Louisa May Alcott: A Unique Childhood The Woman Behind

Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women Louisa May is a documentary film co-produced by Nancy Porter Productions, Inc. and Thirteen/WNET New York’s , and a biography of the same name Alcott was no written by Harriet Reisen. Louisa May Alcott programs in libraries are sponsored by the American Library Association Public Programs Office with the support of little woman, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The documentary was produced with grants from the her life was no National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Louisa May Alcott’s relatives were wealthy, yet she Endowment for the Arts, the Corporation for Public and her three sisters grew up poor. Their father, educator- Broadcasting, the Public Broadcasting Service, Thirteen/ children’s book. philosopher Bronson Alcott, was not a lazy man, but his WNET New York, The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, beliefs were never compatible with earning a living. When and the Simons Foundation and Audrey Simons. Bronson’s utopian farm experiment, Fruitlands, left the Alcotts starving and freezing, Louisa, age 11, vowed to Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations The world-famous author of Little rescue the family from poverty. expressed in this brochure do not necessarily reflect those of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Women grew up in the innermost circle The Alcotts, leaving debts in their wake, made some 30 moves before they settled at in Concord, of the Transcendentalist and antislavery . Louisa wrote and set Little Women in Orchard House, and based heroine Jo upon herself, movements, served as a Civil War army but the book is about Louisa’s childhood as she wished it nurse, and led a secret literary life to be, not how it was. writing pulp fiction. She was vivacious, The Alcott family was materially impoverished, but led a rich passionate, romantic, principled – and intellectual life. Louisa’s father’s friend, Ralph Waldo nearly six feet tall! Louisa May Alcott Emerson, directed her reading; on excursions to , was her own best character, and her life taught The her about nature. Elizabeth Program coordination Woman was her own best plot. Peabody and American Library Association Public Programs Office stood as models of female Behind achievement for her to emulate. Brochure writer Little ’s family Harriet Reisen Women lived next door. Brochure design When slavery threatened to tear the nation apart, the Heather Dellenbach Alcott home was an stop for fugitives. Louisa was proud that she knew the great antislavery activists, among them , Programs supporting Louisa May Alcott: The Woman , and . The Alcotts Behind Little Women are being presented at libraries “I had lots of acted upon their principles, more than once risking their throughout the United States. For a list of participating lives for their ideals. libraries, please visit: www.ala.org/publicprograms or contact the American Library Association Public Programs Office at1-800-545-2433, ext. 5045. troubles, so I cover Louisa May Alcott in her mid-twenties, 1858 Photo courtesy of Louisa May Alcott Memorial Association write jolly tales.” above: top to bottom A reading, viewing, and Fruitlands, scene of Bronson Alcott’s utopian experiment Photo courtesy of Fruitlands Museum discussion series for libraries Henry David Thoreau, essayist, naturalist, and Louisa’s guide to the natural world Photo courtesy of Concord Free Public Library Nineteenth-Century Women Rags to Riches

A free woman in the nineteenth century could not vote Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women, Louisa May Alcott: or own property, and any wealth she had was controlled by her husband after she married. If she had no family but did you know she also: The Woman Behind Little Women money and did not marry, she could barely live at a • worked as a seamstress, a laundress, a teacher, a Documentary poverty level through the only respectable jobs available governess, and a domestic servant? to her: sewing, domestic employment, and teaching. Producer/Director, Nancy Porter. Producer/Writer, With every breath and every step, voluminous and Harriet Reisen. 2009. • was raised a vegetarian and lived on a commune? corseted clothing hampered the middle-class woman of the nineteenth century, and reminded her that women Book • secretly wrote pulp fiction teeming with were not supposed to move as freely as men did. Author, Harriet Reisen. Hardcover: Henry Holt and transvestites, murderers, spies, and frauds – and Company, 2009; Paperback: Picador, 2010; Audiobook: these works remained undiscovered until a half- An enslaved woman in the nineteenth century did not At age 35, Louisa May Alcott took 10 weeks to write Tantor Audio, 2009. Read by Harriet Reisen. century after her death? own even the rags on her back. She was forbidden to Little Women, struck it rich with its publication, and later learn to read or write, or to marry. Her master could amassed a fortune with a series of novels for young Related Readings • was an excellent actress – and may have worked as whip her, rape her, and sell her children. Louisa May adult readers. With her money, she coddled her mother, one under a different name? Alcott was furious about social injustice; as a teenager outfitted her father, paid tuition for her nephews, helped Alcott in Her Own Time. Edited by Daniel Shealy. Iowa City, she taught free black women enough reading and buy a house for her older sister, and sent her younger IA: University Press, 2005. • wrote and published groundbreaking stories about arithmetic to write bills and count their wages. As an sister to study art in Paris. She traveled first-class to interracial marriage, slave revolt, and race relations? adult she taught black soldiers to read as they trained Europe, sojourned in New York, dressed in silk, and went Elbert, Sarah. A Hunger for Home: Louisa May Alcott’s for war. She wrote stories about race relations, risked to the theater as often as she wanted. Place in American Culture. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers • said she didn’t enjoy writing what she called “moral her life to end slavery, and called herself a “fanatic” University Press, 1987. pap for the young” and that she did it for the money? believer in absolute racial equality. In her last 20 years Louisa May Alcott earned $200,000 – millions The Journals of Louisa May Alcott. Edited by • supported equal rights for women, organized women Civil War Nurse in present-day terms. Her and Daniel Shealy. Madeleine B. Stern, associate editor. to vote 40 years before the nineteenth amendment was contemporary, Henry James, Boston: Little, Brown, 1989. passed, and was the first woman to cast her ballot in a Louisa May Alcott wanted to fight in the Civil War, but as earned only $25,000 in his lifetime; Concord election? a woman she could enlist only as a nurse. She was sent earned less than L. M. Alcott: Signature of Reform. Edited by Madeleine B. to the Union Hotel Hospital in the nation’s beleaguered $10,000 in his. Once a domestic Stern. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2002. • inspired the careers of Gertrude Stein, , capital to care for some of the thousands of wounded servant herself, at the end of her Simone de Beauvoir, Cynthia Ozick, Ursula LeGuin, soldiers from the . Within days, life Louisa employed 10 servants. Matteson, John. Eden’s Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Sandra Day O’Connor, Ruth Ginsberg, , and without training, Louisa was assisting at assembly- Once a hungry child, she made Alcott and Her Father. New York: Norton, 2007. and J. K. Rowling? line amputations. “Ether was not thought necessary,” donations to groups who fed them. she commented in a letter home. Later her letters were The Selected Letters of Louisa May Alcott. Edited by Joel adapted for publication as a serial, and then as Hospital Louisa May Alcott’s books for Myerson and Daniel Shealy. Madeleine B. Stern, associate Sketches, her first literary success. young adults have never been editor. Boston: Little, Brown, 1987. out of print and they have been “I’ve often longed to see a war,” Louisa had said, and translated into more than 50 Stern, Madeleine B. Louisa May Alcott: From Blood and although the work was hard, she liked it. She was good languages. For 140 years Alcott Thunder to Hearth and Home. Boston: Northeastern at nursing, and as she had for her dying sister Beth, she has empowered her readers to University Press, 1998. impersonated Dickens’ comical nurse, Sairy Gamp, to forge their own lives and to insist cheer up the convalescents. She was especially moved upon equality. As one reader On the Web by one soldier, and held his hand as he died. said, “You don’t grow up to walk two steps behind your husband if www.louisamayalcott.net you’ve met Jo March.” Official website forLouisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women documentary and biography.

www.classicauthors.net/Alcott Works by Louisa May Alcott available online.

left: top to bottom www.louisamayalcott.org Engraving of Concord, Massachusetts, home of the Alcott family, 1840 Photo courtesy of Concord Free Public Library Website of Orchard House, home of the Alcotts and the setting for Little Women. Louisa May Alcott portrait by George Healy, realistic painter of presidents and the elite Photo courtesy of Louisa May Alcott Memorial Association

Alcott’s novel Work was based upon her many job experiences. “One’s best defense is one’s Photo courtesy of Louisa May Alcott Memorial Association life and one’s character.”