pbw00894 Flower Fables (New York: Hurst & Co., 1900)

| Essay | Bibliography | Alcott in PBO | Teaching Tools | Other Resources |

Among the most popular literature of the 19th century, Louisa May Alcott’s work is timeless. Some of her classic books never have gone out of print, and much of her work only recently has been discovered. Alcott’s writing not only informs readers about the period in which she wrote, but it also reveals volumes about her life and family.

Likewise, the covers that graced her books in the 19th and early 20th centuries offer an education regarding trends in book binding at the time. The PBO database currently has seventy-five editions of Alcott's books. More will be added.

Although born in Pennsylvania (29 November 1832), Alcott spent most of her life in Boston and Concord, Massachusetts. Educated at home, Alcott and her sisters received from their parents a wealth of knowledge and a sense of moral responsibility.

Amos Bronson Alcott was not only a teacher but also a philosopher and prominent Transcendentalist. The reform-minded Abigail May was involved in the abolitionist and suffrage movements.

pbw00009 Little Women (Roberts Bros., 1880)

As a child, Alcott spent a great deal of time with her father’s friends, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Perhaps drawing inspiration from these notable figures, Alcott began writing when she was young. Her stories first found a public venue as plays that she and her sisters acted out for friends. She began publishing poetry and short stories in magazines in 1852, when “Sunlight” appeared in Peterson’s Magazine under the pseudonym Flora Fairfield. Her first book, a collection of stories called Flower Fables, was published in 1854.

However, writing was not her only occupation. Because her family was poor, Alcott began working at the age of fifteen to help support her parents and sisters. She found any job that would hire a woman, working as a teacher, seamstress, governess, and household servant, among other things.

Alcott’s real life fed her writing in many ways. In 1863, she published Hospital Sketches, based on the letters she had written home from Washington, D.C., where she served as a nurse during the Civil War. The book was not the only product of Alcott’s stay in the nation’s capital. She unfortunately contracted typhoid fever, and although she recovered from the illness, the mercury treatment doctors gave her would plague her for the rest of her life.

	pbw00251 A Modern Mephistopheles (Roberts Bros., 1889)

Alcott’s childhood informed her most famous book, Little Women. Alcott was working as editor for the magazine Merry’s Museum when book publisher Thomas Niles asked her to write a story for girls. She drew inspiration for the main characters from her family, basing tomboy Jo on herself. Written in less than three months, the book was an instant success. She immediately penned a second volume, Good Wives, which was published in 1869. The two volumes thereafter have been published as one volume, known only as Little Women. The sequels Little Men and Jo’s Boys were equally popular.

Although the Little Women series and many of Alcott’s other works were essentially written for children, Alcott had another side. She penned a number of sensational, adult-oriented stories anonymously and under the pen names A. M. Barnard, Aunt Weedy, Flora Fairfield, Oranthy Bluggage, and Minerva Moody. The Gothic thrillers she authored as Barnard were particularly lucrative.

pbw00103 Lulu's Library (Roberts Bros., 1886)

The financial success of Alcott’s books yanked her family from poverty, but her home life still was fraught with tragedy. Her sister Elizabeth died of scarlet fever prior to the publishing of Little Women, a blow from which Alcott’s mother never recovered. In 1877, Abigail May died as well. Two years later, Alcott’s youngest sister, May, died from complications after childbirth. May lived long enough to name her daughter Louisa May, and she asked Alcott to raise her namesake.

Alcott took care of young Lulu for eight years, while her own health rapidly declined from the mercury poisoning. She fell into a coma while caring for her ailing father, who died in March of 1888. Alcott followed two days later. She was buried across the feet of her parents and sister Elizabeth.

Alcott remained busy during the twenty years between the publication of Little Women and her death at the age of fifty-six. Following in her mother’s footsteps, she took up the cause of suffrage, writing for The Woman’s Journal and canvassing to encourage women to register to vote after Massachusetts granted women suffrage for school, tax, and bond issues. Alcott became the first woman in Concord to register, voting in the village’s school committee election in 1879.

The Alcott legacy lives on in her writing, as well as in the films that have been made of her books. Although more than thirty volumes appeared during her lifetime, she was more prolific than most of her contemporaries ever knew. Much of her work has been found in her papers and published in the century since her death.

Bibliography (full text available for hyperlinked titles)
NOTE: Only books Louisa May Alcott published under her own name are listed. Most of the stories written anonymously and under pseudonyms were republished in collections that are listed under her posthumous work below.

Flower Fables, 1854 Hospital Sketches, 1863 (revised, 1869) The Rose Family: A Fairy Tale, 1864 On Picket Duty, and Other Tales, 1864 Nelly’s Hospital, 1865 Moods, 1865 (revised, 1882) Morning-Glories and Other Stories, 1867 The Mysterious Key & What It Opened, 1867 Three Proverb Stories, 1868 Will's Wonder Book, 1868 Little Women, 1868 Good Wives, 1869 (part 2 of Little Women) Camp and Fireside Stories, 1869 An Old Fashioned Girl, 1870 Little Men, 1871 Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, vol. 1(My Boys), 1871 Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, vol. 2 (Shawl Straps), 1872 Work: A Story of Experience, 1873 Something to Do, 1873 Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, vol. 3 (Cupid and Chow Chow), 1874 Beginning Again, Being a Continuation of Work, 1875

Eight Cousins; or, The Aunt-Hill, 1875 Silver Pitchers, and Independence, 1876 Rose in Bloom: A Sequel to Eight Cousins, 1876 Horn of Plenty, 1876 Under the Lilacs, 1878 Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, vol. 4 (My Girls), 1878 Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, vol. 5 (Jimmy's Cruise in the Pinafore), 1879 Meadow Blossoms, 1879 Water Cresses, 1879 Sparkling for Bright Eyes, 1879 Jack and Jill: A Village Story, 1880 Christmas Plum Pudding Stories, 1882 Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, vol. 6 (An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving), 1882 Spinning Wheel Stories, 1884 Jo's Boys and How They Turned Out: A Sequel to Little Men, 1886 Lulu's Library, vol. 1 (A Christmas Dream), 1886 Lulu's Library, vol. 2 (The Frost King), 1887 A Garland for Girls, 1888 Lulu's Library, vol. 3 (Recollections), 1889

Posthumous
The following volumes consist of work previously published in periodicals or under pseudonyms, as well as previously unpublished work discovered in the Alcott papers.

A Modern Mephistopheles, and A Whisper in the Dark, 1889 Life, Letters, and Journals, 1889 Comic Tragedies Written by "Jo" and "Meg" and Acted by the "Little Women," 1893 Becky's Christmas Dream, 1895 Marjorie’s Three Gifts, 1899 Doll's Journey, 1902 Letters from the House of Alcott, 1914 Three Unpublished Poems, 1919 A Round Dozen, 1963 Glimpses of Louisa: A Centennial Sampling of the Best Short Stories, 1968 Behind a Mask: The Unknown Thrillers, 1975 Plots and Counterplots: More Unknown Thrillers, 1976 Trudel’s Siege, 1976 Diana and Persis, 1978 Transcendental Wild Oats, 1981 Works, 1983 Napoleon Bonaparte, 1984 Hidden Louisa May Alcott: A Collection of Her Unknown Thrillers, 1985 Selected Letters, 1987 Works of Louisa May Alcott, 1987 The Lay of a Golden Goose, 1987 Double Life: Newly Discovered Thrillers, 1988 Alternative Alcott, 1988

Journals, 1989 Freaks of Genius: Unknown Thrillers, 1991 Selected Fiction, 1991 Fairy Tales and Fantasy Stories, 1992 From Jo March’s Attic, Stories of Intrigue and Suspense, 1993 Girlhood Diary, 1993 A Long Fatal Love Chase, 1995 Lost Stories, 1995 A Marble Woman, 1995 Modern Magic, 1995 Short Stories, 1996 The Feminist Alcott, 1996 The Inheritance, 1997 Intimate Anthology, 1997 Race, Sex, and Slavery, 1997 The Quiet Little Woman, 1999 Poems, 2000 Writings of a Young Author, 1843-1846, 2000 Early Stories, 1852-1860, 2000 A Little Princess, 2001 Three Fire-side Stories, 2001 Selected Fiction, 2001 Uncollected Works, 2001 Sketches, 2001 Christmas Treasury, 2002 Good Boy, 2003 Civil War, coming 2006

pbw00138 Comic Tragedies Sampson Low,1893		pbw00169 Aunt Jo's Scrap Bag Little, Brown, 1903		pbw00130 The Mysterious Key F. M. Lutton, 1902		pba00741 Eights Cousins Little, Brown, 1903