A Guide to the Papers of Louisa May Alcott, 1848 (1863-1888) 1956
Accession Number 6255 through 6255-k
A Collection in the
Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature
Special Collections
The University of Virginia Library



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Preferred Citation

Papers of Louisa May Alcott, Accession #6255 through 6255-k, Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.

Acquisition Information

The Papers of Louisa May Alcott were deposited in the Library at various dates (see following) by Clifton Waller Barrett. The deposits were made gifts on July 1, 1991. 6255-k, a photograph, was purchased from E. Wharton and Co. on September 3, 2003.

6255: deposit, March 19, 1960; gift July 1, 1991
6255-a: deposit, October 18, 1963; gift July 1, 1991
6255-b: deposit, December 17, 1964; gift July 1, 1991
6255-c: deposit, March 3, 1964; gift July 1, 1991
6255-d: deposit, April 7, 1965; gift July 1, 1991
6255-e: deposit, October 21, 1965; gift July 1, 1991
6255-f: deposit, October 21, 1965; gift July 1, 1991
6255-g: deposit, October 21, 1965; gift July 1, 1991
6255-h: deposit, December 30, 1966; gift July 1, 1991
6255-i: deposit, February 13, 1968; gift July 1, 1991
6255-j: deposit, March 13, 1970; gift July 1, 1991
6255-k: purchase, September 3, 2003

Descriptive Summary

Repository: Special Collections, University of Virginia Library
Accession number: 6255 through 6255-k
Title: Papers of Louisa May Alcott 1848 (1863-1888) 1956
Physical Characteristics: 312 items (3 boxes).
Language: English

Scope and Content

The Papers of Louisa May Alcott consists of literary manuscripts, correspondence, legal documents, photographs, and other miscellaneous items. Correspondence discusses her literary career, the writing and publication of her novels and short stories, her family, friends, financial affairs, her health and physicians, and her social life. In addition, there are references to the Concord School of Philosophy, and the career of artist Abigail May Alcott.

Correspondents include: Abigail May Alcott, Amos Bronson Alcott, John Sewall Pratt Alcott, Ariadne Blish, Lydia Maria Francis Child, William Warland Clapp, Mary Mapes Dodge, J.R. Elliott, ed. of Flag of our union; Daniel Sharp Ford, Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, Horace B. Fuller, Laura Hosmer, A.K. Loring, Thomas Niles, William J. Niles, J.R. Osgood, Lydia Dodge Cabot Parker, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Anna Alcott Pratt, James Redpath, Sampson Low, Son & Marston, London; Scribner & Company, New York; Tauchitz, publishers, Leipzig; Howard Malcom Ticknor, William Hayes Ward.

There is also correspondence and documents regarding the will and estate of Miss Alcott; and correspondence between John S.P. Alcott and Jessie Bonstelle Stuart regarding the dramatization of Little Women. There are complete manuscripts for many of her short stories; and pages from the following: An Old Fashioned Girl, Daisy's Ball, Jack and Jill, Jo's Boys, and The Pickwick. Printed material includes obituaries of Miss Alcott, and reviews of her works. There are also photographs, a silhouette, and a portrait of Miss Alcott.

Biographical/Historical Information

Nineteenth-century American writer Louisa May Alcott was the author of the acclaimed and beloved children's classic Little Women and numerous other popular works for children. Though she produced adult novels and stories as well, Alcott is most celebrated for her children's fiction, which includes the eight novels grouped under the "Little Women" series. Autobiographical in nature, Alcott's "Little Women" books were modeled after her parents and sisters as well as friends and neighbors in her native New England, and she is credited with being a pioneer in the creation of realistic fiction for children. Her novels are noted for their perceptive and highly entertaining accounts of childhood, for her portrayal of children as multi-dimensional, thinking individuals, and for her lively and warm depictions of family life. Alcott enjoyed widespread popularity in her lifetime as a children's author, while today books like Little Women and Little Men--which have been translated into numerous foreign languages--are still read and appreciated by children around the world.

Alcott was born on November 29, 1832, in Germantown, Pennsylvania, the second of four daughters of Amos Bronson Alcott, a noted transcendentalist philosopher and educator, and Abigail May, a descendant of one of Boston's more prominent families. Money was scarce in the Alcott family; the eccentric Amos Alcott's various social and educational experiments, and his inability to maintain a stable income, often brought the family to the brink of poverty. One particularly grand failure--a utopian community called Fruitlands established by Amos in Harvard, Massachusetts--was a turning point for the young Louisa. From the young age of twelve, she decided to become responsible as a provider for her family, a resolve which lasted her whole life.

Alcott was predominantly raised in Concord, Massachusetts, just outside of Boston. While money was scarce during Louisa's upbringing, intellectual and family life were exceptionally rich. Never formally educated, Louisa and her sisters were taught at home by their father, who brought them into contact with some of the great intellectuals of the day, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller. Louisa, who tutored Emerson's daughter Ellen, spent many hours in Emerson's library, where she read classics of both philosophy and literature. Alcott was very appreciative of the unconventional teaching methods pursued by her father. "Very happy hours they were to us, for my father taught in the wise way which unfolds what lies in the child's nature, as a flower blooms, rather than crammed it, like a Strasburg goose, with more than it could digest," she wrote in her journal collected in Louisa May Alcott: Her Life, Letters and Journals. The Alcotts were a progressively minded family, and Louisa, like the rest of her family, was a supporter of a number of reform causes, including women's suffragmente, coeducation, and the abolition of slavery.

Domestic life in the Alcott household was one marked by hard work, a teaching of skills such as sewing and clothes-making, and an encouragement of playtime and independent thinking. Alcott's beloved mother was her closest friend and confidant, who encouraged the precocious and headstrong Louisa to lead a life of independence and high values. Each of the Alcott girls was required to keep journals which their parents regularly read, and Louisa particularly valued her mother's comments.

Around the age of sixteen, Alcott moved with her family to Boston, and the city-life was stressful for a girl accustomed to living and playing in the hills and countryside. Although financial burdens continued to fall upon Louisa, her sisters, and her mother, charity and volunteer work were always priorities for the family. In 1850, Louisa began work as a teacher after her sister Anna married, and around this time she also began working very hard at becoming a writer. Louisa found she could readily make money by turning out sentimental and thriller stories for adult magazines, and she became a regular contributor to a number of periodicals, often writing "blood and thunder" stories of passion and revenge under the pseudonym of A. M. Barnard. Louisa longed to do something more serious, however, and began working on two novels for adults. Although she had no particular intent to become a children's writer, her first book, Flower Fables, published when she was twenty-three, was a collection of fairy stories she had originally written while she was a tutor for Emerson's daughter, Ellen.

In 1858, Alcott's sister Elizabeth died after a long illness during which Louisa had provided much care. When the Civil War broke out three years later, Alcott worked at a Union hospital in the District of Columbia. Alcott's letters to her family recounting her nursing experiences were published in 1863 as Hospital Sketches, and earned Alcott a fair amount of critical and commercial success. After only a month at the hospital, however, she contracted typhoid fever, which committed her to long periods of bed rest, and which would impair her health for the rest of her life.

Still wanting more new experiences, and frustrated by the unfavorable reception of her next work, an adult novel entitled Moods published in 1865, Alcott travelled to Europe as the companion of an invalid friend. When she returned in July of 1866, she soon began work on more magazine stories. In 1867, she became editor of a children's monthly magazine, Merry's Museum, the same year that Thomas Niles, an editor at Alcott's publisher Roberts Brothers, approached her with the prospect of writing a girls' book. Although she was hesitant, Alcott began working in May of the following year on what would become Little Women, drawing upon the real-life characters and experiences of her parents and three sisters, Anna, Elizabeth, and May.

Written in six weeks in 1868, Little Women, however, proved Alcott tremendously wrong. The book was an instant sensation as readers relished the autobiographical characters of Jo, Meg, Amy, and Beth, and their parents Mr. and Mrs. March. A second volume was quickly planned and written in two months, and in 1869 was published as Little Women or, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy, Part Second. Both critically and commercially successful, Little Women follows the four March sisters as they strive to improve upon their characters and become "good girls." The novel made giant strides in providing realistic fiction for children, and also in providing a new scope for the traditional "family" novel.

Critics consider Little Women Alcott's masterpiece, yet she followed its success with numerous stories and novels that continued to very popular among her reading fans. Seven of these novels are often grouped with Little Women under the "Little Women" series: An Old-Fashioned Girl, Little Men, Eight Cousins, Rose in Bloom, Under the Lilacs, Jack and Jill, and Jo's Boys and How they Turned Out. These novels follow the lives of the March sisters and their families as they grow older, in addition to the relatives and residents of the New England towns where they lived. The novels demonstrate many of Alcott's beliefs, including the shallowness of materialism, a belief in coeducation and other educational reforms held by her father, and a feminism which supported the idea of self-dependence for women and criticized many of the social customs expected of them.

Alcott was also a prolific author of short stories for children, many which were collected in a series of books entitled Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag. Her success as a writer brought her much fame and financial security in her lifetime, and she continued to provide for her mother and father, as well as other members of her family. She served as legal guardian of her sister May's daughter Louisa, and later also adopted her sister Anna's son, John Sewell Pratt. Alcott herself was never married, once remarking that writing seemed to be her intended companion for life. Alcott died on March 6, 1888, two days after her father's death. While she was the most successful and prolific children's author of her day, Alcott continues to be most noted for her achievement in Little Women.

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