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In 1870, Louisa May Alcott and her younger sister Abby May Alcott
began a fourteen-month tour of Europe. Louisa had already made her
mark as a writer; May was on the verge of a respected art career.
Little Women Abroad gathers a generous selection of May's drawings
along with all of the known letters written by the two Alcott
sisters during their trip. More than thirty drawings are included,
nearly all of them previously unpublished. Of the seventy-one
letters collected here, more than three-quarters appear in their
entirety for the first time. Daniel Shealy's supporting materials
add detail and context to the people, places, and events referenced
in the letters and illustrations. By the time of the Alcott
sisters' sojourn, Louisa's Little Women was already an
international success, and her most recent work, An Old-Fashioned
Girl, was selling briskly. Louisa was now a grand literary lioness
on tour. She would compose Little Men while in Europe, and her
European letters would form the basis of her travel book Shawl
Straps. If Louisa's letters reveal a writer's eye, then May's
demonstrate an eye for color, detail, and composition. Although May
had prior art training in Boston, she came into her own only during
her studies with European masters. When at a loss for words, she
took her drawing pen in hand. These letters of two important
American artists, one literary, the other visual, tell a vibrant
story at the crossroads of European and American history and
culture.
Little Women has delighted and instructed readers for generations.
For many, it is a favorite book first encountered in childhood or
adolescence. Championed by Gertrude Stein, Simone de Beauvoir,
Theodore Roosevelt, and J. K. Rowling, it is however much more than
the "girls' book" intended by Alcott's first publisher. In this
richly annotated, illustrated edition, Daniel Shealy illuminates
the novel's deep engagement with issues such as social equality,
reform movements, the Civil War, friendship, love, loss, and of
course the passage into adulthood. The editor provides running
commentary on biographical contexts (Did Alcott, like Jo, have a
"mood pillow"?), social and historical contexts (When may a lady
properly decline a gentleman's invitation to dance?), literary
allusions (Who is Mrs. Malaprop?), and words likely to cause
difficulty to modern readers (What is a velvet snood? A pickled
lime?). With Shealy as a guide, we appreciate anew the confusions
and difficulties that beset the March sisters as they overcome
their burdens and journey toward maturity and adulthood: beautiful,
domestic-minded Meg, doomed and forever childlike Beth, selfish
Amy, and irrepressible Jo. This edition examines the novel's
central question: How does one grow up well? Little Women: An
Annotated Edition offers something for everyone. It will delight
both new and returning readers, young and old, male and female
alike, who will want to own and treasure this beautiful edition
full of color illustrations and photographs.
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The Journals of Louisa M.Alcott (Paperback, New edition)
Louisa M. Alcott; Volume editing by Joel Myerson; Introduction by Madeleine B. Stern; Edited by Daniel Shealy (Associate Professor of English, University of North Carolina, USA)
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From her eleventh year to the month of her death at age 55, Louisa
May Alcott kept copious journals. She never intended for them to be
published, but the insights they provide into her remarkable life
are invaluable. Alcott grew up in a genteel but impoverished
household, surrounded by the literary and philosophical elite of
19th-century New England, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry
David Thoreau, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Like her fictional alter
ego, Jo March, she was a free spirit who longed for independence,
yet she dutifully supported her parents and three sisters with her
literary efforts. In the journals are to be found hints of Alcott's
surprisingly complex persona as well as clues to her double life as
an author not only of ""high"" literature but also of serial
thrillers and Gothic romances. This unabridged edition of Alcott's
private diaries serves as a companion volume to ""The Selected
Letters of Louisa May Alcott"", offering a record of the life of an
extraordinary woman.
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.
Contributions by Beverly Lyon Clark, Christine Doyle, Gregory
Eiselein, John Matteson, Joel Myerson, Sandra Harbert Petrulionis,
Anne K. Phillips, Daniel Shealy, and Roberta Seelinger Trites As
the golden age of children's literature dawned in America in the
mid-1860s, Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, a work that many
scholars view as one of the first realistic novels for young
people, soon became a classic. Never out of print, Alcott's tale of
four sisters growing up in nineteenth-century New England has been
published in more than fifty countries around the world. Over the
century and a half since its publication, the novel has grown into
a cherished book for girls and boys alike. Readers as diverse as
Carson McCullers, Gloria Steinem, Theodore Roosevelt, Patti Smith,
and J. K. Rowling have declared it a favorite. Little Women at 150,
a collection of eight original essays by scholars whose research
and writings over the past twenty years have helped elevate
Alcott's reputation in the academic community, examines anew the
enduring popularity of the novel and explores the myriad
complexities of Alcott's most famous work. Examining key issues
about philanthropy, class, feminism, Marxism, Transcendentalism,
canon formation, domestic labor, marriage, and Australian
literature, Little Women at 150 presents new perspectives on one of
the United States' most enduring novels. A historical and critical
introduction discusses the creation and publication of the novel,
briefly traces the scholarly critical response, and demonstrates
how these new essays show us that Little Women and its
illustrations still have riches to reveal to its readers in the
twenty-first century.
Contributions by Beverly Lyon Clark, Christine Doyle, Gregory
Eiselein, John Matteson, Joel Myerson, Sandra Harbert Petrulionis,
Anne K. Phillips, Daniel Shealy, and Roberta Seelinger Trites As
the golden age of children's literature dawned in America in the
mid-1860s, Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, a work that many
scholars view as one of the first realistic novels for young
people, soon became a classic. Never out of print, Alcott's tale of
four sisters growing up in nineteenth-century New England has been
published in more than fifty countries around the world. Over the
century and a half since its publication, the novel has grown into
a cherished book for girls and boys alike. Readers as diverse as
Carson McCullers, Gloria Steinem, Theodore Roosevelt, Patti Smith,
and J. K. Rowling have declared it a favorite. Little Women at 150,
a collection of eight original essays by scholars whose research
and writings over the past twenty years have helped elevate
Alcott's reputation in the academic community, examines anew the
enduring popularity of the novel and explores the myriad
complexities of Alcott's most famous work. Examining key issues
about philanthropy, class, feminism, Marxism, Transcendentalism,
canon formation, domestic labor, marriage, and Australian
literature, Little Women at 150 presents new perspectives on one of
the United States' most enduring novels. A historical and critical
introduction discusses the creation and publication of the novel,
briefly traces the scholarly critical response, and demonstrates
how these new essays show us that Little Women and its
illustrations still have riches to reveal to its readers in the
twenty-first century.
Famous for her classic novel Little Women, and regarded as
America's best-loved author of juvenile fiction, Louisa May Alcott
is not readily identified with page-turning thrillers and
sensational tales. Freaks of Genius, however, presents a collection
of previously unknown sensational narratives by Alcott, originally
published in the weekly storypapers of the 1860s and never before
reprinted. The stories are startling examples of an atypical
Alcott, delving into such subjects as violence and insanity,
revenge and murder, and narcotics addiction and evil. Included in
the collection are six of Alcott's tales of the sensational: A
Nurse's Story, The Freak of a Genius, La Jeune, A Laugh and a Look,
The Romance of a Bouquet, and Mrs. Vane's Charade. Their themes
include the blight of inherited insanity, the power struggle
between man and man, the sexual power struggle between man and
woman, a Faustian/Mephistophelian pact (later used in A Modern
Mephistopheles), the passions of actors and actresses, and feminist
triumphs and failures. These skillfully plotted stories are sure to
interest the general reader with their narrative excitement, and to
fascinate the scholar trying to reconcile their darkness with the
sweetness and light tone that has always been associated with
Alcott's work. In addition, the book includes the first complete
bibliography of Alcott's known thrillers, both anonymous and
pseudonymous. For libraries, general readers, and courses such as
American literature and feminist studies, Freaks of Genius will be
an essential publication.
By 1888, twenty years after the publication of "Little Women,
Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) was one of the most popular and
successful authors America had yet produced. In her "pre--"Little
Women days, she concocted blood-and-thunder tales for low wages;
pots--""Little Women, she specialized in domestic novels and short
stories for children. Collected here for the first time are the
reminiscences of people who knew her, the majority of which have
not been published since their original appearance in the 19th and
early 20th centuries. Many of the printed recollections in this
books appeared after Alcott became famous and showcase her as a
literary lion, but others focus on her teen years, when she was
living the life of 10 March: these intimate glimpses into the life
of the Alcott family lead the reader to one conclusion: the family
was happy, fun, and entertaining, very much like the fictional
Marches. The recollections about an older and wealthier Alcott show
a kind and generous, albeit outspoken, woman little changed by her
money and status. From Annie Sawyer Downs's description of life in
Concord to Anna Alcott Pratt's recollections of the Alcott sisters'
acting days to Julian Hawthorne's neighborly portrait of the
Alcotts, the thirty-six recollections in this copiously illustrated
volume tell the private and public story of a remarkable life.
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