NOTES TO THE LETTERS

1 Unless otherwise indicated, the letters in this section were first published in Ednah Dow Cheney’s Louisa May Alcott: Her Life, Letters, and Journals (1889). Dates appearing in brackets are supplied by Myerson and Shealy’s Selected Letters, in which all of the following letters appear. Alcott’s letters to Lucy Stone, Maria S. Porter, William Warland Clapp, Jr., and the Woman’s Journal were also reprinted in Madeleine B. Stern’s “Louisa Alcott’s Feminist Letters,” Studies in the American Renaissance 1978, ed. Joel Myerson (Boston: Twayne, 1978).

2 Ellipses in this letter appear in Cheney and are retained in Myerson and Shealy’s Selected Letters.

3 This letter, undated in Cheney, is tentatively dated by Myerson and Shealy as August 1860.

4 This letter first appeared in Annie M. L. Clark, The Alcotts in Harvard (1902).

5 Alcott’s letters to Moncure Daniel Conway and to Mr. Ayer first appeared in Myerson and Shealy’s Selected Letters and are reprinted here with the kind permission of the Estate of Theresa W. Pratt.

6 The letters to the Lukens sisters and to Maggie Lukens were first published by Edward W. Bok in “Louisa May Alcott’s Letters to Five Girls,” Ladies Home Journal 13, no. 5 (April 1896).

7 This letter to Lucy Stone appeared in the New York Daily Tribune (15 October 1873), and was reprinted in History of Woman Suffrage, edited by Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

8 This letter first appeared in Maria S. Porter’s “Recollections of Louisa May Alcott,” New England Magazine (March 1892).

9 This letter was first printed in the Woman’s Journal 7 (15 July 1876).

10 Alcott’s letter to True first appeared in St. Nicholas 15 (May 1888).

11 The comma between Abby May and Alcott may be a misprint, either introduced or reproduced by Cheney and preserved by Myerson and Shealy. Although it is possible that Alcott is referring to her mother by her maiden name and her father by his surname, it seems more likely that she is referring only to her mother, Abigail May Alcott.

12 Alcott’s letter to Clapp was first published in the Boston Morning Journal (8 March 1883) and the Woman’s Journal 14 (10 March 1883).

13 This letter to Stone first appeared in the History of Woman Suffrage.