As the author of a beloved classic that welcomes new adoring readers of every generation with the unmatched sense of heart and charm that is Little Women, Louisa May Alcott’s legacy and literary impact is one that will endure. While the most that can be known about some classic authors comes from their work itself, Alcott’s life is remarkable in that it is reflected in her writing and well-documented enough that those who are curious enough to delve deeper into her background will have the pleasure of stumbling upon a treasure trove of a uniquely fascinating literary life.
Born in Philadelphia to Abigail and Amos Bronson Alcott in 1832 as the second of four daughters, Louisa May Alcott’s early life is defined by her parents’ somewhat radical political beliefs, the high-profile friends they kept, and the level to which they let their daughters be involved in such pursuits and exemplified their morals. Her mother, Abby, was an activist who championed the poor, the abolitionist movement, the temperance movement, and was a woman suffragist who became one of the first paid social workers in Massachusetts. Alcott’s father was an educator, writer, transcendentalist, abolitionist, and women’s rights advocate. Both of her parents served as stationmasters for the Underground Railroad. After the family moved to Boston in 1834, Alcott’s father established an experimental school based in his theory of teaching through conversation and shunning traditional punishment. He also joined the Transcendental Club during this time, meeting friends that would have a profound impact on Louisa’s education and life, including Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.
Louisa was educated by her father, but had the privilege of taking lessons from family friends such as Emerson, Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and journalist and women’s rights advocate Margaret Fuller. She explored Walden Pond with Thoreau (which inspired her poem Thoreau’s Flute) and had access to Emerson’s library. She also was able to socialize with other leading figures such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Frederick Douglass, and women’s suffrage activist Julia Ward Howe.
Louisa’s early life, while rich in intellectual conversation and educational opportunity with leading literary and political figures, was marked by financial difficulty. She started working from a young age to help support her family. She was a teacher, governess, seamstress, and, of course, a writer. She’d been writing since childhood–keeping journals since she was eight–and continued writing even during her short time as an army nurse in the Civil War where she wrote letters home that were eventually published, first in a Boston anti-slavery paper and later collected in her first book (Hospital Sketches). Louisa sold novels and sensational stories of passion and revenge under the pseudonym A.M. Barnard and also penned at least 35 gothic thrillers for magazines. As many of us know, she drew inspiration from her own life for her writing. Little Women and the March sisters are heavily inspired by the Alcott family’s time in Concord, Massachusetts. Jo March’s penchant for writing plays that she and her sisters would then act out came from Louisa’s own childhood antics, as did Jo’s turning to writing sensational pulp fiction stories to make some money.
While there is a lot of Louisa within Little Women, there is so much to discover about Louisa’s real life that is fascinating. With all of the literary and political influences in her life, Louisa May Alcott, despite never receiving a formal education and growing up terribly poor, had the unique privilege of being able to know some of her favorite writers and thinkers. For us, the closest we can come to her is through her own writing and by delving into research about her life—and by reading her favorite books, of course.
From Louisa May Alcott’s Library
by Charles Dickens
by John Keats
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
“Reading Miss Bremmer and Hawthorne. The ‘Scarlet Letter’ is my favorite. Mother likes Miss B. better, as more wholesome. I fancy ‘lurid’ things if true and strong also.”
-Seventeen year old Louisa May Alcott on The Scarlet Letter, from her journals
by Frances Burney
by William Shakespeare
“Made a resolution to read fewer novels and those only of the best.”
-Louisa May Alcott in her journal, 1852
The books that follow are those that made Louisa’s “books I love” list. These are the titles she wanted to read in order to “improve” her reading, titles by authors she admired and were recommended by Emerson.
by Charlotte Brontë
by John Milton
by John Milton
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Note: Louisa included Goethe’s collected works on her list.
“My romantic period began at fifteen, when I fell to writing poetry, keeping a heart-journal, and wandering by moonlight instead of sleeping quietly. About that time, in browsing over Mr. Emerson’s library, I found Goethe’s Correspondence with a Child, and at once was fired with a desire to be a Bettine, making my father’s friend [Emerson] my Goethe. So I wrote letters to him, but never sent them; sat in a tall cherry-tree at midnight, singing to the moon till the owls scared me to bed; left wild flowers on the doorstep of my ‘Master,’ and sung Mignon’s song under his window in very bad German.”
-Louisa May Alcott on her love of Goethe
“First taste of Goethe. Three years later R. W. E. gave me ‘Wilhelm Meister,’ and from that day Goethe has been my chief idol.”
-Louisa May Alcott, 1885
The French Revolution: A History
by Thomas Carlyle
On Heroes and Hero Worship and the Heroic in History
by Thomas Carlyle
by Plutarch
by Friedrich Schiller
“Never a student but a great reader. R. W. E. [Ralph Waldo Emerson] gave me Goethe’s works at fifteen, and they have been my delight ever since. My library consists of Goethe, Emerson, Shakespeare, Carlyle, Margaret Fuller and George Sand. George Eliot I don’t care for, nor any of the modern poets but Whittier; the old ones – Herbert, Crashaw, Keats, Coleridge, Dante, and a few others – I like.”
-Louisa May Alcott
by Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Motte Guyon
Note: Louisa referred to this as “Madame Guion” only on her list. I presume it is a misspelling.
by Madame de Staël
Goethe’s Correspondence with a Child
by Bettina Von Arnim
Note: Referred to by Louisa as simply “Bettine.”
by Charles Kingsley
by Harriet Beecher Stowe
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
While this list is not exhaustive, it gives us a fantastic glimpse at the types of books Louisa enjoyed, and also the types of books she wanted to enjoy. Do you have any favorites in common with Louisa May Alcott?