”
“…in silence learned the sweet solace which affection administers to sorrow.”
“Go on with your work as usual, for work is a blessed solace.”
“…the little girls wore a grave, troubled expression, as if sorrow was a new experience to them.”
“The clocks were striking midnight and the rooms were very still as a figure glided quietly from bed to bed, smoothing a coverlid here, settling a pillow there, and pausing to look long and tenderly at each unconscious face, to kiss each with lips that mutely blessed, and to pray the fervent prayers which only mothers utter.”
“…feeling as if all the happiness and support of their lives was about to be taken from them.”
“November is the most disagreeable month in the whole ear,' said Margaret, standing at the window one dull afternoon, looking out at the frostbitten garden.'That's the reason I was born in it,' observed Jo pensively, quite unconscious of the blot on her nose.'If something very pleasant should happen now, we should think it a delightful month,' said Beth, who took a hopeful view of everything, even November.”
“Don't try to make me grow up before my time…”
“I don't think secrets agree with me, I feel rumpled up in mind since you told me that…”
“…trying to extinguish the brilliant hopes that blazed up a word of encouragement.”
“…the day had been both unprofitable and unsatisfactory, and he was wishing he could live it over again.”
“Well, I am happy, and I won't fret, but it does seem as if the more one gets the more one wants…”
“Never mind. Little girls shouldn't ask questions,' returned Jo sharply.Now if there is anything mortifying to our feelings when we are young, it is to be told that; and to be bidden to 'run away, dear' is still more trying to us.”
“So she enjoyed herself heartily, and found, what isn't always the case, that her granted wish was all she had hoped.”
“I like adventures, and I’m going to find some.”
“Never take advice!”
“Jo's ambition was to do something very splendid; what it was she had no idea, as yet, but left it for time to tell her…”