The Journals of Louisa May Alcott by Louisa May Alcott

I was even a bit shocked when Amy walked around barefoot in front of Laurie in Paris no self-respecting Jerusalem seminary girl would do that! But we all considered our commitment to modesty a form of feminism, and we were certainly studious and literary, so the scene in which Jo advocated for women’s rights really resonated. Though it was the 90’s, we were all committed to abstinence until marriage, which means the March sisters were more like us than any other movie heroines.

We went because we grew up loving Little Women and because it still fit perfectly with who we were. In 1994, the year I was a seminary student in Israel, the one and only movie I saw in a theater was “Little Women.” Some of my classmates treated me for my birthday, but it could have been any of our birthdays or even nobody’s birthday at all.

This revelatory portrait will present the popular author as she was and as she has never been seen before. A fresh, modern take on this remarkable and prolific writer, who secretly authored pulp fiction, harbored radical abolitionist views, and completed heroic service as a Civil War nurse, Louisa May Alcott is in the end also the story of how the all-time beloved American classic Little Women came to be. This biography explores Alcott’s life in the context of her works, all of which are to some extent autobiographical. Stories and details culled from Alcott’s journals her equally rich letters to family, friends, publishers, and admiring readers and the correspondence, journals, and recollections of her family, friends, and famous contemporaries provide the basis for this lively account of the author’s classic rags-to-riches tale.Īlcott would become the equivalent of a multimillionaire in her lifetime based on the astounding sales of her books, leaving contemporaries like Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Henry James in the dust. Louisa May Alcott portrays a writer as worthy of interest in her own right as her most famous character, Jo March, and addresses all aspects of Alcott’s life: the effect of her father’s self-indulgent utopian schemes her family’s chronic economic difficulties and frequent uprootings her experience as a nurse in the Civil War the loss of her health and frequent recourse to opiates in search of relief from migraines, insomnia, and symptomatic pain. A vivid, energetic account of the life of Louisa May Alcott, whose work has delighted millions of readers

The Journals of Louisa May Alcott by Louisa May Alcott