The first extensive edition of the letters of America's most famous
children's author. Most likely Alcott's letters will not sit on the
bedside table next to Little Women as favorite out-loud reading for
children. These 271 letters will, however, provide pleasant reading
for adults curious about the real Jo March and her family. As in
the lives of her heroines, overcoming poverty is a persistent theme
in the life of Alcott. Her father, Bronson Alcott, an idealistic
reformer and educator and close friend of Emerson and Thoreau,
failed to provide adequately for his family - so Louisa found
herself at an early age earning money as a seamstress, maid, and
writer. (The family was never solvent until she published Little
Women.) Alcott, like her British contemporary, Dickens, who also
suffered extreme financial hardships in his youth, became in later
life a "workaholic," writing incessantly to make life better for
"Marmee" and her sisters. Unlike Dickens, however, who never
forgave his irresponsible father, Louisa is Bronson's fierce
defender. The letters to Bronson are among the most delicately felt
in the book. And unlike him, Louisa was a hardheaded business woman
who knew her worth, so we find a number of sharp letters
complaining about low fees, late payments, and pirated foreign
editions. Louisa also ranges beyond financial matters to give us a
vivid picture of literary and family life in 19th-century Boston.
Not a studied letter writer - her efforts have the immediacy of
having been dashed off between making the bed and finishing up a
tale for the Atlantic Monthly - Alcott nonetheless has left plenty
of fodder for her admirers. (Kirkus Reviews)
The Selected Letters of Louisa May Alcott contains a broad
cross-section of letters from the correspondence of the creator of
Little Women and provides a compelling autobiography of this most
autobiographical of writers. Spanning a period of forty-five years,
this collection provides vivid accounts of Alcott's life and
development as a writer. Episodes in Alcott's life are candidly
reflected: her youth, when the prototype of Jo March was already
being shaped; the 1868 publication of Little Women and the
prosperity and renown the book brought its author; her never-ending
struggles for her family; the final years spent caring for her
niece and an invalid father. Alcott's letters also furnished a vent
for the pressures she felt to write a sequel to Little Women and
play matchmaker for the novel's heroine. Writing to a friend in
early 1869, Alcott remarked that "Jo should have remained a
literary spinster but so many enthusiastic young ladies wrote to me
clamorously demanding that she should marry Laurie, or somebody,
that I didnt dare to refuse & out of perversity went & made
a funny match for her. I expect vials of wrath to be poured out
upon my head, but rather enjoy the prospect." The correspondence
sheds light on Alcott's relationship with her publishers, such
friends as Emerson and Thoreau, and members of her family. Of
particular note are her observations--many of them firsthand--on
such major issues of the day as abolition, the Civil War, and the
women's rights movement.
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