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The Journals of Louisa May Alcott

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When Louisa May Alcott's biography was published shortly after her death in 1888, a reviewer lamented, "We wish heartily that Miss Alcott had chosen to tell her own story." She does in these journals.

Through her father's influence as well as the emerging recogniton of her own devleoping talent, Alcott met many of the masters of American literature in her day: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne -- all of whom are mentioned often in her journals among her everyday struggles to support her family with her writing. She learned her craft by writing thrillers for tabloids while working as a domestic in wealthy households.

Louisa Alcott never intended for these pages to be read so reading them is an extremely personal experience. The reader gains an intimate insight into the life and mind of one of America's premiere 19th century women writers. Louisa was a poor speller, we learn, and we also learn how she felt about abolition, the Civil War, educational reform, women's rights and many other issues including arguments she had with her editors.

Reading JOURNALS was an intense experience that transported me into her time and her life. If you grew up reading LITTLE WOMEN and LITTLE MEN you'll thoroughly enjoy this look at a remarkable author's life.

What a treat it is to read about the life of this great children's author from her own pen. This covers 45 years of Louisa May Alcott's life from her childhood to her death. One see parallels between Little Women and Alcott's real life family and situations. Notes by the editors at the end of each year fill in some of the gaps. Louisa often used initials so the notes flesh out the details.
What an interesting life she lived with the Civil War, women's suffrage and her family's noted literary and philosophical links. It's a little disappointing that her final years are covered so sketchily in the journals, but her health problems and family duties interfered.
It's well-worth reading the introduction by Madeleine Stern which gives a comprehensive mini-biography to accompany the journals.

The eloquent Miss Alcott, creator of Little Women, of course, was not only an interesting diarist, she was one capable of leaving open a portal into her era, her mind, her remarkable human spirit. Her unrehearsed honesty year after year reflects the values of her age moreso than nearly anything else I've read, and the beauty of her entries and thoughts reinforces the fact that our language today is but a pale shadow of the elegant means of expression that existed in America of the nineteenth-century. Alcott scholars should find much to pore through here, but even someone such as myself, who read this out of a sense of historical curiosity, will be delighted. In terms of perfection this is a diary that ranks up there with that of Mary Chesnut, John Evelyn, Samuel Pepys, and very few others.

It's a difficult task to review a diary or journal, as these materials were rarely meant for public consumption. Louisa May Alcott's personal "scribblings" reveal much about her motivations, professional and personal choices, and beliefs. What becomes clear is that she wrote not only as an outlet for her imagination and creativity, but to keep body, soul, and family together. Her father, Amos Bronson Alcott, was a man strong on philosophical principles but considerably weaker on providing for his dependents. Louisa's life, and those of her sisters, was no Victorian romance. Single to the end of her life, she was required to work incessantly, but she also inherited some of her father's idealism. It is not widely known that she was a women's suffragist, and the first woman to register to vote in Concord, MA.

To catch a glimpse of the real Louisa, not the "little woman", you cannot do better than to read her nonfiction account about her own daily life.