1832
Born November 29 in Germantown, Pennsylvania, the second child of Abigail May Alcott (known as “Abba”) and Amos Bronson Alcott. (Father, known as Bronson, was born in poverty in rural Connecticut in 1799 and left school at thirteen to work as an itinerant peddler; an autodidact, he became a schoolteacher and education reformer, publishing Observations on the Principles and Methods of Infant Instruction in 1830. Mother, born 1800 into a Boston Unitarian family, married Bronson in Boston in 1830; they moved to Germantown in 1831 to open a school. Their first child, Anna, was born in Philadelphia on March 16, 1831.)
1833–35
Father meticulously records his observations of Alcott’s infancy and early education. The family returns to Boston in July 1834 in financial distress. In September, with the help of his wife’s family and school reformer Elizabeth Peabody, father founds the experimental Temple School; students include relatives or relatives-in-law of Melville, Hawthorne, Emerson, and John Quincy Adams. Sister Elizabeth Sewall Alcott (“Lizzie”) is born on June 24, 1835. Father becomes a vegetarian; meets Ralph Waldo Emerson and visits him at Concord.
1836–37
Accompanies father to the Temple School, where he reads Wordsworth and the Gospels to students. Father joins Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, George Ripley, Orestes Brownson, and others to start the Transcendentalist Club. Margaret Fuller begins teaching at the Temple School. Father’s Conversations with Children on the Gospels is published in 1837; its liberal theology and discussion of pregnancy create a scandal that, along with the financial panic of 1837, forces the Temple School to close.
1838
Father teaches school in the family home; Emerson encourages him to write. Mother suffers a miscarriage. Alcott runs away from home about this time; is punished by being tied to the sofa.
1839
Father admits an African American girl, Susan Robinson, to his school and loses nearly all of his students; gives up professional teaching. Mother gives birth to a son, who dies after only a few hours.
1840
Family moves to Concord, where they live in a cottage on two acres near the Concord River. Sister Abigail May Alcott (“May”) is born July 26.
1841
Writes her first poem, “The Robin.” Attends school with Lizzie in Emerson’s home, and visits her mother’s family in Boston. Father lectures in Concord and nearby towns.
1842
Father travels to England for six months, where he visits Alcott House, an experimental school named in his honor, and returns home in October with Henry Wright, the director of Alcott House, and a disciple, Charles Lane. Mother notices Alcott’s fondness for writing and gives her a pencil case for her tenth birthday.
1843
In June, the family moves with Charles Lane and his son William to a farm near Harvard, Massachusetts, where they found Fruitlands, a utopian community, and attempt to live as a “consociate family”; others, including a dietary reformer and an advocate of nudism, join them for varying intervals. They live mainly on bread, apples, potatoes, and water; the burden of farmwork falls mainly on Abba. Alcott helps with housework, chores, and childcare; acts out plays with her sisters; reads Plutarch, Byron, Dickens, Maria Edgeworth, and Oliver Goldsmith.
1844
Fruitlands fails in January. Charles Lane and his son join a Shaker community; the Alcotts move to rented rooms in Still River, Massachusetts, and live on Abba’s inheritance from her father and donations from the Mays and Emerson. Alcott attends the Still River village school in the summer.
1845–46
In January, with mother’s inheritance and help from Emerson, family buys a house in Concord, which father names “Hillside.” Alcott is given a bedroom of her own; she is educated at home by her father and Sophia Foord, a young teacher who subsequently opens a schoolroom in Emerson’s barn. Acts out Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress at home with sisters.
1847
In February, family shelters a fugitive slave from Maryland, who spends a week at Hillside. Alcott reads Hawthorne, Charlotte Brontë, Shakespeare, Dante, Carlyle, and Goethe (Emerson lends her Wilhelm Meister). In July, family visits Thoreau at Walden Pond, where father had helped him build a cabin. Mother takes a job at a water-cure hotel in Waterford, Maine, in the fall; Anna teaches in Walpole, New Hampshire.
1848
Alcott reads and supports the “Declaration of Sentiments” of the Seneca Falls women’s rights convention. Family moves to Boston. Mother is hired to serve as missionary to the poor by the South Friendly Society, a philanthropic group. Alcott runs the household while Anna teaches.
1849
Writes novel The Inheritance (it is not published until after her death); earns money teaching and sewing. Alcott sisters found Pickwick Club and publish a family newspaper, The Olive Leaf.
1850
Alcott teaches reading and Sunday school classes in the South End of Boston; dreams of becoming an actress. Reads Frederika Bremer’s Easter Offering and Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, both just published. Entire family afflicted with smallpox, but all recover. In August, mother starts an “Intelligence Service,” or employment agency.
1851
Alcott is inspired by speakers at an antislavery meeting, including William Henry Channing and Wendell Phillips: “I felt ready to do anything,—fight or work, hoot or cry.” Works as a domestic servant in Dedham, Massachusetts, but is “starved & frozen” there, and quits. Earns a total of $40 as governess for the Lovering family, and $40 by sewing and seamstress work. Her first publication, “Sunlight,” a poem, appears in September in Peterson’s Magazine under pseudonym Flora Fairfield.
1852
Publishes story “The Rival Painters” in Olive Branch, a weekly paper enjoyed by the Alcott sisters. Hears transcendentalist Theodore Parker preach on “The Public Function of Women.” Teaches school with Anna at home. Reads Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Hillside purchased by the Hawthornes; mother gives up employment agency and takes in lodgers in their rented house in Beacon Hill. Story “The Masked Marriage” published in December.
1853
In January starts a small school in the family parlor, with around ten pupils. Spends summer in Leicester, Massachusetts, working as a domestic; returns to teaching in October. Anna takes a job teaching in Syracuse, New York. Father embarks on a midwestern speaking tour.
1854
Father returns in February, without having earned the money the family had hoped for. In May, father joins the Vigilance Committee, which makes a failed attempt to rescue Anthony Burns, a fugitive slave, from the Boston courthouse. Alcott visits Anna in Syracuse. “The Rival Prima Donnas” published in November in the Saturday Evening Gazette. Flower Fables, a collection of fairy stories written for Emerson’s daughter and dedicated to Abba, is published in December in an edition of 1,600 copies by George Briggs. The book earns Alcott only $32, but receives good reviews.
1855
Attends plays in Boston. Family spends the summer rent-free in a relative’s house in Walpole, New Hampshire. Fanny Kemble visits; Alcott and Anna act in amateur theatricals. Family returns to Boston in the fall. Alcott hears William Makepeace Thackeray lecture in December.
1856
Publishes stories and poems in the Saturday Evening Gazette; earns money sewing. Lizzie and May contract scarlet fever from a poor family that their mother is taking care of, and Lizzie never fully recovers. Alcott attends Theodore Parker’s Sunday evening discussions and meets William Lloyd Garrison. In December, works as tutor for Alice Lovering, a young invalid. Wears her first silk dress (a gift from an aunt) on New Year’s Eve.
1857
Works as a tutor, writer, and seamstress; sends money to her mother. Reads a biography of Charlotte Brontë, and notes in her journal, “I can’t be a C.B., but I may do a little something yet.” In September, family buys a house in Concord and begins renovations.
1858
Alcott and her mother nurse Lizzie, whose illness worsens; Lizzie dies in March. In April, Anna becomes engaged to John Pratt, son of Minot Pratt, the director of Brook Farm; they agree to postpone the wedding until the family has recovered from Lizzie’s death. Alcott acts in productions of the Concord Dramatic Society: “Perhaps it is acting, not writing, I’m meant for.” Family moves into new home in July; Alcott returns to Boston as Alice Lovering’s tutor.
1859
Writes in March: “Busy life teaching, writing, sewing, getting all I can from lectures, books, and good people. Life is my college. May I graduate well, and earn some honors!” Father appointed Superintendent of Schools in Concord. John Brown speaks at Concord Town Hall in May; family celebrates his attack at Harpers Ferry in October and mourns his execution in December.
1860
Publishes a poem, “With a Rose That Bloomed on the Day of John Brown’s Martyrdom,” in The Liberator; an antislavery story, “M.L.,” is rejected by an editor afraid of offending southern readers. Begins work on novel Moods. Anna marries John Pratt in May. Alcott sees her farce Nat Bachelor’s Pleasure Trip performed in Boston. Theodore Parker dies in June. Family hosts John Brown’s widow when she visits Concord in July. Attends lecture by health reformer Dr. Dio Lewis; notes Concord is “convulsed just now with a Gymnastic fever.” Story “A Modern Cinderella: or, The Little Old Shoe,” based on Anna’s romance with John Pratt, is published in The Atlantic Monthly.
1861
Begins writing novel Work (at first titled “Success”), and revises Moods. Writes a song for Concord school festival hailing “our John Browns” that causes controversy; Emerson defends her and reads the song to the assembly. When the Civil War begins in April, writes: “I’ve often longed to see a war, and now I have my wish. I long to be a man; but as I can’t fight, I will content myself with working for those who can.” John Brown’s daughters board at Orchard House, parents’ house in Concord. Alcott reads Fanny Burney’s Evelina, Fielding’s, Amelia, and Carlyle’s The French Revolution. Visits cousins in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.
1862
Alcott shows publisher James T. Fields manuscript of “How I Went Out to Service”; he tells her, “Stick to your teaching, Miss Alcott. You can’t write.” Teaches at a Boston kindergarten from January to April. Meets writer Rebecca Harding: “A handsome, fresh, quiet woman, who says she never had any troubles, though she writes about woes. I told her I had had lots of troubles; so I write jolly tales; and we wondered why we each did so.” Attends Thoreau’s funeral in May. On December 11, travels to Washington, D.C., where she serves as an army nurse at Union Hotel Hospital.
1863
Story “Pauline’s Passion and Punishment” wins $100 prize and appears in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. At the hospital, contracts typhoid fever and suffers hallucinations; is treated with calomel, a compound containing mercury, which possibly permanently damages her health. Father brings her home, where she recovers over several months. Anna’s first son born in March. Letters about Alcott’s nursing experience, printed in The Boston Commonwealth beginning in May, are unexpectedly popular; in August, James Redpath publishes them as Hospital Sketches. A poem, “Thoreau’s Flute,” and an antislavery story, “My Contraband; or, The Brothers,” appear in Atlantic Monthly. Encouraged by praise for Hospital Sketches and new demand for her work, finishes Moods.
1864
On Picket Duty, and Other Tales published in January. Reads Sir Walter Scott, Goethe, Fanny Burney, Dickens, and Longfellow’s Tales of a Wayside Inn. Continues writing Work. In July, publishes a collection of “Colored Soldiers’ Letters” in The Commonwealth. At her publisher J. K. Loring’s suggestion, cuts ten chapters from Moods; the novel is published in late December and “makes a little stir.”
1865
Attends January convention of Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. Thriller “V.V.: or, Plots and Counterplots” is serialized (under pseudonym A. M. Barnard) in The Flag of Our Union in February; several other “sensation stories” appear later in the year. In March, is invited to dinner by Henry James Sr. and “treated like the Queen of Sheba”; Henry James Jr., who is “very friendly” at dinner, gives Moods a mixed review in the July North American Review. Travels to Europe in July as a companion to Anna Weld, an invalid; visits England, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Switzerland, and France. In Switzerland befriends Ladislas Wisniewski, a young traveler who had fought in the Polish rebellion against Russia in 1863.
1866
Spends January through April in Nice; decides to come home early, as Anna Weld is not interested in travel and “my time is too valuable to be wasted.” In May joins Ladislas Wisniewski in Paris; sees sights and attends the theater. Travels to London, where she meets a wide circle of people including Mathilde Blind, a poet; Barbara Bodichon, an advocate for women’s rights and education; Frances Cobbe, an essayist, philanthropist, and feminist reformer; Elizabeth Garrett, a pioneering doctor; philosopher John Stuart Mill; and political leaders Benjamin Disraeli and William Gladstone. Returns to Concord in July. Novel “A Modern Mephistopheles, or the Long Fatal Love Chase” rejected as “too sensational.”
1867
Thriller “The Abbot’s Ghost; or, Maurice Treherne’s Temptation” serialized in January. Overworked and ill, is unable to write from January to June. In August, travels to Clarke’s Island, in the Connecticut River near Northfield, Massachusetts, with May and a group of Concord friends. In September, is commissioned by Thomas Niles of Roberts Brothers to write a story for girls, and agrees to try. Accepts editorship of the children’s magazine Merry’s Museum. Morning-Glories, and Other Stories published in December. Hears Charles Dickens lecture, and is “disappointed.”
1868
In February, writes article “Happy Women”: “I put in my list all the busy, useful, independent spinsters I know, for liberty is a better husband than love to many of us.” Acts in a charity church fair. From May to June, writes the first part of Little Women, doubtful of its chances. Published by Roberts Brothers in September, the book is a popular and critical success, and quickly sells out its first printing. Niles asks for a sequel, which Alcott begins in November. Attends lecture by Unitarian minister John Weiss on “Woman Suffrage.” An English edition of the first part of Little Women is published in December.
1869
Sends the second part of Little Women to Roberts Brothers on January 1; it is published in April. Puts her family’s financial affairs in order: “Paid up all the debts, thank the Lord!—every penny that money can pay,—and now I feel as if I could die in peace.” Spends July at Rivière de Loup, Quebec, and August, with May, at Mt. Desert, Maine. Roberts Brothers publishes Hospital Sketches and Camp and Fireside Stories. Continues to suffer from ill health.
1870
Novel An Old-Fashioned Girl published by Roberts Brothers in March. In April, sails for Europe with May and May’s friend Alice Bartlett; travels through France to Switzerland (which she finds “crammed with refugees” from the Franco-Prussian War), and then throughout Italy to Rome, where she takes an apartment. Brother-in-law John Pratt dies in late November, leaving two sons.
1871
In January, in Rome, begins Little Men: Life at Plumfield With Jo’s Boys; feels she “must be a father now” to her nephews and writes the novel in order to support them. Spends March in Albano and part of April in Venice; travels to London via Munich, Cologne, and Antwerp. Little Men is published in London in May. Returns to Boston in June, leaving May in Europe to pursue her study of art; by the end of the month, Roberts Brothers in Boston prints 38,000 copies of Little Men. Falls ill soon after she arrives home; takes morphine to sleep.
1872
Aunt Jo’s Scrap Bag: My Boys published in January. Writes “Shawl Straps,” an account of her 1870–71 European tour, for the Christian Union; it appears as a book in November. Attends lectures by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Octavius Brooks Frothingham, and Rabbi Max Lilienthal. Continues writing Work.
1873
Visits Newport, Rhode Island; meets writer Helen Hunt Jackson. Finishes Work. Gives May $1,000 to return to London to study art. Spends summer in Boston with sick mother. Roberts Brothers publishes Work: A Story of Experience in June; “Transcendental Wild Oats,” a fictionalized account of the family’s life at Fruitlands in the 1840s, is published in December, along with a story collection, Aunt Jo’s Scrap Bag. Cupid and Chow Chow, Etc.
1874
In January, writes: “When I had the youth I had no money; now I have the money I have no time; and when I get the time, if I ever do, I shall have no health to enjoy life. . . . Life always was a puzzle to me, and gets more mysterious as I go on.” In February, meets English novelist Charles Kingsley, who is on an American tour. Publishes “How I Went Out to Service,” an account of her early experience as a domestic, in June. Suffers from poor health while working on novel Eight Cousins (“was in such pain could not do much . . . no sleep without morphine”), but finishes in December.
1875
Father, on a western speaking tour, writes that he is “adored as the grandfather of Little Women.” Alcott signs autographs at Vassar, is “rather lionized” in New York, and at home receives a constant stream of celebrity-seeking visitors. (“Fame is an expensive luxury. I can do without it,” she writes.) Attends Woman’s Congress in Syracuse in the fall; is surrounded by autograph hunters. Eight Cousins: or, The Aunt-Hill published by Roberts Brothers. Stays at a New York hotel in November and December; visits literary salons, clubs, and theaters, “very gay for a country-mouse.”
1876
Travels to Philadelphia in January. Hears Henry Ward Beecher preach, but does not like him. Attends Centennial Ball in Boston. Nurses mother. In September, again sends May to Europe to study art: “The money I invest in her pays the sort of interest I like.” Novel Rose in Bloom. A Sequel to “Eight Cousins” published by Roberts Brothers in November; the first printing of 10,000 copies quickly sells out.
1877
A Modern Mephistopheles published anonymously in the Roberts Brothers’ No Name Series. (“It has been simmering ever since I read Faust last year. Enjoyed doing it, being tired of providing moral pap for the young,” she writes in her journal; the book bears the same title as the novel rejected in 1866, but is a different work.) Helps Anna purchase a house in Concord. Is bedridden for several weeks in July. Finishes Under the Lilacs as she takes care of her mother, who is ill; in November, mother dies. Roberts Brothers publishes Aunt Jo’s Scrap Bag. My Girls, Etc.
1878
Stays with Anna while they mourn their mother. May marries Ernest Nieriker, a Swiss businessman, in Paris in March. Alcott attempts to write a memoir of Abba, but finds “it is too soon, and I am not well enough.” Nurses Anna, who has a broken leg. Roberts Brothers publishes Under the Lilacs. In November, begins novella “Diana and Persis,” based on May’s romance and marriage.
1879
Acts at an authors’ carnival at the Boston Music Hall in January. Reads Mary Wollstonecraft. Sets up trust funds for the education of Anna’s children. Honored along with Frances Hodgson Burnett at a gala dinner of Boston’s Papyrus Club in February. Enjoys Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore. Reads for an audience of 400 men at Concord Prison. Registers to vote in local elections, the first woman in Concord to do so, and in September canvasses for woman suffrage. Reads at a women’s prison in Sherborn, Massachusetts, preferring it to the “armed wardens & ‘knock down & drag out’ methods” of the Concord Prison. In October, Roberts Brothers publishes Aunt Jo’s Scrap Bag: Jimmy’s Cruise in the Pinafore. Father, who had hosted a school of philosophy in July, embarks on a two-month western tour. May dies in Paris on December 29, six weeks after giving birth to Louise Marie (called Louisa May, or “Lulu”) Nieriker.
1880
Mourns May: “the wave of sorrow kept rolling over me & I could only weep & wait till the tide ebbed again.” Finishes novel Jack and Jill in February; attends Emerson’s 100th lecture at the Concord Lyceum. In March, joins nineteen women in voting at Concord town meeting. Writes a stage version of Jules Verne’s Michel Strogoff, but does not attempt to have it published or produced. Spends July and August in York, Maine. Roberts Brothers publishes a new edition of Little Women, with illustrations by Frank T. Merrill. Adopts niece Lulu Nieriker, who arrives from Europe in September. Pays poll taxes for the first time. Jack and Jill: A Village Story is published by Roberts Brothers in October.
1881
Spends July in Nonquitt, on the Massachusetts coast. In October, attempts to form a woman suffrage club: “the women need so much coaxing it is hard work.” Writes preface for an edition of Theodore Parker’s prayers. Suffers increasingly from ill health.
1882
Helps found a temperance society in Concord, and writes short articles to aid its cause. Revised edition of Moods published. Emerson dies in April: “Our best & greatest American gone. . . . I can never tell all he has been to me from the time I sang Mignon’s song under his window, a little girl, & wrote letters à la Bettine to him, my Goethe, at 15, up through my hard years when his essays on Self-Reliance, Character, Compensation, Love & Friendship helped me to understand myself & life & God & Nature.” Writes article on Emerson for The Youth’s Companion. Spends summer at Nonquitt. Begins work on Jo’s Boys in October. Father is left paralyzed by stroke, and never fully recovers. Roberts Brothers publishes Aunt Jo’s Scrap Bag: An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving and Proverb Stories.
1883
Cares for her father and Lulu. Spends summer at Nonquitt. Attends lectures by Pratap Chunder Mozoomdar (“Curious to hear a Hindoo tell how the life of Christ impressed him”) and Matthew Arnold.
1884
Sends niece to kindergarten. In June, sells Orchard House and buys a beach house in Nonquitt, where she spends the summer. Tries to work on Jo’s Boys but finds “my head won’t bear work yet,” and puts it aside. Roberts Brothers publishes Spinning-Wheel Stories in November.
1885
Sees Boston “mind-cure” practitioner Anna B. Newman, but after many visits finds the treatment unsuccessful: “my ills are not imaginary.” Contributes a letter to the April 18 Woman’s Journal about her experience. Reads George Eliot’s Life as Related in Her Letters and Journals, just published, and Charles de Montalembert’s Life of St. Elizabeth. Spends summer in Concord and Nonquitt. Rereads old letters and decides to burn many of them. Rents a large house for family in Boston’s Louisburg Square.
1886
In July, finishes Jo’s Boys, and How They Turned Out, the concluding novel in the March family trilogy, which is published by Roberts Brothers in September. Hears Julia Ward Howe lecture on “Women in Plato’s Republic.” Her doctor, Rhoda Lawrence, forbids her to work on novels “or anything that will need much thought.” Suffers from pain and insomnia. Spends December at Dr. Lawrence’s nursing home in Roxbury. Reviews Frances Hodgson Burnett’s Little Lord Fauntleroy.
1887
Plans to adopt her nephew John Pratt. Visits Princeton for a month with Dr. Lawrence; her health improves in the summer, and she is able to take long walks again and ride. Suffers from weakness and pain in her limbs, and returns to Dr. Lawrence’s in the fall for treatment. A Garland for Girls is published in December.
1888
Writes occasionally, and sews clothes for poor children when she is unable to write. In early March visits father, whose health has worsened; is herself in violent pain the next day, and lapses into unconsciousness. Dies, probably of intestinal cancer or an autoimmune disease such as lupus, on March 6, two days after her father. Buried in the family plot at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord.