Abbreviations
Prologue: “Our Book”
1. Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend (New York: Europa, 2012), 68.
2. Christine King Farris, “Why Reading Matters,” What Kids Are Reading and Why It Matters (Renaissance Learning, 2015), 27. Marley Dias, “Hillary Clinton Faces Her Toughest Interviewer Yet—11-Year-Old Marley Dias,” Elle, Oct. 6, 2016; elle.com. Carla Hayden, “By the Book,” New York Times Book Review, Aug. 3, 2017; nytimes.com. Deirdre Bair, Simone de Beauvoir: A Biography (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990), 69. Patti Smith, Just Kids (New York: HarperCollins, 2010), 10–11. Cindy Cantrell, “Concord’s Orchard House Director Brings Alcott to Japan,” Boston Globe, Feb. 17, 2003; bostonglobe.com. Anderson Cooper and Gloria Vanderbilt, The Rainbow Comes and Goes: A Mother and Son on Life, Love, and Loss (New York: HarperCollins, 2016), 92. Chung cited in Afterlife, 107. Steinem quoted in Lisa O’Kelly, “How Was It for You, Girls?” Observer (London), Feb. 19, 1995, p. 23. “J. K. Rowling: By the Book,” New York Times Book Review, Oct. 11, 2012; nytimes.com. Cynthia Ozick, “The Making of a Writer: Spells, Wishes, Goldfish, Old School Hurts,” New York Times, Jan. 31, 1982, p. BR24. Rosanna Greenstreet, “Q&A: Caitlin Moran,” Guardian, May 4, 2013; theguardian.com.
1. “Pegging away”: The Road to Little Women
1. LMA, May, June 1868, Journals, 165–66. LMAWB, 268–69.
2. LMA to Mary E. Channing Higginson, Oct. 18, [1868], SL, 118.
3. Madeleine B. Stern, Introduction, Journals, 22–23. Ednah Cheney, Louisa May Alcott: The Children’s Friend (Boston: L. Prang, 1888).
4. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays and Lectures (New York: Library of America, 1983), 259. Anne E. Boyd, Writing for Immortality: Women and the Emergence of High Literary Culture in America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 23.
5. ABA, Conversations with Children on the Gospels, vol. 1 (Boston: James Monroe, 1836), xxvii, xviii. ABA quoted in Madelon Bedell, The Alcotts: Biography of a Family (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1980), 245. May Alcott quoted in EO, 261. ABA to LMA in The Letters of A. Bronson Alcott, ed. Richard L. Herrstadt (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1969), 379. AMA quoted in LMAWB, 23. LMA to AMA, Dec. 25, 1854, SL, 11.
6. United States Review quoted in Joyce W. Warren, The (Other) American Traditions: Nineteenth-Century Women Writers (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1993), 1. Elizabeth Stoddard, “Woman in Art.—Rosa Bonheur,” The Aldine 5 (July 1872): 145. Fanny Fern, Ruth Hall and Other Writings, ed. Joyce W. Warren (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005), 116. Hawthorne quoted in Introduction to Selected Letters of Nathaniel Hawthorne, ed. Joel Myerson (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2002), xv.
7. The phrase “anxiety of authorship” is Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s in Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979). LMA to Louisa Caroline Greenwood Bond, Sept. 17, [1860], SL, 61.
8. LMAWB, 155–56. LMA to AMA, Dec. 25, 1854, SL, 11.
9. LMA, “A Modern Cinderella,” Atlantic Monthly 6 (Oct. 1860): 427. I discuss this story and her rocky relationship with the Atlantic Monthly in Boyd, Writing for Immortality, 168–69, 208–10.
10. LMA, November 1859, Journals, 95. LMA to Alfred Whitman, Aug. 4, [1861], SL, 67. I discuss the Atlantic’s treatment of women writers in Boyd, Writing for Immortality, 206.
11. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Experience,” in The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Mary Oliver (New York: Random House, 2009), 310. LMA, May 1861; Oct. 1861; Sept., Oct. 1862; Apr. 1861, Journals, 105, 106, 109, 105.
12. LMA, May, Feb. 1862, Journals, 109, 108.
13. LMA, “Transcendental Wild Oats,” in Alternative Alcott, ed. Elaine Showalter (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1988), 375. LMA quoted in Frederick L. H. Willis, Alcott Memoirs (Boston: Richard G. Badger, 1915), 41.
14. LMA to Alfred Whitman, June 22, [1862], SL, 70.
15. LMA quoted in LaSalle Corbell Picket, Across My Path: Memories of People I Have Known (1916), excerpted in AIHOT, 184–85.
16. LMA, Nov. and Dec. 1862, Journals, 110.
17. LMA, June and Aug. 1863, Journals, 119, 120. Boyd, Writing for Immortality, 212.
18. LMA to Moncure Daniel Conway, Feb. 18, 1865, SL, 108. Boyd, Writing for Immortality, 226–27.
19. LMA, Feb. 1865, Journals, 139.
20. LMA, Dec. 1865 and May 1866, Journals, 145, 151.
21. LMA to Louisa Chandler Moulton, n.d., quoted in ML, 224.
22. LMA, June 1868, Journals, 166. Thomas Niles to LMA, quoted in ML, 228.
23. LMA, Aug. 1868, Journals, 166.
24. LMA, LW, 185. LMA, Nov. 1, 1868, Journals, 167.
25. LMA, Nov. 1, Nov. 17, 1868, Journals, 167. LMA to Samuel Joseph May, Jan. 22, [1869], SL, 122.
26. LMA, “Our Foreign Correspondent,” chap. 7 of Little Women, part two, manuscript, Louisa May Alcott Papers, Vault A35, Unit 1, Folder 5, Concord Free Public Library, Concord, MA.
27. LMA, “Heartache,” chap. 12 of Little Women, part two, manuscript, Louisa May Alcott Papers, Vault A35, Unit 1, Folder 6, Concord Free Public Library, Concord, MA.
28. LMA, Apr. 1868, Journals, 171.
29. Julian Hawthorne, “The Woman Who Wrote Little Women” (1922), in AIHOT, 200–201. LMA, Aug. 1868, Journals, 172.
2. “We really lived most of it”: Making Up Little Women
In writing this chapter, I have consulted the following secondary sources liberally throughout: AIHOT, EO, LMAB, LMAWB, MHIB, ML, and TW (see Abbreviations). Direct citations have been limited for ease of reading.
1. LMA, May 1868, Journals, 165–66. LMA, Aug. 26, 1868, Journals, 166.
2. Letter quoted in Sheryl A. Englund, “Reading the Author in Little Women: A Biography of the Book,” American Transcendental Quarterly 12.3 (Sept. 1998): 206. LMA, Apr. 1855, Journals, 73.
3. LMA, LW, 38–39.
4. ML, 68.
5. Quoted in EO, 99.
6. Quoted in Daniel Shealy, ed., Little Women: An Annotated Edition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 131.
7. The story is recounted in two different sources from friends of the family, with slight variation, reprinted in AIHOT, 215 and 225.
8. Eve LaPlante sees Samuel Joseph May as the prototype for Mr. March (personal conversation). She discusses his and AMA’s progressive politics extensively in ML.
9. LMA, LW, 69.
10. Quoted in EO, 96.
11. Descriptions of ABA in Frederick H. Willis, in AIHOT, 173. AMA to Samuel Joseph May, Dec. 14, 1852, in MHIB, 185. AMA quoted in Frederick L. H. Willis, AIHOT, 174.
12. LMAWB, 128. Annie M. L. Clark in AIHOT, 113.
13. LMA, Dec. 10, 1843, Journals, 47.
14. EO, 202. Anna, letter to ABA, quoted in EO, 247. Here and elsewhere, the original spelling has been retained in quotations without the inclusion of [sic] to indicate misspellings.
15. LMA quoted in Frank Preston Stearns, AIHOT, 87. AMA quoted in ML, 119. LaPlante, ML, 120.
16. An archivist has discovered that it was common to add a silent “r” to names in New England letters of the period. See “Marmee Dearest,” Letter to the Editor, New York Times, Jan. 3, 2013; nytimes.com. LMA, LW, 68.
17. AMA’s advice summarized by LaPlante in ML, 282. AMA quoted in ML, 138.
18. LaPlante, ML, 192. AMA quoted in LMAWB, 83. LMA, July 1850, Journals, 63. ABA quoted in LMAWB, 350.
19. LMA’s version of her relatives’ impressions of her quoted in ML, 254. Lydia Hosmer Wood in AIHOT, 165.
20. Clara Gowing, in AIHOT, 135.
21. LMA, “Reminiscences,” in AIHOT, 34. Clara Gowing in AIHOT, 135.
22. Clara Gowing in AIHOT, 136. LMA, “Reminiscences,” in AIHOT, 35.
23. LMA, “Reminiscences,” AIHOT, 36. LMA, December 1863, Journals, 122. LMA, “Merry’s Monthly Chat with His Friends,” in LW, 541–43. The girls’ names are also taken from life in the story: Nan, Lu, Beth, and May.
24. ML, 142–43.
25. LMA, 1852, Journals, 67. LMA, “Reminiscences,” AIHOT, 36.
26. LMA, “Reminiscences,” AIHOT, 37.
27. ML, 151, 153–54.
28. EO, 374.
29. LMA, LW, 272.
30. Maria S. Porter in AIHOT, 61–62. See also LMA, Apr. 1862, Journals, 109. LMA, Feb. 1863, Journals, 117.
31. LMA, Apr. 1855, Journals, 73.
32. Matteson describes Lizzie’s likeness to her father and quotes ABA in EO, 186. AMA quoted in LMAWB, 151. Reisen interprets Lizzie’s symptoms as describing “a deep depression bordering on catatonia and requiring hospitalization,” LMAWB, 151. LMA, LW, 253. LMA, 1853 and 1854, Journals, 69, 72.
33. LMA, June 1857, Journals, 85. For homeopathic remedies, see, for instance, A. Gerald Hull, The Homeopathic Examiner, vol. 1 (New York: Henry Ludwig, 1840).
34. LaPlante and Reisen assume rheumatic fever, although her symptoms do not correlate with that disease (see Rachel Hajar, “Rheumatic Fever and Rheumatic Heart Disease a Historical Perspective,” Heart Views 17.3 [Jul.–Sept. 2016]: 120–26). Barton points out that “physicians could not agree whether Lizzie’s afflictions were of the lungs or of the brain,” with no mention of the heart, the afflicted organ in rheumatic fever, TW, 160. Matteson seems to suggest mental ailment, pointing out that “Lizzie’s emotional attachment to the world was diffident and weak,” EO, 230. Susan Bailey, who is working on a biography of Elizabeth Alcott, is examining the possibility of anorexia nervosa (personal conversation). Doctor’s diagnosis in AMA’s diary, quoted in TW, 161. Symptoms in LMAWB, 175. Lizzie’s words to her mother a quote from ABA’s journal in ML, 183.
35. AMA to Samuel Joseph May, Mar. 19, 1858, MHIB, 196. LMA, Mar. 14, 1858, Journals, 89. ABA’s poem quoted in EO, 327.
36. LMA to the Alcott Family, [Oct. 1858], SL, 34.
37. Anna wrote to Alfred Whitman about Louisa’s dream of being a famous author, adding, “Mine you know was to be an actress, Mays to be an artist,” quoted in “The Alcotts Through Thirty Years: Letters to Alfred Whitman,” Harvard Library Bulletin 11 (Autumn 1957), 381. LMA, “The Sister’s Trial,” in LW, 511.
38. LMA, LW, 118.
39. May Alcott to Alfred Whitman, Sept. 25, 1868, quoted in “The Alcotts Through Thirty Years,” 377. Frederick H. Willis called May “childishly tyrannical,” in AIHOT, 181. LMA, Feb. 1864 and Apr. 1878, Journals, 128, 209.
40. May Alcott to Alfred Whitman, Jan. 5, 1869, quoted in “The Alcotts Through Thirty Years,” 377.
41. LMA claims Hawthorne was not Laurie in a letter to Miss Holmes, [ca. 1872], SL, 167. Quotes from Frederick H. Willis, in AIHOT, 171, 170, 180.
42. LMA to Alfred Whitman, Feb. 13, [1858], SL, 42. Alfred Whitman, in AIHOT, 108. LMA to Alfred Whitman, Jan. 6, 1869, SL, 120.
43. LMA to Elizabeth Powell, Mar. 20, [1869], SL, 125. LMA, June 1860, Journals, 99.
44. LMA, Apr. 1860, Journals, 98. Reisen, LMAWB, 193. LMA, LW, 84.
45. LMA, “Reminiscences,” AIHOT, 36. Christine Doyle, “Singing Mignon’s Song: German Literature and Culture in the March Trilogy,” Children’s Literature 31 (2003): 56, 58–59.
46. Reisen, LMAWB, 3.
3. “Fresh, sparkling, . . . full of soul”: The Phenomenon of Little Women
1. Eclectic Magazine in CR, 64.
2. Charlotte Yonge, The Daisy Chain: or, Aspirations. A Family Chronicle (London: John W. Parker and Son, 1860), 21.
3. A.D.T. Whitney, Faith Gartney’s Girlhood (Boston: Loring, 1863), 7.
4. LMA, LW, 11.
5. Boston Daily Evening Transcript in CR, 61. Providence Daily Journal in CR, 62.
6. Daniel Shealy, Introduction, Little Women: An Annotated Edition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 18. “Books for the Young,” The Spectator 42 (Mar. 13, 1869), p. 332.
7. “Little Women,” The Graphic, Nov. 26, 1870, p. 11. Review of Little Women; or, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy, Part Second, London Evening Standard, Nov. 2, 1869, p. 2. “Christmas Books,” Pall Mall Gazette, Dec. 6, 1870, p. 12.
8. Henry James, Review of Eight Cousins, The Nation, in CR, 247. “New Books,” Charleston Daily News, June 28, 1868, p. 2.
9. Zion’s Herald in CR, 64. The Ladies’ Repository, in LW, 549. Thomas Niles to LMA, Oct. 26, 1868, in LW, 419.
10. LMA to Thomas Niles, [1868], https://www.skinnerinc.com/auctions/2658B/lots/5. Current price of book by Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America, http://www.abaa.org/member-articles/louisa-may-alcott-a-checklist-of-first-editions. Boston Daily Evening Transcript, National Anti-Slavery Standard, and [Unknown], in CR, 61, 62, 68, 63.
11. Unidentified newspaper clipping in CR, 69. Joel Myerson and Daniel Shealy, “The Sales of Louisa May Alcott’s Books,” Harvard Library Bulletin n.s., 1.1 (Apr. 1990): 51. LMA to Thomas Niles, [early 1869], SL, 118–19. Shealy, Introduction, Little Women: An Annotated Edition, 22.
12. Reviews quoted in CR, 78, 72, 84. Frank Preston Stearns in AIHOT, 85.
13. Zion’s Herald in CR, 75. For a recent article warning homeschooling parents about the lack of Christianity in Little Women, see http://www.homemakerscorner.com/alcott.htm. LMA, LW, 281. Christian Union quoted in Thomas Niles to LMA, [June 1882], in LW, 426.
14. Billings, Hammatt, Little Women [proof of frontispiece illustration for second part], 1868; Sinclair Hamilton Non-book collection (GC053); Graphic Arts Collection Department, Rare and Special Books Collection, Princeton University Library. LMA to Elizabeth B. Greene, Apr. 1, [1869], SL, 126.
15. James F. O’Gorman, Accomplished in All Departments of Art—Hammatt Billings of Boston, 1818–1874 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), 64.
16. Ibid., 65.
17. Reviews quoted in CR, 88, 90. Sales in Afterlife, 11.
18. Frank Merrill’s drawings, Vault A20, Unit A1, Series I, Drawings, Folders 1 and 2, Concord Free Public Library, Concord, MA. LMA to Thomas Niles, July 20, 1880, SL, 249.
19. LMA, Old-Fashioned Girl (New York: Puffin, 1991), 215–16.
20. For an extensive list of the changes, see “Textual Variants,” in LW, 386–408.
21. Susan R. Gannon, “Getting Cozy with a Classic: Visualizing Little Women (1868–1995),” LWFI, 116. See Shealy, “Note on the Text,” Little Women: An Annotated Edition, x. Thomas Niles to LMA, Jan. 5, 1883, in LW, 427. The Norton Critical, Penguin Classics, and Broadview editions are based on the original 1868–69 text.
22. “Special Notice,” in the back of Little Women Wedded (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Low & Searle, 1872). Advertisement for A Story of Four Little Women in Publishers’ Circular, Oct. 1, 1870, p. 616.
23. Gloria T. Delmar, Louisa May Alcott and “Little Women”: Biography, Critique, Publications, Poems, Songs and Contemporary Relevance (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1990), 196. Catalogue of the British Library. Advertisement in London Evening Standard, Nov. 9, 1872, p. 8. Ward, Lock, and Tyler also published Good Wives serially in its magazine Beeton’s Young Englishwoman in 1873.
24. Discussed in Sarah Elbert, A Hunger for Home: Louisa May Alcott’s Place in American Culture (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987), 217–18.
25. Constance Fenimore Woolson to Linda Guildford [1891], in The Complete Letters of Constance Fenimore Woolson, ed. Sharon Dean (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2012), 464. Anne Boyd Rioux, Constance Fenimore Woolson: Portrait of a Lady Novelist (New York: W. W. Norton, 2016), 72–73.
26. Thomas Niles to LMA, Apr. 4, 1869, in LW, 422. LMA, 1869, Journals, 172, 173, 176.
27. LMA, 1871 and June 1871, Journals, 177, 178.
28. LMA, LM, 109–10, 115.
29. LMA, “Reminiscences,” AIHOT, 35. LMA, LM, 161–62.
30. LMA, LM, 113.
31. LMA, LM, 25, 29.
32. LMA, June 1871, Journals, 178.
33. LMA, quoted in EO, 370.
34. LMA, JB, 38. LMA, July 1872, Journals, 183. LMA to Springfield Republican, May 4, 1869, SL, 127, 128.
35. LMA, Sept. and Oct. 1875, Journals, 196. LMA, JB, 41.
36. The letters are reprinted in SL, 275–80, 285–88, 296–97.
37. “Barbara Sicherman: The Persistence of Little Women, or Still Timely after All These Years,” Nov. 29, 2012; UNCPressBlog.com. Barbara Sicherman, Well-Read Lives: How Books Inspired a Generation of American Women (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press), 22. Delmar, Louisa May Alcott and “Little Women”, 136, 110.
38. John Barry, “Louisa Alcott Lives for Tots,” Des Moines Register, Feb. 23, 1933, p. 14. “Louisa M. Alcott Dead,” Mar. 7, 1888, New York Times; nytimes.com. Spofford quoted in Afterlife, 28. Ednah D. Cheney, Louisa May Alcott, the Children’s Friend (Boston: Prang, 1888).
39. Typescript copy of LMA’s will, Louisa May Alcott Papers, Folder 12, Concord Free Public Library, Concord, MA. Ednah D. Cheney, Louisa May Alcott: Her Life, Letters, and Journals (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1889). LMAB.
40. “Louisa M. Alcott Centenary Year,” Publisher’s Weekly 122 (July 2, 1932): 23–24.
41. Madame Alexander created the Little Women dolls to coincide with the 1933 film starring Katharine Hepburn. Katharine Anthony, “The Most Beloved American Writer,” Woman’s Home Companion (Dec. 1937): 9–11+; (Jan. 1938): 11–13+; (Feb. 1938): 9–11+; (Mar. 1938): 20–22+.
42. Afterlife, 186.
43. Afterlife, 186. Results of worldcat.org search for “little women” by Louisa May Alcott and Louisa M. Alcott, and “ ‘little women’ retold” in English. A fraction of the results are collections of stories that include portions of Little Women. These numbers include e-books, microfilm, and braille books.
44. See Afterlife, 16.
45. For translations through the 1960s, see Judith C. Ullom, Louisa May Alcott: A Centennial for Little Women. An Annotated, Selected Bibliography (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1969), 27–31. For post-1970 translations, see Afterlife, 142. For Little Women in Japan, see Kazuko Watanabe, “Reading Little Women, Reading Motherhood in Japan,” Feminist Studies 25.3 (Fall 1999): 700; and Aiko Moro-oka, “Alcott in Japan: A Selected Bibliography,” LWFI, 377–79.
46. This estimate is based on the claim that 5 million copies had been sold by 1968 in Eugenia Kaledin, “Louisa May Alcott: The Success and Sorrow of Self-Denial,” Women’s Studies 5 (Jan. 1978): 262.
4. “See her . . . living . . . the immortal Jo!”: Little Women on Stage and Screen
1. Anna Steese Richardson, “At the Theater with ‘Little Women,’ ” Woman’s Home Companion 39 (May 1912): 10.
2. John S. P. Alcott, “The ‘Little Women’ of Long Ago,” in AIHOT, 154. “ ‘Little Women and Sundry Big Events,” New York Times, Dec. 6, 1931, p. X3. “Lovely Play Made from ‘Little Women,’ ” New York Times, Oct. 17, 1912, p. 11.
3. “The Playgoer,” New-York Tribune, Oct. 20, 1912, part 5, p. 2. Bonstelle and theatergoer quoted in Afterlife, 71.
4. “Little Women Revived,” New York Times, Dec. 8, 1931, p. 36.
5. For an overview of the critical and popular reaction, see Afterlife, 75–77. Quotes from New-York Tribune and Brooklyn Eagle on 76 and 76–77. Run of 203 nights recorded in “ ‘Little Women and Sundry Big Events,” New York Times, Dec. 6, 1931, p. X5. Adolph Klauber, “The Week’s New Plays,” New York Times, Oct. 20, 1912, p. X5.
6. The two silent films and all other film and television adaptations mentioned in this chapter are in the Internet Movie Database, imdb.com. “Little Women and Sundry Big Events.” “Little Women Leads Poll: Novel Rated Above Bible for Influence on High School Pupils,” New York Times, May 22, 1927, in CE, 84.
7. “Book Notes,” New York Times, July 16, 1935, p. 17. B. Lamar Johnson, “Children’s Reading Interests as Related to Sex and Grade in School,” School Review 40 (Apr. 1932), 261. “Televiews of Pictures,” New York Times, Dec. 17, 1939, p. X12. Afterlife, 117–18.
8. Charlotte Chandler, I Know Where I’m Going: Katharine Hepburn, A Personal Biography (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), 82. Afterlife, 122. Richard B. Jewell, RKO Radio Pictures: A Titan Is Born (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 62, 75–77. Gene D. Phillips, George Cukor (Boston: Twayne, 1982), 65.
9. Afterlife, 122. Katharine Hepburn, Me: Stories of My Life (New York: Random House, 2011), 149.
10. Chandler, I Know Where I’m Going, 82. Hepburn, Me, 147.
11. Hepburn, Me, 149. Cukor quoted in Afterlife, 123. Cukor and Hepburn quoted in Anne Edwards, Katharine Hepburn: A Remarkable Woman (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1985, 2000), 110.
12. Newspaper ads quoted (with ellipses in original) in Edwards, Katharine Hepburn, 110. William J. Mann, Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn (New York: Picador, 2006), 42, 36–37; Hepburn quoted, 40.
13. Afterlife, 123. “Little Women,” Variety, Nov. 31, 1933, p. 14.
14. Kate Ellis, “Life with Marmee: Three Versions,” in The Classic American Novel and the Movies (New York: F. Ungar, 1977), 70. Ellis is also referring to June Allyson’s performance in the 1949 film. Mann, Kate, 195.
15. Jewell, RKO Radio Pictures, 75–76. “Little Women,” Variety, Nov. 31, 1933, p. 14. Afterlife, 122.
16. Jewell, RKO Radio Pictures, 76. Corbin Patrick, “Katharine Hepburn Triumphs in ‘Little Women,’ ” Indianapolis Star, Dec. 3, 1933, part 4, p. 7. See also Afterlife, 124–27.
17. “Story Success ‘Unexpected,’ ” Los Angeles Times, Apr. 7, 1934, p. 7; “ ‘Little Women’ Demand Is Far Ahead of Library Supply,” Hutchinson News (KS), Jan. 12, 1934, p. 9. Mary Knight, “Paris Styles,” Chillicothe Constitution-Tribune (MO), Aug. 25, 1934, p. 3.
18. Afterlife, 109, 128. “Miniature Women,” The Jack Benny Program, Feb. 11, 1934; oldtimeradio.com.
19. The shows can be found at oldtimeradio.com.
20. Afterlife, 117–18.
21. Quoted in Phillips, George Cukor, 67.
22. LMA, LW, 13. Carol Gay, “Little Women at the Movies,” in Children’s Novels and the Movies (New York: F. Ungar, 1983), 35. For a critique of Allyson’s performance at the time, see Bosley Crowther, “Metro Fails to Spare Pathos in ‘Little Women’ Remake Seen at Music Hall,” New York Times, Mar. 11, 1949; nytimes.com. “Actresses Have Happy Memories of ’49 Film,” USA Today, Dec. 20, 1994, p. 4D.
23. Quote in C. David Heymann, Liz: An Intimate Biography of Elizabeth Taylor (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), 72. Allan R. Ellenberger, Margaret O’Brien: A Career Chronicle and Biography (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004), 148.
24. LMA, Little Women, 124. Bosley Crowther, “Into the Rainbow: ‘Little Women’ Acquires a Pollyanna Air,” New York Times, March 20, 1949, p. X1. Stuart Aubrey, “Somewhere under the Rainbow Lies Louisa May Alcott’s ‘Little Women,’ ” Hutchinson News-Herald (KS), July 17, 1949, p. 22. Philip K. Scheuer, “ ‘Little Women’ Revives Era of Gracious Living,” Los Angeles Times, Apr. 18, 1949, p. 39. “Casting Jewels Before Audiences: A Woman’s Picture,” The Age (Melbourne, Australia), Nov. 5, 1949, p. 9.
25. Jewelry box in advertisement, Daily Capital Journal (Salem, OR), May 6, 1949, p. 3. Scarf in Afterlife, 133. “ ‘Little Women’ Gowns Adapted for Today,” Los Angeles Times, Mar. 20, 1949, p. 74; Advertisement, Portsmouth Herald (NH), Apr. 7, 1949, p. 6. Afterlife, 132.
26. Barbara Crossette, “Television Discovers ‘Little Women,’ ” Tennessean (Nashville), Oct. 1, 1978, p. 157. Tom Dorsey, “Television Does Justice to ‘Little Women,’ ” Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY), Oct. 2, 1978, p. C1.
27. “Third Film Unlike the First Two,” Greenville News (SC), May 3, 1978, p. 4B. Crossette, “Television Discovers ‘Little Women,’ ” p. 157.
28. Ibid. LMA, Little Women, 372.
29. Joan Hanauer, “ ‘Users’ Trashy TV, ‘Women’ Too Sweet,” Pittsburgh Press, Sept. 30, 1978, p. B4. Dorsey, “Television Does Justice to ‘Little Women,’ ” p. C1.
30. “Wakakusa Monogatari Yori Wakakusa no Yon Shimai (TV)” and “Ai no Wakakusa Monogatari (TV),” Anime Encyclopedia, animenewsnetwork.com.
31. “Actresses Have Happy Memories of ’49 Film.” Tom Stempel, Framework: A History of Screenwriting in the American Film, Third Edition (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000), p. 250.
32. Gillian Armstrong, “Director’s Commentary,” DVD of Little Women (1994).
33. Marshall Fine, “Little Women’ Is a Surprising Achievement,” USA Today, Dec. 21, 1994, n.p. Sara Eckel, “Feminist Tale OK with All,” Daily Chronicle (DeKalb, IL), Mar. 6. 1995, p. 4.
34. Kristine McKenna, “Not So ‘Little Women,’ ” Los Angeles Times, Dec. 27, 1994, pp. 8, 9. “ ‘Little Women’ Kicks Off a Hollywood Trend,” Entertainment Weekly, Mar. 11, 1994; ew.com.
35. McKenna, “Not So ‘Little Women,’ ” p. 9.
36. LMA, LW, 84.
37. Armstrong, “Director’s Commentary.”
38. Cindy Pearlman, “The Ballad of ‘Little’s’ Jo,” Kokomo Tribune (IN), Dec. 15, 1994, p. 36. Susan Wloszczyna, “Classic ‘Little Women’ Meets Generation X,” USA Today, Dec. 20, 1994, p. 4D. See also Armstrong, “Director’s Commentary.”
39. Armstrong quoted as saying, “There are gross preconceptions about female achievers. That’s why I always wear my lipstick,” in Quentin Curtis, “The Mother of Modern Movies,” Independent on Sunday (London), Mar. 19, 1995.
40. Bob Strauss, “Actress Thinks ‘Little Women’ Can Inspire Girls of the ’90s,” Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY), Jan. 15, 1995, p. 95.
41. Roger Ebert, Review of Little Women, Dec. 21, 1994; rogerebert.com. Janet Maslin, “The Gold Standard for Girlhood Across America,” New York Times, December 21, 1994; nytimes.com. “Sisters Are Doing It for Themselves,” Daily Telegraph (London), Mar. 17, 1995, p. 20. Curtis, “The Mother of Modern Movies.” Stephen Amidon, “No Liberties with the Little,” Sunday Times (London), March 19, 1995, p.6.
42. Rita Kempley, “The Gift of ‘Little Women’,” Washington Post, Dec. 21, 1994, p. C1. “An Oscar for Victorian Values?” Daily Mail (London), Mar. 17, 1995, pp. 42–43. Donna Britt, “Four Genteel Sisters: ‘Little Women’ Is a Film for the Heart,” Des Moines Register, Dec. 30, 1994, p. 9.
43. Rated at #9 (Jan. 22, 1995), #10 (Feb. 5, 1995), #13 (Feb. 12, 1995), and #13 (Feb. 19, 1995) on New York Times Paperback Best Seller Lists, nytimes.com. Molly Walsh, “Film Gives New Editions of ‘Little Women’ a Big Boost,” USA Today, Jan. 16, 1995, n.p. Christopher Hudson, “Never Mind the Book, You Can Read the Film,” Daily Telegraph (London), Mar. 14, 1995, p. 17.
44. “Alcott Novel on Way; Was Too Steamy in 1866,” Arizona Republic (Phoenix), Dec. 20, 1994, p. 17. Nancy Roberts Trott, “Unpublished Alcott Novel Is a Real Find,” Akron Beacon Journal (Ohio), Jan. 3, 1995, p. 1. Ranked #14 on New York Times Best Seller List for Oct. 15, 1995; nytimes.com.
45. markadamo.com/little-women.
46. John Rockwell, “Opera Review; Alcott’s Sisters Grow from Page to Stage,” New York Times, Mar. 26, 2003; nytimes.com.
47. Alex Ross, “Sisterhood: Making Opera out of ‘Little Women,’ ” The New Yorker, July 22, 2002; newyorker.com. Rockwell, “Opera Review; Alcott’s Sisters Grow from Page to Stage.” Anthony Tommasini, “Television Review; Lyricism but Few Modern Bits for the March Sisters,” New York Times, Aug. 29, 2001; nytimes.com.
48. Orla Swift, “Getting ‘Little Women’ Ready,” News & Observer (Raleigh, NC), Oct. 10, 2004, p. G1. Michael Kuchwara, “Girl Power Lights Up B’way Shows,” Star-Ledger (Newark, NJ), Feb. 22, 2005.
49. Swift, “Getting ‘Little Women’ Ready.”
50. Matthew Murray, review of Little Women the Musical, Talkin’ Broadway, Jan. 23, 2005; talkinbroadway.com. David Rooney, “Review: ‘Little Women: The Musical,’ ” Variety, Jan. 23, 2005; variety.com. Howard Kissel, “ ‘Little Women’ Is a Big Letdown,” New York Daily News, Jan. 25, 2005. Michael Sommers, “Sister Act: Sutton Foster Glows as Jo in ‘Little Women,’ ” Star-Ledger (Newark, NJ), Jan. 24, 2005.
51. Afterlife, 153. Elizabeth Weiss, “To Flip a Flop,” The New Yorker, Jan. 7, 2014; newyorker.com.
52. Sarah Hughes, “Sex and the Middle-Aged Woman . . . a Groundbreaking BBC Drama Tells It Like It Is,” Guardian, Jan. 14, 2017; theguardian.com.
5. “The mother of us all”: Little Women’s Cultural and Literary Influence
1. Deborah Weisgall, “The Mother of All Girls’ Books,” American Prospect, June 11, 2012; prospect.org.
2. For early respect among scholars and subsequent decline of LW’s reputation, see Barbara Sicherman, “Reading Little Women: The Many Lives of a Text,” in The Girls’ History and Culture Reader: The Nineteenth Century, ed. Miriam Forman-Brunell and Leslie Paris (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011), 278–79; and Afterlife, 43–44. G. K. Chesterton, “Louisa,” in CE, 213, 214.
3. I discuss the masculinization of the American literary canon in Anne E. Boyd, Writing for Immortality: Women and the Emergence of High Literary Culture in America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 241–46. Edward Wagenknecht, Cavalcade of the American Novel (New York: Holt, 1952), 88. Lawrence Buell, in The Dream of the Great American Novel (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014), devotes a chapter to Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Little Women is mentioned nowhere in its pages.
4. James quoted in CR, 246. British critic quoted in Afterlife, 85. “Our Library Table,” Educational Times (Apr. 1, 1893), p. 188. For Little, Brown editions in 1907, 1913, and 1908, respectively, see Anne Lindsey Bruder, “Outside the Classroom Walls: Alternative Pedagogies in American Literature and Culture,” diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2009, p. 91. “Further Testimony of a Great Picture’s Hold on the Public,” Washington Post, Dec. 24, 1933, p. B2.
5. “Popular Books for Children of Grammar Grade,” Journal of Education 70.7 (Aug. 26, 1909), 182. G. W. Willett, “The Reading Interests of High-School Pupils,” English Journal 8.8 (Oct. 1919), 474–87. H. D. Roberts, “Review: A Study of Reading Interests,” English Journal 15.7 (Sept. 1926), 557–58. “Little Women Leads Poll: Novel Rated Ahead of Bible for Influence on High School Pupils,” New York Times, Mar. 22, 1927; in CE, 84. Edgar Dale, “Books Which Children Like to See Pictured,” Educational Research Bulletin 10.16 (Nov. 11, 1931), 423–29. Edith Rosenblatt, “Library Surveys Show Reading Trends Here,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (PA), Jan. 4, 1949, p. 7. “ ‘Trapp Family’ Favorite Book at Library Here; Children Select ‘Little Women’ as Favorite,” Suburbanite Economist (Chicago), May 31, 1950, p. 5. “Religious Books Are the Most Popular,” Lincoln Evening Journal (NE), Apr. 28, 1950, p. 6.
6. Quote from a WWII-era poster reprinted as the frontispiece in Molly Guptill Manning, When Books Went to War: The Stories That Helped Us Win World War II (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2014). “Send in Your Lists,” Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY), May 3, 1942, p. 39. Pearl S. Buck, “Books About Americans for People in Asia to Read,” Asia: Journal of the American Asiatic Association (Oct. 1942): 2, 1. “An American Album,” Tucson Daily Citizen (AZ), Oct. 16, 1942, p. 8. The books chosen were microfilmed by the Office of War Information and sent to Chunking. Last quote from Brett Anderson, “Book Marks,” Pittsburgh Press (PA), Dec. 20, 1942, p. 39.
7. “School Correspondence Plan Boosts International Friendship,” Los Angeles Times, Feb. 3, 1949, p. 33. Quote about Franklin Book Program in Louise S. Robbins, “Publishing American Values: The Franklin Book Programs as Cold War Cultural Diplomacy,” Library Trends, 55.3 (Winter 2007): 642. Choice of Little Women as one of first texts in finding aid for “Franklin Book Programs Records,” Princeton University Library; http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/p2676v53g. Hiroshi Kitamura, Screening Enlightenment: Hollywood and the Cultural Reconstruction of Defeated Japan (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010), 100–104. Frances Stonor Saunders, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters (New York: The New Press, 2013), 243. “Interchange,” The Reading Teacher 25 (Dec. 1971): 287. “Laura Bush Promotes Reading in Russia,” School Library Journal (Nov. 2003): 25.
8. “Ban Cinderella in Red Hungary,” Des Moines Register, Dec. 14, 1950, p. 8. Ralph Thompson, “In and Out of Books,” New York Times, Nov. 14, 1948; nytimes.com. “Hungary Bans ‘Little Women’ and Strippers Too,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Dec. 14, 1950, p. 15. See also “Louisa Alcott’s old book, ‘Little Women,’ has been banned in Russia,” Democrat and Chronicle (Rochester, NY), Jan. 30, 1949, p. 18; “Cover to Cover,” Sydney Morning Herald, Apr. 24, 1949, p. 18.
9. Lavinia Russ, “Not to Be Read on Sunday,” in CE, 99. “Junior Choice,” Guardian, Nov. 9, 1999; theguardian.com. Patricia J. Wilson and Richard F. Abrahamson, “What Children’s Literature Classics Do Children Really Enjoy?” Reading Teacher 41.4 (Jan. 1988), 406–11. Arthur N. Applebee, A Study of Book-Length Works Taught in High School English Courses (Albany, NY: Center for the Learning and Teaching of Literature, 1989). “Book Poll Reveals Favorites of Young,” Cincinnati Enquirer, Jan. 5, 1974, p. 12.
10. For an overview of early feminist criticism on Little Women and references, see Introduction, LWFI.
11. Deborah Friedell, “The Vortex,” New Republic (May 16, 2005): 42. Quotes about Library of America at its website, loa.org.
12. Weisgall, “The Mother of All Girls’ Books.” Lucinda Rosenfeld, “Great Novels About Sisters,” in The Pretty One: A Novel About Sisters (New York: Little, Brown, 2013); googlebooks. Wharton quoted in Sicherman, “Reading Little Women,” 285. Paglia quoted in Hermione Lee and Sophia Chauchard-Stuart, “Marmee’s Girls,” Independent (London), Mar. 3, 1995; independent.co.uk. Hilary Mantel, “Author, Author: Looking for Female Role Models in Nineteenth Century Novels,” Guardian, Jan. 31, 2009; theguardian.com.
13. Carolyn G. Heilbrun, “Louisa May Alcott: The Influence of Little Women,” in Women, the Arts, and the 1920s in Paris and New York, ed. Kenneth W. Wheeler and Virginia Lee Lussier (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1983), 25. Elaine Showalter, Sister’s Choice: Tradition and Change in American Women’s Writing (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1991), 64. Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Fisherwoman’s Daughter,” in Mother Reader: Essential Writings on Motherhood, ed. Moyra Davey (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2001), 162, 164. Sanchez quoted in Afterlife, xvi.
14. Gail Mazur, “Growing Up with Jo,” Boston Review 13 (Feb. 1988): 18. Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Ruined by Reading: A Life in Books (Boston: Beacon Press, 1997), 66–67.
15. Barbara Kingsolver, High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now or Never (New York: Harper Perennial, 1995), 44. Maureen Corrigan, Leave Me Alone, I’m Reading: Finding and Losing Myself in Books (New York: Knopf Doubleday, 2007), xxx. Nora Ephron quoted in Liz Dance, Nora Ephron: Everything Is Copy (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2015), 34. Delia Ephron, Sister Mother Husband Dog (Etc.) (New York: Penguin, 2013); googlebooks.
16. Ann Petry quoted in Barbara Sicherman, “Reading Little Women,” 285. bell hooks, Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood (New York: Holt, 1996), 77. Elizabeth Alexander, “Elizabeth Alexander on the Book That Taught Her About Complicated Women,” The Cut, Sept. 9, 2017; thecut.com. Bich Minh Nguyen, Stealing Buddha’s Dinner (New York: Penguin, 2008); googlebooks. Candy Gourlay, comment on Elizabeth Bird, “Denying Children’s Literature: When Adult Authors Talk About Youthful Indiscretions,” School Library Journal, June 14, 2016; blogs.slj.com. Cynthia Ozick, “The Making of a Writer: Spells, Wishes, Goldfish, Old School Hurts,” New York Times, Jan. 31, 1982, p. BR24. “Why Does Cynthia Ozick Write? ‘I Simply Must,’ She Says,” National Public Radio, July 17, 2016; npr.org. Mazur, “Growing Up with Jo,” 18.
17. “Christmas Books; Uncle Wiggily’s Karma and Other Childhood Memories,” New York Times, Dec. 7, 1986; nytimes.com. Erica Jong, “Unzipped,” New York Times Book Review, Oct. 3, 2013; nytimes.com.
18. Lisa K. Winkler, “Dr. Perri Klass: Doctor, Writer, Professor, Literacy Advocate,” Education Update Online, Apr. 2007; educationupdate.com. Stacy Schiff, “Our Little Women Problem,” New York Times, June 18, 2005; nytimes.com. Lamott quoted in The Book That Changed My Life: 71 Remarkable Writers Celebrate the Books That Matter Most to Them, ed. Roxanne J. Coady and Joy Johannessen (New York: Penguin, 2007), 99. “What’s on Stephenie Meyer’s Ideal Bookshelf?” Guardian, Nov. 25, 2012; theguardian.com. Weisgall, “The Mother of All Girls’ Books.” Natalia Sylvester, “Re-reading Little Women,” Jan. 13, 2016; nataliasylvester.com.
19. Susan Cheever, Introduction to Little Women (New York: Modern Library, 2000), xiv–xv. Jane Smiley, Introduction to Little Women (New York: Penguin, 2012), vii. Anna Quindlen, Introduction to Little Women (New York: Little, Brown, 1994), n.p.
20. Carl Rollyson, Amy Lowell: A New Biography (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013), 9. Mary Gordon, Circling My Mother (New York: Anchor Books, 2008), 110. Madeleine Blais, The Heart Is an Instrument: Portraits in Journalism (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992), 246. “Anne Tyler: By the Book,” New York Times Book Review, Feb. 5, 2015; nytimes.com. Steinem quoted in Lisa O’Kelly, “How Was It for You, Girls?” Observer (Philadelphia), Feb. 19, 1995; philly.com. Sara Paretsky, Writing in an Age of Silence (London: Verso, 2009), 5. Bloom quoted in Julie Vadnal, “Amy Bloom on the Audacity of Little Women,” Elle, Mar. 31, 2010; elle.com.
21. Carson McCullers, The Mortgaged Heart: Selected Writings (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005), xxiv, 233. Susan Sontag quoted in “Christmas Books; Uncle Wiggily’s Karma.” Maxine Hong Kingston quoted in Jody Joy, “To Be Able to See the Tao,” in Conversations with Maxine Hong Kingston, ed. Paul Skenazy and Tera Martin (Oxford: University Press of Mississippi, 1989), 62. “Jhumpa Lahiri: By the Book,” New York Times Book Review, Sept. 15, 2013; nytimes.com. Margaret Atwood, “Letter to America,” in Moving Targets: Writing with Intent, 1982–2004 (Toronto: Anansi Press, 2004), 324. Shaena Lambert, “How My Writing Allowed Me to Heal,” Huffington Post, Jan. 9, 2014; huffingtonpost.ca. Emma Donoghue, “Once upon a Life: Emma Donoghue,” Guardian, Sept. 5, 2010; theguardian.com. Adriana Lanzi, “The Influence of Little Women in Argentina”; academia.edu. For further examples of American authors, see the following sources: Edna Ferber, Bess Streeter Aldrich, Ida B. Wells, and Sarah Teasdale cited in Afterlife, 15. Mary Antin quoted in Sicherman, “Reading Little Women,” 288. H.D. in Annette Debo, The American H.D. (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2012), 182. Shirley Jackson, Raising Demons (New York: Penguin, 2015). Rita Dove quoted in Rob Crisell, “The Power of Poetry,” Highlights 50.9 (Sept. 1995): 10. “Francine Prose: By the Book,” New York Times Book Review, Jan. 3, 2013; nytimes.com. Ann Hood, “Ann Hood: The Books We Love,” Parade, Aug. 5, 2016; parade.com. Shirley Geok-lin Lim, “ ‘Ain’t I a Feminist?’ Reforming the Circle,” in The Feminist Memoir Project: Voices from Women’s Liberation, ed. Rachel Blau DuPlessis and Ann Snitow (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007), 450. Vanessa Hua, “At Home at the Library,” San Francisco Chronicle, July 7, 2016; sfchronicle.com. “Danielle Steel: By the Book,” New York Times Book Review, Feb. 11, 2016. Judith Krantz quoted in “Christmas Books; Uncle Wiggily’s Karma.” Jennifer Weiner, “Jennifer Weiner on Finding Her Way Back from Sadness,” Huffington Post, July 7, 2014; huffingtonpost.com. Julia Alvarez, Something to Declare: Essays (Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books, 2014), 139. Mary Jo Salter, “Louisa May Alcott’s American Girls,” New York Times Book Review, May 15, 2005; nytimes.com. Robb Forman Dew quoted in J. Peder Zane, ed., The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books (New York: W. W. Norton, 2010), 57. Bobbie Ann Mason quoted in Marie Arana-Ward, “Speaking for the Country,” Washington Post, Dec. 20, 1998, p. X10. Isabelle Holland quoted in LWFI, xv. Laurie Hertzel, “Q&A with bestselling author Deborah Harkness,” StarTribune (Minneapolis), Aug. 13, 2014; startribune.com. “J. Courtney Sullivan: By the Book,” New York Times Book Review, Aug. 2, 2012; nytimes.com. “One Minute with Kim Edwards, Novelist,” Independent (London), Mar. 4, 2011, p.25. Donna Britt, “Four Genteel Sisters: ‘Little Women’ Is a Film for the Heart,” Des Moines Register, Dec. 30, 1994, p. 9. Margo Jefferson, Negroland (New York: Pantheon, 2015). Deborah Feldman, “Once upon a Life: Deborah Feldman,” Guardian, Aug. 29, 2010; theguardian.com. Mitali Perkins, “Grow Up with Us, You’ll Be Fine” and Alice Schertle, “Up the Bookcase to Poetry,” in A Family of Readers: The Book Lover’s Guide to Children’s and Young Adult Literature, ed. Roger Sutton and Martha V. Parravano (Somerville, MA: Candlewick Press, 2012). Karen Cushman in Once upon a Heroine: 450 Books for Girls to Love, ed. Alison Cooper-Mullin and Jennifer Marmaduke Coye (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1998), 150. Susanna Daniel, Jane Yolen (New York: Rosen, 2004), 16. Bonnie Kunzel and Susan Fichtelberg, Tamora Pierce (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2007), 256. Eileen Myles in Emily Temple, “The Books That Made Your Favorite Writers Want to Write,” Literary Hub, Apr. 26, 2017; lithub.com.
22. “J. K. Rowling: By the Book,” New York Times, Oct. 11, 2012; nytimes.com. Rowling interviewed in “The Women of Harry Potter,” Deathly Hallows, Part 2, DVD extras. Rosanna Greenstreet, “Q&A: Caitlin Moran,” Guardian, May 4, 2013; theguardian.com. “Books That Changed Me: Holly Smalle,” Sydney Morning Herald, Mar. 17, 2013; smh.com. Gabrielle Donnelly, “Little Women and Me,” gabrielledonnellyauthor.com. Kate Mosse, “The Little Women Who Never Grow Old: Kate Mosse Delights in a New, Annotated Edition of Louisa May Alcott’s Defining Tale,” Times (London), June 1, 2013, p. 43.
23. Louise Jury, “The Life-Changing Novels Every Woman Should Read,” Independent (London), Sept. 13, 2004; independent.co.uk. Carol Clewlow, “Sisters Stealing a March on Time,” Herald (Glasgow), Mar. 20, 1995, p. 15. Enid Blyton, The Story of My Life (London: Grafton Books, 1952), 47. Jacqueline Wilson, “The Ten Best: Books to Read Aloud,” Independent (London), May 7, 2006; independent.co.uk. Arifa Akbar, “One Minute with Francesca Simon, Children’s Author,” Independent (London), Oct. 21, 2011, p. 23. Doris Lessing (and Carol Ann Duffy) in “ ‘Get your head out of that book!’—The Children’s Stories That Inspired Leading Writers,” Guardian, May 9, 2015; theguardian.com. A. S. Byatt in The Pleasures of Reading: 43 Writers on the Discovery of Reading and the Books That Inspired Them, ed. Antonia Fraser (New York: Bloomsbury, 2015), 136, 140. Zadie Smith thought “Hepburn played the greatest, most empathic and beautiful Jo March there ever has been or ever will be,” suggesting her admiration of the character; see Smith, “The Divine Ms H,” Guardian, July 1, 2003; theguardian.com. Helen Oyeyemi in Megan O’Grady, “The Fantastic and Mr. Fox: Helen Oyeyemi on Her New Folktale-Inspired Novel,” Vogue, Sept. 28, 2011; vogue.com. See also P. D. James, Time to Be in Earnest (New York: Random House, 2007); googlebooks; Germaine Greer in O’Kelly, “How Was It for You, Girls?”; Sue Townsend in The Pleasures of Reading, 220; Shena Mackay, Lynne Truss, and Julie Burchill in Lee and Chauchard-Stuart, “Marmee’s Girls”; Catherine McPhail in Amanda Keenan, “Half-a-Million Books to Be Handed Out Free Today as World Book Night Spreads the Beauty of the Printed Word,” Daily Record, Apr. 23, 2013; dailyrecord.co.uk; Carole Cadwallader in Afterlife, 142; Jennie Colgan in JoJo Moyes, “The Healing Power of Jane Austen,” Telegraph, Mar. 30, 2010; telegraph.co.uk; Zoë Heller, “Five Best: Zoë Heller Chooses Memorable Portraits of Sisters,” Wall Street Journal, Mar. 27, 2010; wsj.com; “Guest post: Holly Webb Talks About the Inspiration Behind Her Newest Characters,” June 18, 2013; librarymice.com.
24. Deirdre Bair, Simone de Beauvoir: A Biography (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990), 69. Simone de Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter (New York: Harper Perennial, 2005), 89. Last quote from Bair, Simone de Beauvoir, 69. Lavinia R. Davis, “American Ambassadors,” New York Times, May 8, 1960; nytimes.com. Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend (New York: Europa Editions, 2012). Afterlife, 108. Ghada Hashem Talhami, Historical Dictionary of Women in the Middle East and North Africa (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2013), 297. Jennifer Dann, “Twelve Questions with Emily Perkins,” New Zealand Herald, Sept. 11, 2012; nzherald.co.nz.
25. Stats on sequels, retellings, etc., in Afterlife, 177. See Lois Lowry, Anastasia at Your Service (Bantam Doubleday Dell Books for Young Readers, 1982), Anastasia, Absolutely (Bantam Doubleday Dell, 1995), The Willoughbys (Yearling, 2008), Like the Willow Tree: The Diary of Lydia Amelia Pierce (Scholastic, 2011), and The Silent Boy (Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, 2003, 2012).
26. Gabrielle Donnelly, The Little Women Letters (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), 349.
27. “Previous Books: Frequently Asked Questions,” kingsolver.com.
28. Kate Saunders, “A Book That Changed Me,” Independent on Sunday (London), July 5, 1998, p. 32. Chelsea Cain, “Fairest of Them All,” New York Times Book Review, June 5, 2009; nytimes.com.
29. See Clark, who also mentions more, in Afterlife, 181–82, 256. Sherry Jones comments on the likeness of her four sisters to the March sisters in Nancy Bilyeau, “Bloody Good Interview: Sherry Jones on “Four Sisters, All Queens,” May 9, 2012; bloodygoodread.blogspot.com.
30. Amy Bloom, Lucky Us: A Novel (New York: Penguin Random House, 2014); googlebooks. A. S. Byatt, The Game: A Novel (New York: Knopf Doubleday, 2012); googlebooks. See Jennifer Weiner’s novels Little Earthquakes (New York: Washington Square Press, 2004), The Guy Not Taken (New York: Washington Square Press, 2006), and Who Do You Love (New York: Washington Square Press, 2015).
31. The Open Syllabus Project database; explorer.opensyllabusproject.org.
6. “A divided house of a book”: Reading Little Women
1. Margo Jefferson. “Books of the Times; Little Women, Growing Up Then and Now,” New York Times, Dec. 21, 1994; nytimes.com. Alice Kaplan, Looking for The Stranger: Albert Camus and the Life of a Literary Classic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), 2.
2. LMA, LW, 36, 275–76, 12.
3. [Larcom, Lucy?], Our Young Folks, in CR, 79; see also 61–82. [Review of Little Women, Part I], Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, in CE, 83.
4. G. K. Chesterton, “Louisa Alcott,” in CE, 213. LMA, LW, 368.
5. Reviews from [Northern Christian Advocate?], Hartford Daily Courant, and The Galaxy, in CR, 81, 77, 78.
6. Review of 1912 play quoted in Afterlife, 78. Quentin Letts, “A Night Out as Warm and Wholesome as Hot Milk,” Daily Mail (London), Oct. 14, 2004, p. 6.
7. LMA, LW, 368.
8. Lavinia Russ, “Not to Be Read on Sunday,” in CE, 100.
9. LMA, LW, 30, 65, 369.
10. Quotes in Afterlife, 126, 131.
11. James Baldwin, “Everybody’s Protest Novel,” Notes of a Native Son (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955; reprint, 1984), 14. The essay was first published in Zero magazine in Paris and in The Partisan Review in the United States in June 1949.
12. Brigid Brophy, “A Masterpiece, and Dreadful,” New York Times Book Review, Jan. 17, 1965.
13. Elizabeth Janeway, “Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy and Louisa,” in CE, 97. Russ, “Not to Be Read on Sunday,” in CE, 99.
14. Sean O’Faolain, “This Is Your Life . . . Louisa May Alcott,” in CE, 106.
15. Mary Gaitskill, “Does Little Women Belittle Women?” Vogue (Jan. 1995): 36. Miranda Kiek, “Why I Love . . . the Dribbly Kiss in Little Women,” Guardian, Aug. 21, 2013; theguardian.com. Laura Miller, “A Good Book Should Make You Cry,” New York Times, Aug. 22, 2004; nytimes.com.
16. Foster quoted in Orla Swift, “Getting ‘Little Women’ Ready,” News & Observer (Raleigh, NC), Oct. 10, 2004, p. G1. Anna Quindlen, “She Was Jo, and That Was That,” New York Times, Mar. 3, 1991; nytimes.com. “Little Women at Seacoast Rep This August,” Broadway World, July 22, 2016; broadwayworld.com.
17. LMA, LW, 93.
18. Perri Klass, Other Women’s Children (New York: Random House, 1990), 231. “Gloria Steinem’s Wandering Childhood,” Wall Street Journal, Oct. 27, 2015; wsj.com.
19. Review from the Cincinnati Times Star quoted in Susan R. Gannon, “Getting Coy with a Classic: Visualizing Little Women (1868–1995),” in LWFI, 120.
20. LMA to Woman’s Journal, [ca. Oct. 11, 1879], SL, 237–38. LMA, JB, 70.
21. LMA, LW, 207, 235.
22. Elizabeth Vincent, “Subversive Miss Alcott,” in CE, 223, 224. F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Bernice Bobs Her Hair,” in Novels & Stories 1920–1922 (New York: Library of America, 2000), 365.
23. Elizabeth Janeway, “Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy and Louisa,” in CE, 98.
24. “Letters,” New York Times Book Review, Nov. 3, 1968, p. 56.
25. Gerald Nachman, “After ‘Wuthering,’ What?” New York Times, Oct. 4, 1970, p. D13.The Many Lives of a Text,
26. Karen Lindsay, “Louisa May Alcott: The Author of Little Women as Feminist,” Women: A Journal of Liberation 2 (Fall 1970): 35.
27. Stephanie Harrington, “Does Little Women Belittle Women?” in CE, 110, 111, 112.
28. Nachman, “After ‘Wuthering,’ What?”
29. Patricia Meyer Spacks, The Female Imagination, in CE, 117, 116, 119. Nina Auerbach, Communities of Women: An Idea in Fiction (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978), 55, 68.
30. Judith Fetterley, “Little Women: Alcott’s Civil War,” Feminist Studies 5.2 (Summer 1979): 382. Two other feminist analyses of the 1970s are Kate Ellis, “Life with Marmee: Three Versions,” in The Classic American Novel and the Movies (New York: F. Ungar, 1977), 62–72; and Thomas H. Pauly, “Ragged Dick and Little Women: Idealized Homes and Unwanted Marriages,” Journal of Popular Culture 9 (Winter 1975): 583–92.
31. Numbers of articles based on the “selected bibliography” of Alcott criticism in LWFI, 406–17. I have counted those works that focus on Little Women and rounded up for the 1990s since LWFI was published in 1999. “Cultural work” from Jane Tompkins’s Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction, 1790–1860 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985). See also Afterlife, 147. Gregory Eiselein, “Reading a Feminist Romance: Literary Critics and Little Women,” Children’s Literature 28 (2000): 243.
32. Carolyn G. Heilbrun, “Louisa May Alcott: The Influence of Little Women,” in Women, the Arts, and the 1920s in Paris and New York, ed. Kenneth W. Wheeler and Virginia Lee Lussier (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1982), 21, 23. Angela M. Estes and Kathleen Margaret Lant, “Dismembering the Text: The Horror of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women,” Children’s Literature 17 (1989): 101, 115. Beverly Lyon Clark, “A Portrait of the Artist as a Little Woman,” Children’s Literature 17 (1989): 88.
33. Gaitskill, “Does Little Women Belittle Women?” 44, 38. Caryn James, “Amy Had Golden Curls; Jo Had a Rat. Who Would You Rather Be?” New York Times, Dec. 25, 1994; nytimes.com.
34. Brenda Maddox, “Making Little Women of Us All,” Times (London), Jan. 18, 1995, p. 23. Roberts, Grant, and Forgan quoted in Lisa O’Kelly, “How Was It for You, Girls?” Observer (London), Feb. 19, 1995, p. 23. Hermione Lee and Sophia Chauchard-Stuart, “Marmee’s Girls,” Independent (London), Mar. 3, 1995; independent.co.uk. Julie Bindel, “I Know We’ve Had Our Spats,” Guardian, May 13, 2009; theguardian.com.
35. Greer and Steinem quoted in O’Kelly, “How Was It for You, Girls?”
36. Deborah Friedell, “The Vortex,” New Republic 232 (May 16, 2005): 42–43. Stacy Schiff, “Our Little Women Problem,” New York Times, June 18, 2005; nytimes.com. Elaine Showalter, “Little Women,” Letter to the Editor, New York Times, June 22, 2005; nytimes.com.
37. Barbara Sicherman, “Reading Little Women: The Many Lives of a Text,” in The Girls’ History and Culture Reader: The Nineteenth Century, ed. Miriam Forman-Brunell and Leslie Paris (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011), 289. Catharine R. Stimpson, “Reading for Love: Canons, Paracanons, and Whistling Jo March,” in LWFI, 75.
38. LMA, LW, 128. Elizabeth Lennox Keyser points out Jo’s contradictory desires in Whispers in the Dark: The Fiction of Louisa May Alcott (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1993), 70. Michelle A. Massé, “Songs to Aging Children: Louisa May Alcott’s March Trilogy,” in LWFI, 332.
39. LMA, LW, 379.
40. LMA, LW, 327.
41. LMA, LW, 337, 99.
7. “A private book for girls”: Can Boys Read Little Women?
1. What Kids Are Reading: The Book-Reading Habits of Students in American Schools (Renaissance Learning, 2010 edition). This and the other reports are difficult to locate because renaissance.com provides the current edition only; those I previously found are no longer available.
2. What Kids Are Reading: The Book-Reading Habits of Students in American Schools (Renaissance Learning, 2014 and 2016 editions); and What Kids Are Reading: The Book-Reading Habits of Pupils in British Schools (Renaissance Learning, 2016 report).
3. For criticism of Common Core lists of exemplar texts, see Rick Chambers, “The Common Core Text Exemplars: A Worthy Canon or Not?” Voices from the Middle 21.2 (Sept. 2013): 48–52; and Lindsay Cesari, “Weeding the Common Core Standards,” May 4, 2011; noshhinghere.blogspot.com. Quote from Susan Ohanian, “Grade 8 Common Core ELA Sample Questions,” Aug. 11, 2012; susanohanian.org.
4. “Please, Do Not Teach Little Women!” Aug. 21, 2011; usedbooksinclass.com. Cesari, “Weeding the Common Core Standards.”
5. David Curtis, “Little Women: A Reconsideration,” Elementary English 45 (Nov. 1968): 878.
6. David Denby, Lit Up: One Reporter. Three Schools. Twenty-Four Books That Can Change Lives (New York: Macmillan, 2016), 73. See Sandra Stotsky, “Literary Study in Grades 9, 10, and 11: A National Survey,” Forum 4 (Fall 2010): 2–77.
7. See the surveys conducted in Barbara G. Samuels, “Young Adult Literature: Young Adult Novels in the Classroom?” English Journal 72.4 (Apr. 1983): 86–88; and Stotsky, “Literary Study in Grades 9, 10, and 11.” Although Stotsky documents a consistency in the most frequently taught titles, their frequency has diminished considerably, as indicated in table 6, p. 17.
8. For how boys became the focus of education research, see Marcus Weaver-Hightower, “The ‘Boy Turn’ in Research on Gender and Education,” Review of Educational Research 73.4 (Winter 2003): 471–98. For an overview of initiatives in different countries, see Roberta F. Hammett and Kathy Sanford, Introduction to Boys, Girls, and the Myths of Literacies and Learning (Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press, 2008), 1–20. Peg Tyre, “The Trouble with Boys,” Newsweek (Jan. 30, 2006): 44–52. For critical articles, see Caryl Rivers and Rosalind Chait Barnett, “The Myth of ‘The Boy Crisis,’ ” Washington Post, Apr. 9, 2006; washingtonpost.com; Cara Okopny, “Why Jimmy Isn’t Failing: The Myth of the Boy Crisis,” Feminist Teacher 18.3 (2008): 216–28. One recent article on the crisis is Elizabeth Perlman, “School Gender Gap Crisis: Boys ‘Twice as Likely to Fall Behind Girls,’ ” Newsweek, July 18, 2016; newsweek.com.
9. Librarian quoted in Jeff Kinney, “Kid Lit Unbound,” Time, July 18, 2011; content.time.com. Michael Sullivan, “Why Johnny Won’t Read,” School Library Journal, Aug. 1, 2004; slj.com. A few examples of boys being actively discouraged from reading books about girls: Awnali Mills, “Boy and Books,” The Librarian Is on the Loose, June 16, 2015; librarianisontheloose.wordpress.com; Elizabeth Bluemle, “He Won’t Read Books About Girls,” ShelfTalker, Apr. 5, 2012; blogs.publishersweekly.com; Josie Leavitt, “It’s Not a Boy Read or a Girl Read,” ShelfTalker, Dec. 1, 2011; blogs.publishersweekly.com. One librarian bucking the trend is Karen Yingling, “Challenging Gender Norms with ‘Boys Read Pink’ Celebration,” School Library Journal, May 18, 2016; slj.com.
10. First quote from Nicole Senn, “Effective Approaches to Motivate and Engage Reluctant Boys in Literacy,” Reading Teacher 66.3 (Nov. 2012): 217. Quote about more boy books than girl books in libraries in Myra Pollack Sadker et al., “Sex Bias in Reading and Language Arts Teacher Education,” Reading Teacher 33.5 (Feb. 1980): 534. Quotes from textbook and about teachers’ and librarians’ assumptions in Elizabeth Segal’s “ ‘As the Twig Is Bent . . .’: Gender and Childhood Reading,” in Gender and Reading: Essays on Readers, Texts, and Contexts, ed. Elizabeth A. Flynn and Patrocinio P. Schweickart (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 180. On preference for boy books in education courses, see Pamela J. Farris et al., “Male Call: Fifth-Grade Boys’ Reading Preferences,” Reading Teacher 63.3 (Nov. 2009): 181. In Stotsky’s “Literary Study in Grades 9, 10, and 11: A National Survey,” only three of the twenty most frequently assigned titles could be said to represent female points of view unfiltered by a male author: To Kill a Mockingbird, Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, and Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak, the last being the only one that focuses on women’s issues. Speak was ranked twentieth, with only 3 percent frequency; see table 2, p. 14.
11. Elizabeth Dutro, “ ‘But That’s a Girls’ Book!’ Exploring Gender Boundaries in Children’s Reading Practices,” Reading Teacher 55.4 (Dec. 2001–Jan. 2002): 377.
12. The discussion that follows is drawn from Segal, “ ‘As the Twig Is Bent,’ ” 165–86.
13. Roosevelt quoted in LWFI, xv; Phelps and Woollcott in Segal, “ ‘As the Twig Is Bent,’ ” 176; and Kipling in Afterlife, 15. Quote about boys reading at turn of the century from the Bookman (1897) in Afterlife, 29. Cather quoted in M. Catherine Downs, Becoming Modern: Willa Cather’s Journalism (Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press, 1999), 72.
14. Alison Flood, “Study Finds Huge Gender Imbalance in Children’s Literature: New Research Reveals Male Characters Far Outnumber Females, Pointing to ‘symbolic annihilation of women and girls’,” Guardian, May 6, 2011; theguardian.com. Alison Flood, “Children Are Being ‘Indoctrinated’ Says Chocolat Author,” Guardian, Sept. 17, 2015; theguardian.com.
15. Sarah P. McGeown, “Sex or Gender Identity? Understanding Children’s Reading Choices and Motivation,” Journal of Research in Reading 38.1 (Feb. 2015): 43.
16. See, for instance, McGeown, “Sex or Gender Identity?”
17. See Elizabeth Dutro, “Boys Reading American Girls: What’s at Stake in Debates About What Boys Won’t Read,” in Boys, Girls, and the Myths of Literacies and Learning, ed. Roberta F. Hammett and Kathy Sanford (Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press, 2008), 69–90; quote on 80–81.
18. Shannon Hale, “No Boys Allowed: School Visits as a Woman Writer,” Feb. 26, 2015; shannonhale.tumblr.com (ellipses in original). Lauren Barack, “When Boys Can’t Like ‘Girl Books,’ ” School Library Journal, Mar. 5, 2015; slj.com. Caroline Paul, “Why Boys Should Read Girl Books,” Mar. 29, 2016; ideas.ted.com.
19. On masculine identity requiring the repression of empathy, see Beth A. Quinn, “Sexual Harassment and Masculinity: The Power and Meaning of ‘Girl Watching,’ ” Gender and Society 16.3 (June 2002): 386–402. On reading and empathy, see Raymond A. Mar and Keith Oatley, “The Function of Fiction Is the Abstraction and Simulation of Social Experience,” Perspectives on Psychological Science 3.3 (May 2008): 173–92.
20. Bluemle, “He Won’t Read Books About Girls.”
21. Carolyn G. Heilbrun, “Louisa May Alcott: The Influence of Little Women,” in Women, the Arts, and the 1920s in Paris and New York, ed. Kenneth W. Wheeler and Virginia Lee Lussier (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1983), 25. The Bechdel test, whether two female characters in a given film or literary work have a conversation about something other than a man, was first mentioned in 1985 in Alison Bechdel’s comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For and has since been popularized. Jan Susina describes his friend’s interest in reading LW in “Men and Little Women: Notes of a Resisting (Male) Reader,” in LWFI, 166.
22. Susina, “Men and Little Women,” 164, 165, 167.
23. Philip Charles Crawford, “Of Sissies, Invalids, and the Mysterious Boy in the Window,” Horn Book Magazine, 83.5 (Sept. 2007): 473.
24. Luis Negrón, “The Pain of Reading,” New York Times, Oct. 6, 2012; nytimes.com. Leo Lerman, in CE, 113–14. Armond White, “Little Men Is a Class-Conscious Coming-of-Age Story,” Out Magazine, Aug. 5, 2016; out.com.
25. Kidder quoted in Bill Bradfield, ed., Books and Reading: A Book of Quotations (Mineola, NY: Dover, 2012), 31. James Parker and Charles McGrath, “Is There Anything One Should Feel Ashamed of Reading?” New York Times Book Review, Apr. 7, 2015; nytimes.com. Sean O’Faolain, in CE, 106.
26. Daniel Shealy, ed., Little Women: An Annotated Edition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013); John Matteson, ed., The Annotated Little Women (New York: W. W. Norton, 2015). Roger Ebert, Review of Little Women, Dec. 21, 1994; rogerebert.com. Gabriel Byrne mentioned in Gillian Armstrong, “Director’s Commentary,” DVD of Little Women (1994). “John Paul Stevens: By the Book,” New York Times Book Review, Apr. 3. 2014; nytimes.com. George Orwell, “Riding Down from Bangor,” The Collected Journalism, Essays, and Letters, vol. 4, ed. Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (Boston: Nonpareil Books, 2000), 243. Peter Craven, “Love and Longing in the Crinoline and Bonnet Set,” The Age (Melbourne), Oct. 4, 2008, p. 27. Melvyn Bragg, “Little Women,” Children’s Literature in Education 9 (1978): 95. “Little Women Still Has Big Fans,” Parade Magazine, Dec. 19, 1994, p. 15.
27. Stephen King, “Blood and Thunder in Concord,” New York Times Book Review, Sept. 10, 1995; nytimes.com. Dorris quoted in Conversations with Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris, ed., Allan Richard Chavkin and Nancy Feyl Chavkin (Oxford: University Press of Mississippi, 1994), 218. Matthew Bell, “Fellowes Denies Plagiarism in ‘Downton Abbey,’ ” Independent (London), Oct. 30, 2010; independent.co.uk. (The scene he allegedly borrowed was that in which Jo puts salt on a dessert instead of sugar, which Mrs. Patmore does as well in season 1.) Marc McEvoy, “Interview: John Green,” Sydney Morning Herald, Jan. 21, 2012; smh.com.au.
28. “Risque Book—Porridge—BBC Classic Comedy,” Nov. 12, 2007, BBC Worldwide Channel; youtube.com. “The One Where Monica and Richard Are Just Friends,” Friends, 1997, season 3, episode 13. “The Man in the Flannel Pants,” The Simpsons, 2011, season 23, episode 7. Girls, 2013, season 2, episode 6.
29. Jane Roland Martin, The Schoolhome: Rethinking Schools for Changing Families (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 76. Mark Adamo, composer’s commentary at end of video of Great Performances broadcast of Little Women opera, 2001.
8. “Being someone”: Growing Up Female with Little Women
1. Robin Wasserman, “What Does It Mean When We Call Women Girls?” Literary Hub, May 18, 2016; lithub.com.
2. Margo Jefferson, Negroland (New York: Pantheon, 2015), 216–17, 210. Judith Beth Cohen quoted in Sue Standing, “In Jo’s Garret: Little Women and the Space of Imagination,” in LWFI, 179.
3. Elizabeth Freeman, “Key Limes: Amy,” Los Angeles Review of Books, July 18, 2016; lareviewofbooks.org.
4. Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary and the Wrongs of Woman (1798, repr.; Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2009), 67. Margaret Fuller in The Portable Margaret Fuller, ed. Mary Kelly (New York: Penguin, 1994), 330.
5. “Growing down” in Annis Pratt, Archetypal Patterns in Women’s Fiction (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981), 14. “Tam[ing] girls into women” in Holly Blackford, “Little Women on the Big Screen: Heterosexual Womanhood as Social Performance,” in Sisterhoods: Across the Media/Literature Divide, ed. Deborah Cartmell et al. (London: Pluto Press, 1998), 32. For the prevalence of romance, see Kelsey McKinney, “It’s Frustratingly Rare to Find a Novel About Women That’s Not About Love,” June 9, 2013, Atlantic Monthly; theatlantic.com.
6. John Demos and Virginia Demos, “Adolescence in Historical Perspective,” in Childhood in America, ed. Paula S. Fass and Mary Ann Mason (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 132–38. Colin Heywood, A History of Childhood: Children and Childhood in the West from Medieval to Modern Times (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001); googlebooks.
7. Crista DeLuzio argues that the form of adolescence as torn between family and independence was especially typical for girls, whereas boys tended to be released from family responsibility quite early and unproblematically. See Female Adolescence in American Scientific Thought, 1830–1930 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), 10–11. LMA, LW, 14.
8. Suzanne Fagence Cooper, Effie: The Passionate Lives of Effie Gray, John Ruskin, and John Everett Millais (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2010), 23.
9. LMA, A Long Fatal Love Chase (New York: Dell, 1995), 3, 8.
10. Nicholas L. Syrett, American Child Bride: A History of Minors and Marriage in the United States (Charlotte: University of North Carolina Press, 2016), 52, 53, 2. The year 1861 was the last for which statistics were available. Unfortunately, percentages for the ages of sixteen and seventeen are not provided, only raw numbers.
11. Matthew Waites, The Age of Consent: Young People, Sexuality, and Citizenship (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 69.
12. Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, The Story of Alice: Lewis Carroll and the Secret History of Wonderland (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2015); Carroll quotes on 233, 151.
13. Deborah Gorham, The Victorian Girl and the Feminine Ideal (1982 repr.; New York: Routledge, 2012), 101.
14. LMA, LW, 11, 12, 132, 134.
15. Ibid., 76, 232.
16. Shortchanging Girls, Shortchanging America (Washington, DC: American Association of University Women, 1991, 1994).
17. Anne Thompson, “ ‘Little Women’ Kicks Off a Hollywood Trend,” Mar. 11, 1994, Entertainment Weekly; ew.com.
18. “Paperback Bestsellers,” Aug. 16, 1998,” New York Times, Aug. 16, 1968; nytimes.com. Kathleen Sweeney, Maiden USA: Girl Icons Come of Age (New York: Peter Lang, 2008), 97.
19. Sweeney, Maiden USA, 106. Jane Victoria Ward and Beth Cooper Benjamin, “Women, Girls, and the Unfinished Work of Connection: A Critical Review of American Girls’ Studies,” in All About the Girl: Culture, Power, and Identity, ed. Anita Harris (New York: Routledge, 2004), 20. Mary Pipher also indicated that black, Hispanic, and poor girls might be more resilient in Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls (New York: Ballantine, 1994), 281.
20. Pipher, Reviving Ophelia, 39.
21. Report of the APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2007).
22. Pipher, Reviving Ophelia, 283–84. Anna Quindlen, Introduction, Little Women (New York: Little, Brown, 1994), n.p.
23. Pipher, Reviving Ophelia, 43.
24. LMA, LW, 35, 225.
25. Ibid., 306, 305. Sarah Blackwood and Sarah Mesle, “No One Likes Meg,” Avidly, July 18, 2016; avidly.lareviewofbooks.org.
26. LMA, LW, 199, 192, 299, 297.
27. Ibid., 317. Caryn James, “Amy Had Golden Curls; Jo Had a Rat. Who Would You Rather Be?” New York Times, Dec. 25, 1995; nytimes.com.
28. Judith Fetterley, “Little Women: Alcott’s Civil War,” Feminist Studies 5.2 (Summer 1979): 379. Michelle A. Massé, “Songs to Aging Children: Louisa May Alcott’s March Trilogy,” in LWFI, 337. David H. Watters, “ ‘A Power in the House’: Little Women and the Architecture of Individual Expression,” in LWFI, 198. Angela M. Estes and Kathleen Margaret Lant, “Dismembering the Text: The Horror of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women,” Children’s Literature 17 (1989): 113.
29. LMA, LW, 118.
30. See discussion of Lizzie Alcott’s illness in chapter two. Lois Keith, Take Up Thy Bed and Walk: Death, Disability and Cure in Classic Fiction for Girls (New York: Routledge, 2001), 62. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979), 483. Janice M. Alberghene and Beverly Lyon Clark write, “Shy Beth is so fully self-effacing that she dies,” Introduction, LWFI, xvii.
31. LMA, LW, 254.
32. Ibid., 294–95.
33. Ann B. Murphy, “The Borders of Ethical, Erotic, and Artistic Possibilities in ‘Little Women,’ ” Signs 15.3 (Spring 1990): 572, 571. See also Fetterley, “Little Women: Alcott’s Civil War,” where she says, “Beth registers the cost of being a little woman; of suppressing so completely the expression of one’s needs; of controlling so massively all selfishness, self-assertiveness, and anger” (379).
34. My discussion of anorexia nervosa here is informed by Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Fasting Girls: The History of Anorexia Nervosa (New York: Vintage, 2000); and Megan Warin, Abject Relations: Everyday Worlds of Anorexia (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2010), especially chap. 6.
35. LMA, LW, 191. For the history of “fasting girls” as symbols of religious devotion, see Brumberg, Fasting Girls. LMA, LW, 97. Strangely, though, Beth is described as “retir[ing] to her room, overcome with emotion and lobster,” after the funeral (98), so she is supposed to have eaten something, although she was never mentioned as being at the table. The lobster was also of “meagre proportions” (97), so she couldn’t have eaten much of it.
36. Brigid Brophy, “A Masterpiece, and Dreadful,” New York Times Book Review, Jan. 17, 1965, p. 44. LMA, LW, 39, 12.
37. LMA, LW, 12, 14, 13.
38. Ibid., 138, 176, 51.
39. Ibid., 230, 237, 257, 255.
40. Ibid., 273.
41. Ibid., 281.
42. Ibid., 287, 286.
43. Ibid., 372.
44. Gail Mazur, “Growing Up with Jo,” Boston Review 13 (Feb. 1988): 18.
45. Michelle A. Massé, “Songs to Aging Children: Louisa May Alcott’s March Trilogy,” in LWFI, 327.
46. LMA, LW, 84.
9. “Wanting to be Rory, but better”: Little Women and Girls’ Stories Today
1. Peggy Orenstein, Girls and Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape (New York: HarperCollins, 2016). Shauna Pomerantz and Rebecca Raby, Smart Girls: Success, School, and the Myth of Post-Feminism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017).
2. John Ezard, “Little Women—and Boys—Losing Touch with Classics,” Guardian, Feb. 1, 2003; theguardian.com. “The Big Read Top 100,” BBC, Sept. 2, 2014; bbc.co.uk. “The Nation’s Favourite Books” in Times (London), Mar. 1, 2007, p.25. Robert McCrum, “The 100 Best Novels: No. 20—Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (1868–9),” Guardian, Feb. 3, 2014; theguardian.com. “The Cat in the Hat is America’s Favorite Book from Childhood,” Mar. 11, 2016; “The Bible Remains America’s Favorite Book,” Apr. 29, 2014; theharrispoll.com. See chapter seven for discussion of What Kids Are Reading reports.
3. Elaine Dutka, “ ‘Beauty and Beast’ Writer Is as Feisty as Her Heroine,” Orlando Sentinel, Jan. 25, 1992; articles.orlandosentinel.com.
4. Dorian Lynskey, “Why Frozen’s ‘Let It Go’ Is More Than a Disney Hit—It’s an Adolescent Aperitif,” Guardian, Apr. 10, 2014; theguardian.com.
5. “World Book Day: Heroines Fight Off Heroes in Poll,” BBC News, Feb. 22, 2016; bbc.com.
6. Cindy Hudson, “Book Review: The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han,” Mother Daughter Book Club, June 29, 2020; motherdaugtherbookclub.com.
7. Joanna Webb Johnson, “Chick Lit Jr.: More Than Glitz and Glamour for Teens and Tweens,” Chick Lit: The New Woman’s Fiction, ed. Suzanne Ferriss and Mallory Young (New York: Routledge, 2006), 141–57. Much of this paragraph is also informed by Johnson’s article. My thanks as well to former McGehee student Elizabeth Gay for sharing with me her senior thesis, “An Analysis of Chick Lit,” which discusses Little Women and the Gossip Girl books. “Review: Little Women, Louisa May Alcott,” Nov. 2014; girlwithherheadinabook.co.uk.
8. Cecily von Ziegesar, Gossip Girl (New York: Little, Brown, 2002), 3.
9. Naomi Wolf, “Young Adult Fiction: Wild Things,” New York Times, Mar. 12, 2006; nytimes.com. Emily Nussbaum, “Psst, Serena Is a Slut. Pass It On,” New York Magazine, n.d.; nymag.com.
10. See, for instance, Hannah Schiff, “12 Things Rory Gilmore Taught Us About Growing Up,” Buzzfeed, Nov. 2, 2014; buzzfeed.com; and Hannah Steinkopf-Frank, “What I Learned from Growing Up with Rory Gilmore,” Bitch Media, Nov. 7, 2014; bitchmedia.org. A later example is Betsy Morais, “My Life with Rory Gilmore,” The New Yorker, Dec. 1, 2016; newyorker.com.
11. Ritch Calvin, Introduction, “ ‘Where You Lead’: Gilmore Girls and the Politics of Identity,” in Gilmore Girls and the Politics of Identity: Essays on Family and Feminism in the Television Series, ed. Ritch Calvin (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008), p. 15. Kaitlyn Tiffany, “The New Gilmore Girls Is Weirdly Hostile Toward Fans, Women, and Storytelling in General,” The Verge, Nov. 28, 2016; theverge.com.
12. Calvin, “Introduction,” p. 5.
13. Kaitlyn Tiffany, “Gilmore Girls’ Depressing, Regressive Ending: Was It Fine?” The Verge, Nov. 30, 2016; theverge.com.
14. Quoted in Eliana Dockterman, “Gilmore Girls Creator Amy Sherman-Palladino Wishes You Weren’t So Obsessed with Rory’s Boyfriends,” Time, Nov. 2, 2016; time.com.
15. Kathryn VanArendonk, “How Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life Is Just Like Little Women,” Vulture, Nov. 29, 2016; vulture.com. Leah Thomas, “Rory Writing a Book on ‘Gilmore Girls’ Is the Perfect Way to Wrap Up Her Story and the Series,” Bustle, Nov. 25, 2016; bustle.com.
16. Chiara Atik, “Girls and Little Women: How Hannah Horvath Is Like Jo March,” Vulture, Jan. 21, 2014; vulture.com. Lena Dunham, responding to the article, wrote on Twitter, Jan. 22, 2014, “This rules. We definitely had Ray reading Little Women for a reason.” Kit Steinkellner, “Little Women Is Not Like Girls,” Book Riot, Jan. 29, 2014; bookriot.com.
17. Alexandra MacAaron, “Raising a Feminist Teen in the Age of Texting and Twerking,” Women’s Voices for Change, Dec. 17, 2013; womensvoicesfor change.org.