By 1888, twenty years after the publication of Little Women, Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) was one of the most popular and successful authors America had yet produced. In her pre-Little Women days, she concocted blood-and-thunder tales for low wages; post-Little Women, she specialized in domestic novels and short stories for children. Collected here for the first time are the reminiscences of people who knew her, the majority of which have not been published since their original appearance in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Many of the printed recollections in this book appeared after Alcott became famous and showcase her as a literary lion, but others focus on her teen years, when she was living the life of Jo March; these intimate glimpses into the life of the Alcott family lead the reader to one conclusion: the family was happy, fun, and entertaining, very much like the fictional Marches. The recollections about an older and wealthier Alcott show a kind and generous, albeit outspoken, woman little changed by her money and status. From Annie Sawyer Downs's description of life in Concord to Anna Alcott Pratt's recollections of the Alcott sisters' acting days to Julian Hawthorne's neighborly portrait of the Alcotts, the thirty-six recollections in this copiously illustrated volume tell the private and public story of a remarkable life.
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Shealy, a professor of English at UNC-Charlotte and editor of Alcott's letters and journals, has collected 36 first-person reminiscences that span the life(1832–1888) of the ever-popular author of Little Women. The essays testify to how accurately Alcott's fiction detailed her often impoverished childhood as the daughter of transcendentalist Bronson Alcott. Her oldest sister, Anna, writes to one of Louisa's fans that the fictional sisters Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy are all "entirely truthful pictures" of the Alcott sisters, and Alfred Whitman revealed only in 1901, in the Ladies' Home Journal, that Alcott had admitted he was one of two models for Laurie (though others also claim the title). Another theme is Bronson's willingness to sacrifice the well-being of his family to his philosophical ideals, leaving the problem of feeding their children to his hard-working, practical wife. Other entries recount the later years, when Louisa's writing had become lucrative and she gratefully eased her parents' financial burdens; despite persistent ill health resulting from a Civil War nursing stint, the middle-aged Alcott retained her affectionate nature and sense of irreverent fun. This valuable book will be a boon to devotees and scholars. 33 photos, 12 line drawings. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
"This delightful and incredibly useful collection brings together a kaleidoscope of firsthand accounts of Alcott: the breezy author slinging slang, the defiant and funny activist, and much more. Filled with difficult-to-find primary sources, Shealy's volume will be as gratifying to readers as it is necessary to students and scholars."--Gregory Eiselein, coeditor of The Louisa May Alcott Encyclopedia and the Norton Critical Edition of Little Women
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Alcott in Her Own Time By Daniel Shealy: redundant and yet still enjoyable,
By Alex Mager (NY) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Alcott in Her Own Time: A Biographical Chronicle of Her Life, Drawn from Recollections, Interviews, and Memoirs by Family, Friends, and Associates (Writers in Their Own Time) (Paperback)
The book Alcott in Her Own Time is not just another biography of the famed author of Little Women, Louisa May Alcott and her incredible life. Nor was it written by some person living in our time who never knew Louisa May Alcott. No, this biography on Louisa May Alcott was written by many people and each and every one of them knew Louisa May Alcott or had a memorable encounter with her.
This biography is full of stories about the author and her "All-American" family; many of the stories have never been known to the public until now. This book delves deep into the lives of all the Alcotts with many funny stories and childhood friends mentioned. The book shows just how connected the Alcotts were, too, with family and with many important people from that time period. Stories from family or close friends never fail to make the connections between the childhood of Louisa and the story about her family: Little Women. This is an interesting and enjoyable aspect of the book because it shows how important family was to the great author and it shows that great characters are found in real life too. Another component of the book that is enjoyable is the photos. There are photos of Louisa and her family, as well as a few drawings done by May Alcott, otherwise known as Amy March. It is also interesting to read the many comments on how the unforgettable character of Jo March is the absolute heart and soul of Louisa May Alcott, even down to the adventures and experiences she has. Like the ever memorable characters of Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird, the Alcotts and Louisa's characters are some of the very few that will live on forever in books and in the minds of those who read about them. The book is very good, but somewhat redundant at times. It often repeats stories or facts, even though they are written by a different person each time. It can get quite tiresome to read the same stories or family tree of the Alcotts seven or eight times. Overall, the book was sweet and interesting. This book is better suited for those who could ake it through the unabridged version of Little Women and all Alcott lovers. It portrayed the Alcotts as they were and as they were known to everyone who met them.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Real Little Women,
By YA Librarian "http://yabookmarks.blogspot.com/" (Always Cloudy Upstate NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Alcott in Her Own Time: A Biographical Chronicle of Her Life, Drawn from Recollections, Interviews, and Memoirs by Family, Friends, and Associates (Writers in Their Own Time) (Paperback)
This book is a real gem. The editor did a marvelous job and I think it is a must have for anyone who is interested in Louisa May Alcott.
Within this book we have eyewitness accounts of people who knew Louisa May Alcott and her family, before and during her fame. The editor gives a brief biography of the person giving their account and this is very helpful because you have a greater understanding of how this person knew Louisa. I found some of the passages very moving especially those that spoke of Lizzy(Beth in Little Women). There was one part in the book where a person encountered Louisa sewing Lizzy's burial shroud and Louisa was so upset she ran from the room. These are the small glimpses that make the book priceless. I will agree with the other reviewer that this book does cover a lot about Louisa's father. Although, to be fair, I found that he was mentioned when people were recalling the family. I do not recall any stand-alone essays on him. Some of the entries found in this book maybe redundant if you are an avid Louisa May Alcott fan. For instance there are some journal snippets from Louisa May Alcott and a few other things that I have read before. However, this is an excellent addition to your Alcott collection.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Carrots and Candlesticks,
By Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER) (TOP 1000 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Alcott in Her Own Time: A Biographical Chronicle of Her Life, Drawn from Recollections, Interviews, and Memoirs by Family, Friends, and Associates (Writers in Their Own Time) (Paperback)
Daniel Shealy, an expert on Louisa May Alcott who has edited or co-edited a dozen books about her and by her, turns his attention now to contemporary accounts of her life and personality. He has dug up old interviews from the nineteenth century, as well as scores of memorials published after her death, from the people who remembered her and loved her best; and, in a few cases, from people who barely knew her at all but who knew what star quality she had. Alcott was one of America's greatest novelists but her reputation suffered from the "stain" of being known primarily as a writer of "girls' literature." She hid the dozens of blood and thunder pulp stories she wrote under pseudonyms, publishing a few under her own name at the very end of her life as a kind of metafictional illustration of the kind of thing Jo March, LITTLE WOMEN's heroine, might have been writing during the years she was scrambling so for money.
The Alcotts' household is enchantingly Bohemian, up to a point. Edward Emerson, son of Ralph Waldo, credits the Concord circle with inventing all the famous childhood games that came into vogue later in the century. They put on their own plays, invented "Charades," wrote impromptu poems on set subjects in half an hour's time. He remembers a period when the Alcotts didn't even have enough money for candlesticks, but their inventive minds carved out niches for candles in the small ends of large orange carrots! These details really bring back a period of American history long lost to us. Could the book be a litle bit longer than it has to? The only reason I wonder this is, if you pick up the book and flip to any page, you might not find any mention of Louisa herself. Many of the memoirists wrote as much about her father, Bronson Alcott, as they did about her. And believe me, he gets tiresome after awhile. A book more sharply focussed on Miss Alcott herself might be a welcome treat. However, on second thought, there's no getting arund the eternal mystery of Bronson Alcott, a man so transcendental he he believed, like Christ, in letting anyone come into his house. Thus the four daughters had often to give up their beds to literally the scum of the earth, and the quacks, and the sexually adventurous, and the "hippies" of the 1840s of which, it seems, there were plenty. LMA rarely complained but I can only imagine there must have been some resentment about the way Bronson A. forced his girls to encounter the lame and the halt? Maybe that's why she left him out of LITTLE WOMEN, shipped him off to fight the Civil War.
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