Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women [Paperback]

Harriet Reisen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 26, 2010

In a fresh, modern take on the remarkable Louisa May Alcott, Harriet Reisen’s vivid biography explores the author’s life in the context of her works, many of which are to some extent autobiographical. Although Alcott secretly wrote pulp fiction, harbored radical abolitionist views, and served as a Civil War nurse, her novels went on to sell more copies than those of Herman Melville and Henry James. Stories and details culled from Alcott’s journals, together with revealing letters to family, friends, and publishers, plus recollections of her famous contemporaries provide the basis for this lively account of the author’s classic rags-to-riches tale. In Louisa May Alcott, the extraordinary woman behind the beloved American classic Little Women is revealed as never before.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

SignatureReviewed by Brenda WineappleHailed as the first complete biography of Louisa May Alcott despite the fine previous work of Madeline Stern and Martha Saxton, Harriet Reisen's Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women does valiantly portray the beloved author as a stalwart woman whose life, as Reisen succinctly puts it, was no children's book. The daughter of impecunious transcendentalist Bronson Alcott and long-suffering Abigail May, as a girl Louisa Alcott watched her father preach esoteric uplift while practicing the penury that impoverished the family. Bronson's redeeming trait, Reisen speculates, may have been temporary insanity. The sadder case was Alcott's mother—the model for Marmee in Little Women—an intelligent woman harnessed to a man in search of the ineffable and, on occasion, young female acolytes. Louisa appointed herself the Golden Goose of these needy nurturers. Churning out what Reisen calls the chick-lit of its day to provide her mother and sisters the material comforts she never had, Alcott also used her imagination, according to Reisen, to escape the confines of ordinary life, although for Bronson Alcott's daughter, ordinary life was not all that ordinary; Reisen calculates that the family moved at least 30 times by Alcott's 20s. The ordeals of childhood were transmuted into rich literary endowments, Reisen explains. Alcott also wrote to earn parental approval; no longer was she a tomboy with a temper, though a careful reader can detect the anger beneath the surface of her most placid stories. Yet there's something else unexplored here: by converting a childhood of raw apples, cold-water baths and ceaseless sibling rivalry into the stories and novels that supported her family, she also kept that family forever dependent on her. In this companion to an upcoming PBS documentary on Alcott, Reisen too often interprets Alcott's life through her work, as if Alcott did not transmute experience into art after all. Reisen thus sprinkles her book with must have beens (she must have felt banished, the book must have struck a chord) and then plays the mental illness card once more: Was Louisa Alcott, like so many artists, manic-depressive (bipolar)? Yet Reisen's rich empathy for Alcott never falters and her chronicle of Alcott's exhausting attempt, as one friend remarked, to fill vacant niches in all things, whether in her family or in the world of popular literature, is heart-rending. As Reisen notes, Alcott simply wore herself out. Devotees of Little Women may be shocked that its self-medicating, troubled creator was not a jolly J.K. Rowling, though likely many of them know this. What they may not realize is that the redoubtable Alcott, who chose to be a free spinster and to paddle my own canoe, was decidedly strong but, alas, never free. (Nov.)Brenda Wineapple is the author, most recently, of White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson (Knopf),which will be published by Anchor in paper.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

“At last, Louisa May Alcott has the biography that admirers of Little Women might have hoped for.” —The Wall Street Journal's Best 10 Books of the Year

“A magnificent new biography . . . a classic.” —The Washington Times

“Fans will adore Harriet Reisen's sympathetic biography. . . .With charming verve, she details Alcott's remarkable if difficult life.” —USA Today

 

“Superb . . . punctuates the myths of the Alcott family, rendering Louisa May with nuance.” —Chicago Tribune

 

“A biography as vibrant as its subject.” —Vogue

“Reisen’s lifelong fascination with Little Women and the woman who wrote it has produced an absorbing narrative, in many ways the best ever, of Alcott’s own life. . . . The utterly compelling force of Alcott’s personality has never been better described. I found the book compulsively readable; I couldn’t put it down.” —Robert Richardson, author of Emerson: The Mind on Fire and Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind

“Brilliantly researched. . . . Her biography will occupy an essential place on any Alcott bookshelf.” —John Matteson, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Eden’s Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father

“A beautifully written, significant, and fascinating work. Harriet Reisen does with this biography what Alcott did with her writing—gives us a memorable and inspiring gift full of humanity, heart, and soul.” —Winona Ryder, producer and star of Little Women (1994)

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: Picador; Reprint edition (October 26, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312658877
• ISBN-13: 978-0312658878
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (59 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #96,200 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Q: Little Women, Louisa May Alcott's most famous work, has had a worldwide influence over generations of women since its first publication 140 years ago. What impact has Alcott and her writing had on your life?

A: Like millions of girls, I saw myself as Jo March, Louisa Alcott's literary alter ego and the heroine of Little Women. Jo was passionate and brave, and like me had a tendency to get lost in thought. My mother had presented me with Little Women, ceremoniously, as if bestowing the key to a magic kingdom. The wise and funny authorial voice of Louisa May Alcott spoke like another mother to me, giving permission to be flawed, license to dream, and encouragement to do good.

Soon after I moved to Boston in the 1970s I visited Orchard House in Concord, the Alcott family home for twenty years. In Louisa's bedroom, between two windows, was the semi-circular writing table Bronson Alcott had built her. From this surface, with space for no more than a piece of paper and an inkwell, Louisa had brought forth Little Women in just ten weeks. As I stood there, Louisa's spirit seemed to rise up and claim me. Her benevolent ghost has driven me through the decades, challenging me to attempt her story twice, in a documentary and in this book. I've never wanted to analyze my fascination with this woman. It's just there, and continues.


Q: You and your friend, Emmy Award-winning producer Nancy Porter, joined forces to create a documentary on Louisa May Alcott which will premiere on PBS American Masters on December 28, 2009. What was your role in developing this documentary? Is it true that the idea for the biography grew out of your plans for the documentary?

A: For years I had a pipe dream about writing a short, accessible biography of Louisa May Alcott, but I wasn't a trained scholar or an established author. I didn't think I could write a book, let alone have the opportunity.

My friend Nancy Porter had tremendous experience making historical documentary portraits for PBS--of the Wright Brothers, Houdini, Amelia Earhart, to name just a few. Nancy and I worked as independent co-producers, trying to get our Alcott film made. Nancy would be the director, and I the writer. It took some twenty years, off and on, to do it.

I decided to write the film script completely from primary sources. Louisa and all the other characters would speak only words they had written or were reported by contemporaries to have said. My choice and arrangement of scenes and dialogue, our production choices, interviews with scholars and experts, and Nancy's direction and editing were our only means to interpret Louisa's character and her life. We had no narrator to get between the viewer and the material.

What the film gained in authenticity was worth the embargo on my own knowledge and opinion. The book came as a gift--with room to let Louisa's story roam, and freedom to tell it in my own words and fill it with characters without having to consider what their costumes and meals would cost.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Harriet Reisen, a former fellow in screenwriting at the American Film Institute, has written dramatic and historical documentary scripts for PBS and HBO, including the forthcoming PBS documentary of Louisa May Alcott. She lives in Massachusetts with her husband, Tony Kahn, and son Andrew Kahn. This is her first book.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

54 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Real Louisa May Alcott, August 31, 2009

By 

YA Librarian "http://yabookmarks.blogspot.com/" (Always Cloudy Upstate NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women (John MacRae Books) (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

Louisa May Alcott has always been a favorite author of mine. I have read a few biographies(years ago with the exception of Little Women Abroad, Alcott in Her Own Time) about her life and have read all of her books. So when this new biography came up I was interested but I wondered if anything knew could be written about the author that everyone seems to forget.

I was pleasantly surprised by this book. As others have said it is an easy read, not weighed down with academic writing that makes one want to fall asleep. Yet it is obvious that the author has done her research.

The book starts out with a history of Abigail and Bronson's family history, how they meet and their early marriage. This sets the stage for the childhood that Louisa and her sisters will experience. The interesting thing about this book is that it describes Bronson's life but I found out more about Mrs. Alcott than I ever knew. Everyone neglects her and always focuses on Bronson which is a crime since she was the one who worked the hardest. For instance I was unaware that she had been left for long periods of time with the children while Bronson went off trying to make money. Nor did I know that she had so many miscarriages and nearly died as a result. Another thing that was interesting to me is that Louisa seemed more like her mother yet most biographers continue to say that Louisa was like her father.

The Real Louisa May Alcott is brought out in this book. The author does not sugarcoat things, she does not try to make Louisa into some Victorian model of womanhood(if that was even possible). What the author tries to do is explain who Louisa was faults and all. Those faults do not make Louisa bad, just human, like the rest of us.

Louisa was a rash, naughty child who was spanked for not sitting down properly at the dinner table. She would often hit her older sister and when Elizabeth was born she hated her. Louisa often confused her father with her outbursts and her rage. Abigail felt a kinship with her daughter because she shared the same faults. Yet despite her flaws Louisa was determined to make something of herself. She saw how her mother toiled, how her father lacked common sense, and she wanted to help her family. Louisa longed for nice things as everyone else and she wanted to erase the family debt.

The biography trails Louisa's life, her trials and her victories. While I have read all this before the author gave me new information. I have read about the Fruitlands experience but I cannot recall anyone mentioning Abigail's distrust or Mr. Lane. I remember descriptions of what happened but not the amount of detail that Ms. Reisen provides.

The book covers every aspect of Louisa's life. Her stint as a Civil War nurse, her trip abroad, the success of Little Women and so much more.

Yet even when she gained success she still wasn't happy. Louisa hid from her admirers and didn't seem to like them much. Louisa complained that her family seemed eager to take her money and she wondered when she would enjoy it. There are also some quotes from Lulu, May's daughter, which are insightful. Louisa seems to have showered Lulu with expensive dresses and toys(things she never received).

I enjoyed this book very much and I highly recommend it. I hope that with this book and the new documentary that Louisa May Alcott will be rediscovered for the amazing talent she was. She will no longer be remembered as just a childrens author who is constantly swept under the rug so authors like Dickens and Austen can be praised.

30 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars review, December 7, 2009

By 

J. Kocher (Illinois) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women (John MacRae Books) (Hardcover)

I have long been a fan of LM Alcott and have devoured several biographies about her. While Reisen's book is very informative, the narrative style is rather dry and tedious. My one major grievance with the book is a blatant error on page 238 where the author is describing the character Jo's children in Little Men. Reisen claims thatt Jo's children were fraternal twins--Demi and Daisy. How can a professed Alcott disciple make such an egregious blunder? And what sloppy editing that no one caught the error before publication. Jo had two sons with her husband, the professor. Meg had the twins. I am also suprised that the author did not include one single photograph in this biography. As a reader, that left a tremendous void with the volume.

I would recommend Martha's Saxton's Louisa May Alcott: A Modern Biography as a better overview of LMA's life.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ---------Don't miss reading this wonderful book---------, October 18, 2009

By 

Judith Miller (Bluemont, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women (John MacRae Books) (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

This was a timely read for me. I visited Orchard House, the Alcott family home, a few years ago, and found the place surreal. It was easy to picture the family living there. I stood next to Louisa's writing table and learned that she had to become ambidextrous because she was sorely misusing the one hand. I admired her sister, May's room where the walls were filled with her drawings. After the tour, I purchased a small print of an owl that had been painted by May Alcott. I also bought a print of Orchard House. I thoroughly enjoyed my visit and the two prints are in the room that I call my library. Finally, in a box of old books, that were recently given to me, I found a book containing five thrillers that had been written by the amazing Louisa May Alcott.

Well, along came THE WOMAN BEHIND LITTLE WOMEN by Harriet Reisen, and I was ready. The book is fascinating. I sincerely applaud the author for her excellent research. Although, this book has a lot of very detailed information, it held my interest.

Louisa's father, Bronson Alcott was an intellectual who became involved with the transcendental movement. He was a teacher, and had many different schools over the years, but they usually failed as his methods seemed too unorthodox to most people. His marriage to Abigail May produced 4 daughters. The family were constantly moving and Bronson often left his wife and children for months at a time fulfilling his intellectual pursuits. Mrs. Alcott, was left alone to care for her family. During the years, she experience five miscarriages. Of course, her health suffered, and she almost died during one miscarriage. Bronson was rarely there when she needed him most.

Louisa May Alcott, was the second of the daughters and we're told that she was a difficult and stubborn child. She was often disciplined by her father because she was too willful! Her life was spent in the company of some of the most famous men in New England. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Nathaniel Hawthorne were all friends of the family. Over the years, those friends provided financial help to the Alcott's, as Bronson could never support his own family. Louisa's family spent most of their lives living on the good will and support of family and friends. Sometimes the family would be split up living in several different places and just waiting for a time that they could be together again. In later years, Louisa's success as a writer brought their dreams to fulfillment.

Writing a short review of this book is almost impossible and my words are only tidbits from the book. I came away with so much respect for Louisa! She worked hard for her entire life and when she finally received fame and fortune, she was surprised at the people who constantly sought her out for autographs and conversation. Her health was not good and it was peace and quiet that she sought and not scores of people wanting to meet and converse with her.

This book is a must read for the details of Louisa May Alcott's life! It also provides some interesting history of the Civil War. Louisa, herself worked in a hospital in Washington, D.C. nursing wounded soldiers. In fact, she contacted typhoid pneumonia and came close to dying from the experience.