Author, born in Germantown, Penn., 29th November, 1832. Her birth was the anniversary of the birth of her father. Her first published book was “Flower Fables” (Boston, 1855). It was not successful. She continued to write for her own amusement in her spare hours, but devoted herself to helping her father and mother by teaching school, serving as nursery governess, and even at times sewing for a living…. In 1862 she became a nurse in the Washington Hospitals and devoted herself to her duties there with conscientious zeal. In consequence, she became ill herself and narrowly escaped death by typhoid fever. While in Washington she wrote to her mother and sisters letters describing hospital life and experience, which were revised and published in book-form as “Hospital Sketches” (Boston, 1863). In that year she went to Europe as companion to an invalid woman, spending the year in Germany, Switzerland, Paris, and London. Then followed “Moods” (1864); “Morning Glories, and Other Tales” (1867); “Proverb Stories” (1868). She then published “Little Women,” 2 volumes, (1868), a story founded largely on incidents in the lives of her three sisters and herself at Concord. This book made its author famous. From its appearance until her death she was constantly held in public esteem, and the sale of her books has passed into many hundred thousands. Most of her stories were written while she resided in Concord, though she penned the manuscript in Boston, declaring that she could do her writing better in that city, so favorable to her genius and success. Following “Little Women” came “An Old-Fashioned Girl” (1870); “Little Men” (1871), the mere announcement of which brought an advance order from the dealers for 50,000 copies; the “Aunt Jo’s Scrap-Bag” (1871), 6 volumes; “Work” (1873); “Eight Cousins” (1875); “A Rose in Bloom” (1876); “Silver Pitchers and Independence” (1876); “Modern Mephistopheles,” anonymously in the “No Name Series” (1877); “Under The Lilacs” (1878); “Jack and Jill” (1880); “Proverb Stories” a new edition revised (1882); “Moods” a revised edition (1884); “Spinning-Wheel Stories” (1884); “Jo’s Boys” (1886). This latest story was a sequel to “Little Men.” “A Garland for Girls” (1887).

Personal

  She never had a study—any corner will answer to write in. She is not particular as to pen and paper, and an old atlas on her knee is all she cares for. She has the wonderful power to carry a dozen plots in her head at a time, thinking them over whenever she is in the mood. Sometimes she carries a plot thus for years, and suddenly finds it all ready to be written. Often, in the dead waste and middle of the night, she lies awake and plans whole chapters, word for word, and when daylight comes has only to write them off as if she were copying. In her hardest-working days she used to write fourteen hours in the twenty-four, sitting steadily at her work, and scarcely tasting food till her daily task was done.

  A singular combination of opposing influences dominated the youth of Louisa Alcott. It is to be doubted if any woman ever before achieved literary fame and fortune under more discouraging material circumstances,—or what would have been discouraging to any one placed in the neighborhood of less noble natures,—or was ever led up to her attempt under more fortunate inheritance and training; and a great part of her excellence consists in the way in which she conquered one with the other.

  A girl, whose earliest teacher was Margaret Fuller; who at ten years of age, learned to know the seasons in their varied dress and nature in its deepest meanings under Thoreau’s guidance; to whom men like Emerson, Channing, Ripley, and Hawthorne were every-day company, yet who was brought up almost in poverty, and with the necessity of work at home if not abroad; who had a fund of downright common sense and keen humor underlying all transcendental influence,—is one who, as a woman, might be expected to have made her mark, and she did it by the simplest, kindliest, cheeriest of writing, and the sweetest of companionship and kindness toward others.

  On her birthday, twenty years after her first story was written, and while the whole country was enjoying her last, she writes in her diary: “Spent alone, working hard. No presents, but father’s “Tablets” (recently published). I never seem to have many presents, though I give a good many. That is best, perhaps, and makes a gift very precious when it does come.” Six months later, when her name was in every one’s mouth, she wrote: “Very poorly; feel quite used up. Don’t care much for myself, as rest is heavenly even with pain, but the family seems so panic-stricken and helpless when I break down that I try to keep the mill going.” So she plods along and writes four short stories, which together bring her seventy dollars—barely as much as a writer of equal prominence nowadays would demand for one little tale. Even after she had received many thousands of dollars for “Little Women” she continued to work hard, for she always saw new ways of using money for her dear ones.

  The happy, guileless world of children claims her for its own. She comes freely among them—a child herself in her simplicity and camaraderie, with that undefinable “something” which means sympathy, comprehension, and, above all, appreciation. We have all been under the spell, whether we can fairly conjure it up anew or not. But now that the story of her life has been told, with its unswerving purpose and will, its gentle and absolutely disinterested affections, her works seem to fade into insignificance, while her fame lifts itself upon a broader basis, and takes ampler scope and proportions. It is the woman who rises before us,—single-minded and single-hearted, with no distraction, no bewilderment, no vagaries, and always a master-voice in her life to be obeyed,—and who comes freely among us, children no more, but struggling men and women less well trained and equipped than she, but all the more grateful to be helped, to be sustained, and even to be rebuked by so valiant an example as hers.

  Finding she had a talent for writing stories, she employed that to the best of her powers, and for the same ends. She often thought out stories while busy with sewing. Whatever her hands found to do she did cheerfully. If a sad, this is also an inspiring story: few more notable have come to public knowledge in the lives of women in our day. Its splendour and nobility should long survive, and many thousands who read her books have been grateful for knowing how cheerful, brave, and beautiful her own life was. She might have married advantageously. She had more than one offer and many attentions she did not care for; but her heart was bound up in her family. She could not contemplate her own interests as something separate from theirs. She died Louisa Alcott, and honoured be her name.

General

  In the absence of knowledge, our authoress has derived her figures, as the German derived his camel, from the depths of her moral consciousness. If they are on this account the less real, they are also on this account the more unmistakably instinct with a certain beauty and grace. If Miss Alcott’s experience of human nature has been small, as we should suppose, her admiration for it is nevertheless great. Putting aside Adam’s treatment of Ottila, she sympathises throughout her book [“Moods”] with none but great things. She has the rare merit, accordingly, of being very seldom puerile. For inanimate nature, too, she has a genuine love, together with a very pretty way of describing it. With these qualities there is no reason why Miss Alcott should not write a very good novel, provided she will be satisfied to describe only that which she has seen. When such a novel comes, as we doubt not it eventually shall, we shall be among the first to welcome it. With the exception of two or three celebrated names, we know not, indeed, to whom, in this country, unless to Miss Alcott, we are to look for a novel above the average.

  Miss Louisa M. Alcott, in her “Little Women” and “Little Men,” has almost revolutionized juvenile literature by the audacity of her innovations. She thoroughly understands that peculiar element in practical youthful character which makes romps of so many girls and “roughs” of so many boys. Real little women and real little men look into her stories as into mirrors in order to get an accurate reflection of their inward selves. She has also a tart, quaint, racy, witty good sense, which acts on the mind like a tonic. Her success has been as great as her rejection of conventionality in depicting lads and lasses deserved.

  It has been said that one of Mr. Alcott’s best contributions to literature was his daughter, Louisa; and readers of all ages, here and in America, will give their cordial assent to that. Few writers are more popular, and none more deservedly so.

  I fancy that all the reading world must know the story of the phenomenal furor which this book [“Little Women”] created. Twenty years have elapsed since its publication, and, looking back to the days of my own childhood, I can recall the wild delight with which “we girls” read, imitated, rehearsed, laughed, and cried over it, and how we all longed to know Miss Alcott, wondered who and what she was; and my own experience in regard to the excitement created during the first five years of its life is worth recording, merely because it proves the permanent successful quality in the work, since I see young people to-day reading it in the fashion that we did fifteen years ago, repeating all of the sentiments it elicited and all the enthusiasm which girls of our time delighted to express. We read it in much the same fashion, I think, that Thackeray said his daughter did “Nicholas Nickleby,” which was by day and by night, when she was sick or well, sleepy or wakeful, even walking or riding. We picked out our “favourites,” as what girl of to-day does not?

  Miss Alcott addressed herself to children, and no author’s name is more endeared to the young than hers. Although there is little in her writing that is not drawn from personal experience, this is so colored by her imagination, and so strong through her sympathy with life, that her books represent the universal world of childhood and youth. But while they are characterized by humor, cheerfulness, good morals, and natural action, their healthfulness may be somewhat questionable on account of the sentimentality that is woven into her work and breaks the natural grace of childhood by introducing the romantic element, and a hint of self-importance and independence that tends to create a restless and rebellious spirit.

  Louisa May Alcott is universally recognized as the greatest and most popular story-teller for children in her generation. She has known the way to the hearts of young people, not only in her own class, or even country, but in every condition of life, and in many foreign lands…. Of no author can it be more truly said than of Louisa Alcott that her works are a revelation of herself. She rarely sought for the material of her stories in the old chronicles, or foreign adventures. Her capital was her own life and experiences and those of others directly about her; and her own well-remembered girlish frolics and fancies were sure to find responsive enjoyment in the minds of other girls.

  What was it in Miss Alcott’s books that surprised and delighted the children of a score of years ago, and that still holds its charm for the childhood of to-day? Was it a new world that she discovered—a fairy-land of imagination and romance, peopled by heroes and enchanted beings? Far from it. It was the literal homespun, child’s world of to-day; the common air and skies, the common life of every New England boy and girl, such as she knew it; the daily joys and cares, the games and romps and jolly companions—all the actuality and detail of familiar and accustomed things which children love. For children are born realists, who delight in the marvelous simply because for them the marvelous is no less real than the commonplace, and is accepted just as unconditionally. Miss Alcott met the children on their own plane, gravely discussed their problems, and adopted their point of view, drawing in no wise upon her invention or imagination, but upon the facts of her own memory and experience. Whether or not the picture, so true to the life, as she had lived it, will remain true and vital for all times cannot now be determined. For the literature of children, no less than for our own, a higher gift may be needed; more finish, and less of the “rough-and-ready” of every-day habit and existence; above all, perhaps, a larger generalization and suggestion, and the touch of things unseen as well as things familiar.

  No name in American literature has more thrilled the hearts of the young people of this generation than that of Louisa May Alcott.

  It has been truly said that Miss Alcott’s fictions have imparted genuine happiness to thousands and thousands of the young, and those thrice happy elders who have kept young in heart and feeling.

  Adeline D. T. Whitney and eminently Louisa Alcott have the secret of laughter as well as of tears, but their abiding charm for girlhood is less in the story told than in the tenderness of the telling.

  Among the great multitude of writers of Juvenile Literature, I select for special mention here Louisa May Alcott, as on the whole the best representative of the tendencies of this form of literature.

  Her stories are transcriptions rather than creations, and if the Alcott family life had not been what it was, the “Little Women” and “Little Men” and the other delightful stories could never have been written. For they were the literary flowering of outward and actual experiences. Coming directly out of life, Miss Alcott’s books appeal to life…. Some of the more artificial writers or critics of writers who do not sufficiently relate literature to life assert that Miss Alcott’s stories lack this or that, and are not “literature.” Yet her books are translated into more than half a dozen languages; they are widely read in half a dozen countries, and her name is a household word where the names of some of these superfine critics will never be dreamed of, or heard. Miss Alcott appealed to the higher qualities of the spirit in our common humanity, and the response was universal. She had an infinite capacity for affection, great love for the people, an exquisite tenderness, keen, practical good sense, and a fund of humour that enlivened daily life.

  Just thirty years ago “Little Men” was published, and, from then until now, probably no other book excepting “Little Women” has been so much read by children. Other writers for young people have come and gone, or have come and stayed, but their popularity has never been so great in any direction as Miss Alcott’s. She is less exquisitely charming than Mrs. Ewing and no more delightful than Susan Coolidge, but her appeal to the heart of most children is unfailing. She preaches them innumerable little sermons in the most barefaced way; her grown-up characters remind her little folks of their faults with a faithfulness which one sometimes feels would defeat its own end, but there is frankness about it all, and confidence that every nature has plenty of good in it to be appealed to; frankness and confidence are always winning cards, and year after year the old stories are read again. Year after year, too, the worn old copies give way after long and faithful service, and, if their original owners do not replace them, new copies must be obtained for younger children. They are read and re-read and lent and carried on journeys. They are just as popular now as they used to be, and there seems no reason why their vogue should not continue indefinitely.