аÄÃÅ¿ª½±½á¹û

Louisa May Alcott –

Top 10 Facts About Louisa May Alcott

Louisa May Alcott was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet best known as the author of the novel Little Women in 1868 and its sequels Little Men in 1871 and Jo’s Boys in 1886. Raised in New England by her transcendentalist parents, Abigail May and Amos Bronson Alcott, she grew up among many well-known intellectuals of the day, such as Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Alcott’s family suffered from financial difficulties, and while she worked to help support the family from an early age, she also sought an outlet in writing. She began to receive critical success for her writing in the 1860s. Early in her career, she sometimes used pen names such as A. M. Barnard, under which she wrote lurid short stories and sensation novels for adults that focused on passion and revenge.

Here are the top 10 facts about Louisa May Alcott

1. Alcott was an abolitionist and a feminist

Alcott was an abolitionist and a feminist and remained unmarried throughout her life. All her life she was active in such reform movements as temperance and women’s suffrage.

Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that societies prioritize the male point of view and that women are treated unjustly in these societies. 

2. Poverty made it necessary for Alcott to go to work at an early age

Headshot of Louisa May Alcott at age 20 –

She was a teacher, seamstress, governess, domestic helper, and writer. Her sisters also supported the family, working as seamstresses, while their mother took on social work among the Irish immigrants. Only the youngest, Abigail, was able to attend public school. 

Due to all of these pressures, writing became a creative and emotional outlet for Alcott. Her first book was Flower Fables 1849, a selection of tales originally written for Ellen Emerson, daughter of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Alcott is quoted as saying “I wish I was rich, I was good, and we were all a happy family this day and was driven in life not to be poor. 

3. Alcott’s Hospital Sketches brought her first critical recognition for her observations and humor

When the Civil War broke out, she served as a nurse in the Union Hospital in Georgetown, DC, for six weeks in 1862–1863. She intended to serve three months as a nurse, but halfway through she contracted typhoid fever and became deathly ill, though she eventually recovered. Her letters home were revised and published in the Boston anti-slavery paper Commonwealth and collected as Hospital Sketches.

Hospital Sketches is a compilation of four sketches based on letters Louisa May Alcott sent home during the six weeks she spent as a volunteer nurse for the Union Army during the American Civil War in Georgetown.

4. Alcott anonymously wrote at least thirty-three gothic thrillers for popular magazines and papers

Louisa M. Alcott –

Between 1863 and 1872, Alcott anonymously wrote at least thirty-three gothic thrillers for popular magazines and papers such as The Flag of Our Union; they began to be rediscovered only in 1975.

In the mid-1860s she wrote passionate, fiery novels and sensational stories akin to those of English authors Wilkie Collins and Mary Elizabeth Braddon under the nom de plume A. M. Barnard. Among these are A Long Fatal Love Chase and Pauline’s Passion and Punishment. Her protagonists for these books, like those of Collins and Braddon who also included feminist characters in their writings, are strong, smart, and determined. 

5. Alcott is credited with creating one of the earliest works of detective fiction in American literature

Catherine Ross Nickerson credits Alcott with creating one of the earliest works of detective fiction in American literature, preceded only by Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and his other Auguste Dupin stories, with the 1865 thriller “V.V., or Plots and Counterplots.” 

A short story published anonymously by Alcott concerns a Scottish aristocrat who tries to prove that a mysterious woman has killed his fiancée and cousin. The detective on the case, Antoine Dupres, is a parody of Poe’s Dupin who is less concerned with solving the crime than in setting up a way to reveal the solution with a dramatic flourish.

6. Alcott became even more successful with the first part of Little Women

Frontispiece from first edition of ‘Little Men’, by Louisa May Alcott –

Little Women is a coming-of-age novel written by American novelist Louisa May Alcott, originally published in two volumes in 1868 and 1869 at the request of her publisher.

Little Women was well-received, with critics and audiences finding it suitable for many age groups as a fresh, natural representation of daily life. An Eclectic Magazine reviewer called it “the very best of books to reach the hearts of the young of any age from six to sixty”. With the success of Little Women, Alcott shied away from the attention and would sometimes act as a servant when fans would come to her house.

7. Alcott was one of the founders of the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union in Boston

In 1877, Alcott was one of the founders of the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union in Boston. The Women’s Educational and Industrial Union in Boston, Massachusetts, was founded by physician Harriet Clisby for the advancement of women and to help women and children in the industrial city. By 1893, chapters of the WEIU were established in Buffalo and Rochester, New York.

8. Alcott was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1996

Louisa May Alcott –

Louisa May Alcott was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1996. The National Women’s Hall of Fame is an American institution incorporated in 1969 by a group of men and women in Seneca Falls, New York, although it did not induct its first enshrines until 1973. As of 2021, it had 303 inductees.

9. Alcott died two days after her father’s death

Alcott suffered chronic health problems in her later years, including vertigo. She and her earliest biographers attributed her illness and death to mercury poisoning. During her American Civil War service, Alcott contracted typhoid fever and was treated with a compound containing mercury. 

A recent analysis of Alcott’s illness suggests that her chronic health problems may have been associated with an autoimmune disease, not mercury exposure. Alcott died of a stroke at age 55 in Boston, on March 6, 1888, two days after her father’s death.

10. The Alcott’s home was made a historic house museum since 1912

Orchard House is a historic house museum in Concord, Massachusetts, United States, opened to the public on May 27, 1912.  It was the longtime home of Amos Bronson Alcott from 1799 to 1888 and his family, including his daughter Louisa May Alcott from 1832 to 1888, who wrote and set her novel Little Women from 1868 to 1869 there.