FOR FURTHER READING

Biographies and Primary Sources

Alcott, Louisa May. The Journals of Louisa May Alcott. Edited by Joel Myerson, Daniel Shealy, and Madeleine B. Stern. Boston: Little, Brown, 1989.

—. The Selected Letters of Louisa May Alcott. Edited by Joel Myerson, Daniel Shealy, and Madeleine B. Stern. Boston: Little, Brown, 1987.

Bedell, Madelon. The Alcotts: Biography of a Family. New York: Clarkson Potter, 1980.

Cheney, Ednah Dow, ed. Louisa May Alcott: Her Life, Letters and Journals. Boston: Little, Brown, 1928.

Elbert, Sarah. A Hunger for Home: Louisa May Alcott and Little Women. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1984.

Saxton, Martha. Louisa May: A Modern Biography of Louisa May Alcott. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977.

Stern, Madeleine B. Louisa May Alcott: A Biography. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1999. A new edition of the standard Alcott biography.

—. Louisa May Alcott: From Blood & Thunder to Hearth & Home. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998.

Reference Texts

Eiselein, Gregory, and Anne K. Phillips, eds. The Louisa May Alcott Encyclopedia. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001.

Payne, Alma J. Louisa May Alcott: A Reference Guide. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1980.

Lesser-known Works by Alcott

Alternative Alcott. Edited and with an introduction by Elaine Showalter. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1988. Includes selections from Hospital Sketches, An Old-Fashioned Girl, Work, and many others.

The Feminist Alcott: Stories of a Woman’s Power. Edited and with an introduction by Madeleine B. Stem. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1996. Includes “Pauline’s Passion and Punishment,” “V.V.: or, Plots and Counterplots,” “Behind a Mask: or, A Woman’s Power,” and “Taming a Tartar.”

The Inheritance. Edited by Joel Myerson and Daniel Shealy. New York: Penguin, 1998. Alcott’s first novel, written when she was seventeen years old.

A Long Fatal Love Chase. Edited by Kent Bicknell. New York: Dell, 1995. Unpublished as too sensational during Alcott’s lifetime.

A Marble Woman: Unknown Thrillers of Louisa May Alcott. Edited by Madeleine B. Stern. New York: Avon, 1976. Includes letters between Alcott and her publisher, “V.V.: or, Plots and Counterplots,” “A Marble Woman: or, The Mysterious Model,” “The Skeleton in the Closet,” “A Whisper in the Dark,” and “Perilous Play.”

Critical Studies

Alberghene, Janice M. and Beverly Lyon Clark, eds. Little Women and the Feminist Imagination: Criticism, Controversy, Personal Essays. New York: Garland Publishing, 1999. Collected essays and commentary by scholars.

Delamar, Gloria T. Louisa May Alcott and “Little Women”: Biography, Critique, Publications, Poems, Songs and Contemporary Relevance. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1990. Includes excerpts from reviews, polls, and commentary.

Keyser, Elizabeth Lennox. Little Women: A Family Romance. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1999. Part of the Twayne’s Masterwork Studies series. A psychological reading.

—. Whispers in the Dark: The Fiction of Louisa May Alcott. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1993. Examines Alcott’s sensational stories, children’s literature, and adult novels to reveal her subversion of conventional women’s values.

MacDonald, Ruth K. Louisa May Alcott. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1983. Part of Twayne’s United States Authors series. Establishes Alcott’s pragmatism in contrast to her father’s idealism; discusses the March family stories at length.

Stern, Madeleine B., ed. Critical Essays on Louisa May Alcott. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1984.

Strickland, Charles. Victorian Domesticity: Families in the Life and Art of Louisa May Alcott. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1985.

Books with Critical Studies of Alcott

Auerbach, Nina. Communities of Women: An Idea in Fiction. Cam-bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978. Includes studies of Little Women, as well as of Charlotte Brontë’s Villette, Henry James’s The Bostonians, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss lean Brodie.

Baym, Nina. Woman’s Fiction: A Guide to Novels by and about Women in America, 1820-1870. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1979. Comprehensive study; includes information on two of Jo’s favorite novelists, E.D.E.N. Southworth and Susan Warner.

Foster, Shirley. What Katy Read: Feminist Re-readings of “Classic” Stories for Girls. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1995. Chapter on Little Women, as well as on Susan Warner’s The Wide, Wide World (mentioned in Little Women), Charlotte Yonge’s The Daisy Chain, L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, and Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, among others.

Showalter, Elaine. Sister’s Choice: Tradition and Change in American Women’s Writing. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991. Section on Little Women, as well as on Kate Chopin’s The Awakening and Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth.