Louisa May Alcott

I meant to do this yesterday.



My childhood was replete with her books. Louisa May was perhaps my first female role model.

I've got a full shelf of her books and books about her and her family.

I've only read most of Little Women, I don't think I ever finished it.

I love the March family books and An old fashioned girl. I was less keen on the thrillers that she wrote, and found The inheritance disappointing.

Yes, I've actually disposed of some of her thriller stories because I'll never visit them again. As Jo did, Louisa May learned finally to write about what she knew.

>2 fuzzi: But you should, because then you can go on to Little Men and Jo's Boys.

I read Little Women a dozen times if at all. Love it, Eight Cousins, Rose in Bloom, and An Old Fashioned Girl the best. Read others too, just not necessarily on my favorite list.

I purchased another copy of Little Women the other day. It is the much newer 1963 Little Women with the purple cover.

Just picked up a copy of A Long Fatal Love Chase; a 1995 release of a serialized story that never saw print in her lifetime because it was considered rather racy. I was aware she wrote for audiences other than Little Women fans, but never encountered one of those in print before. I'm sure I'll keep Jo in mind as I read, scrawling away to put tawdry stories in the paper to pay the butcher's bill.

>7 gmathis:

Quite a few collections of her "thrillers" have been published now, presumably because they are now public domain. Madeleine Stern edited a volume titled Louisa May Alcott Unmasked : Collected Thrillers, and also wrote Louisa May Alcott : from blood & thunder to hearth & home, which might interest you.

>8 lilithcat: Good to know...I'll have to see whether I can handle the genre shift :)

I read the Unmasked one from the library several years ago, it was pretty good.