29 Nov 2021
On This Day
29 November 2021 Cheryl

29 November 1832: Louisa May Alcott is born

Louisa May Alcott & Little Women

In 1852, Peterson’s Magazine, an American women’s magazine published a poem named ‘Sunlight’. Written by a 19-year-old named Flora Fairfield, it was actually the first published work of Louisa May Alcott under a pen name. [1]

Louisa May Alcott was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, USA on 29 November 1832. She was a novelist, short story writer and poet, but is best known as the author of Little Women (1868) and the novels that followed in that series.

Her father, Amos Bronson Alcott, was an educator and philosopher, a strong supporter of women’s rights, and an early abolitionist. The four Alcott sisters grew up among his friends, well-known intellectuals of the day, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and they were even tutored by them at times.

The family was not well-off, and the girls were primarily educated by their father who required them to keep a daily journal. For Louisa, writing came as a natural, early passion. She had a rich imagination, and she and her sisters would often act out her stories. The family’s poverty made it necessary for Louisa to go to work at an early age as a teacher, seamstress, governess and domestic helper. But she sought an outlet in her writing and began to receive critical success for her stories in the 1860s.

Published in 1868, Little Women is set in the family home in Concord, Massachusetts, and is loosely based on Alcott’s childhood experiences with her three sisters. The novels are realistic accounts of the March family and show children developing as independent and thoughtful individuals, facing and learning from conflicts, and sharing a warm and loving family life.

Some of my favourite girlhood reading was the Little Women series of novels. I wept over Beth’s death, longed to write stories like Jo, and got cross when handsome, charming Laurie was married to Amy instead of to Jo, who got a middle-aged professor for a husband instead.

A few years ago, I finally managed to visit Concord and see Orchard House, the Alcott’s home, and the Alcott graves in Concord’s Sleepy Hollow cemetery. It was just so moving to see the simple desk that her father built for Louisa and on which she wrote her famous book. My video talk explains the autobiographical aspects of Little Women and discuss what makes it such an enduring tale.

Louisa May Alcott died on 6 March 1888 aged 55.