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Nov 23, 2010

Barbara rated it:

Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Woman is a very detailed biography of Louisa May Alcott, in addition to a history of an incredibly interesting time in America.

While reading this book I felt as though I was transported back to the New England of the 19th Century. Harriet Reisen's descriptions of LMA, her parents, sisters, and many of their relatives and friends were just fascinating, especially the Alcott family's involvement in the Transcendentalist Movement and abolitionis More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Oct 04, 2011

Suzanne C rated it:

Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women is a lovingly crafted, meticulously researched biography by Harriett Reisen. I received my copy from a GoodReads First Reads drawing. As a Little Women fan from childhood, I was thrilled to receive the book and was not disappointed. I learned a great deal about Louisa and was surprised to find that much of Little Women was taken from people and experiences in her own life, although highly idealized. My only complaint with this book is that it More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 12, 2011

Jael rated it:

This was a well-written biography and I enjoyed it. I've always admired Alcott's books (at least her children's ones - I am not interested in the pulp fiction she did), but didn't know a whole lot about her life, so I learned a lot.

There were a few statements I took issue with, and they may well be the result of poor proofreading, but for someone who appears to be as obsessed with Alcott as the author claims to be, I found it ridiculous that she made the three following erroneous remar More...

2 comments like

Jun 21, 2011

Corinne rated it:

Talk about someone who lived an amazing life. I'm not usually a biography reader, but something about Louisa and the world she grew up in intrigued me - and rightly so. This very readable book tells Louisa's story from beginning to end, weaving in her writings as well as pertinent historical information that fleshes out the scene of her days.

Growing up with Emerson and Thoreau as surrogate uncles, the Concord and Boston of Louisa's day is the stuff of legend. What I really enjoyed abou More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 30, 2010

Ann rated it:

This is an engaging, easy to read book about Louisa May Alcott. I am not in a position to judge the author's scholarship, but I found it a fascinating entry into the world of not only the Transcendentalists but also Boston's upper crust in the 19th century.

I have two critiques of the book.

1. No pictures ! Not a single photograph, portrait, reproduction of a letter, nothing! Would it have been so hard to add a copy of George Healy's famous portrait of LMA? There is a refe More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Dec 11, 2010

Laura rated it:

I only knew a little bit about Louisa May Alcott from the tour I got at the Orchard House in Concord, MA. They told some of the harder truths about her life but it was somewhat romanticized.

The first part of this book focuses on her childhood and early adult life. It is extremely interesting. It gets a little boring in the middle. (I found it to be a rather dry recording of her literary accomplishments. She was so prolific and trying so hard to earn a living, she didn't have time for More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 01, 2010

The Library Lady rated it:

Reisen seems to believe that she has something new to say about Alcott, but aside from a few quotes I haven't read before, there is little her that hasn't been told and told more movingly by other Alcott biographers of recent times.
Moreover, if Reisen did so much research for the excellent documentary she did for American Masters and for this book, why does she make so many niggling errors about the books.Here are three whoppers:

1)In "Little Men" she says that JO has twi More...

4 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jul 22, 2010

ICPL added it

Louisa May Alcott grew up surrounded by some of the most influential people in American philosophy and literature, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Elizabeth Peabody, and of course, her father Bronson Alcott. Her mother, Abby May Alcott, of a prominent Bostonian family, worked for emancipation, woman’s suffrage, and other social reforms. Even though she is surrounded by great minds and rich cousins, Louisa grew up in a family with a pretty dire financial situation. Her fat More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 19, 2010

Kimberly rated it:

Harriet Reisen has written an excellent biography that was on Wall Street Journal's Ten Best Books of 2009. Louisa May Alcott was part of the American Bloomsbury group that included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller and Nathaniel Hawthorne. She also grew up knowing Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes (what is it with these middle names?), and Henry James and other famous writers, poets, and artists.

Louisa was tremendously loyal to her famil More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

May 25, 2010

Laurel rated it:

Loved it! Learned a lot. Laughed a lot.

Book description from Amazon:
A vivid, energetic account of the life of Louisa May Alcott, whose work has delighted millions of readers

Louisa May Alcott portrays a writer as worthy of interest in her own right as her most famous character, Jo March, and addresses all aspects of Alcott’s life: the effect of her father’s self-indulgent utopian schemes; her family’s chronic economic difficulties and frequent uprootings; her experie More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 12, 2010

Sarah rated it:

While I enjoyed this look into Louisa May Alcott's life and found the book very readable, I wanted more from the author. She makes conclusions and provides a sentence or two quoting a journal as support. That didn't do it for me, there was a little too much reading into things without giving the reader the information. (Yes, there are pages and pages of notes in the back, but there was almost too much to really look through and find the page/section you were referencing.) She did let you kno More...

1 comment like

Apr 12, 2010

Leeanna rated it:

Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women, by Harriet Reisen

"Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women" is a fascinating biography into the life of the author of the classic "Little Women," and also an in-depth look at her family. Reisen provides an extremely complete picture of Louisa's unusual childhood, and how it influenced her later publications.

The beginning of the book focuses on her father, Bronson Alcott, an unusual man for his More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 08, 2010

Shannon rated it:

I'm not much for biographies, but Louisa May Alcott is special. I remember watching "Little Women" with my mother, grandmother, and aunt when I was a young girl, the version with June Allyson as Jo. I loved it. Not much later, I read the book, as well as reading Little Men. Again, loved them. So when this book was mentioned in "Library Journal" I immediately requested it from the library and read it in a weekend.

Harried Reisen has done years of research on Al More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 04, 2010

Nell rated it:

Before reading this biography, I had no idea about Alcott’s background and how much she based her writings on her own life, or that those writings included novels and stories for adults and pulp fiction as well as her better-known children’s works. Not surprisingly, she was an imaginative, competitive, energetic, adventurous (even wild) tomboy—the Jo of Little Women. Her parents were loving, but her idealistic father could not support his wife and four daughters, and they often went hungry. Yet More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 22, 2009

Debbie rated it:

This biography of Louisa May Alcott was a well-written, enjoyable read. Harriet Reisen gave a chronological account of the Alcott's lives while relating how the national events of the time effected them and how they influenced history (through their Transcendental movement, abolition movement, etc.). She also worked in many quotes taken from letters and the personal journals kept by each member of the family.

The first 87 pages were mainly about Louisa's parents (Abby and Bronson) and More...

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May 06, 2010

Michelle rated it:

When I was about ten, my grandmother sent me a copy of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. The next year, my mom bought me a copy of Eight Cousins, or The Aunt Hill, followed by a mission to the library to find its sequel, Rose in Bloom. All three of those books were certainly fun to read (Rose Campbell's stories), and very moving (Little Women, but it wasn't until a few years later that I became very interested in Louisa May Alcott as an author. That was when I received a copy of A Marble Wom More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Nov 17, 2009

Lydia rated it:

When I was around 10 years old, I read Little Women. How many times have you heard a grown woman say something similar to this? Maybe the age wasn't the same, but nearly every woman I know has read Little Women at some point in their life. Nowadays it's very possible they've seen the movie too, you know.. the one with Wynona Rider as Jo? I loved that movie as well!

I remember falling in love with Laurie and feeling so much frustration that Jo wouldn't just give him a chance! I me More...

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Jul 27, 2011

Christina rated it:

I fell in love with Little Women when I was nine years old. I continued to read it once a year until I hit high school. I never wanted to read any of the other books by Louisa May Alcott because I feared they wouldn't be as good or as memorable as Little Women. One day I picked up the newspaper and saw a review for this biography on Louisa May Alcott and I knew I had to read it.

It was definitely well worth it. I learned so much about this incredible woman's life and I found a kindred spirit in h More...

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Dec 31, 2009

Carol rated it:

How much of "Little Women" and other Alcott favorites is based on reality? That's one of the questions Reisen tries to answer. Far more interesting than that issue is the life of Alcott herself. Many a person may identify with her situation, as the only wage-earner, from her teens to death, in a family of ne'er-do-wells and inadequates and entitleds. She and her sisters lived in hunger much of their youth, and, as children, depended heavily on hand-me-downs and hand-outs. I don't know More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

May 28, 2010

MAP rated it:

Like many girls, when I was 11 or 12, I read Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. Unlike many girls, the book made no real lasting impact on me. By that time, I was a voracious reader, and Little Women was just one more in a long line of books I was devouring. I enjoyed the book, and was glad I had read it, but it was not one of those books that I carried with me emotionally even days after I had finished it, like it seems to be for so many others.

Therefore, I was drawn to this biogr More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

May 08, 2010

Jodi rated it:

I enjoyed learning about Louisa May Alcott but at times the book was a little dry - thus 2 stars. The author was definitely well-researched and gave a pretty good idea of Louisa as a person.

What I learned about Louisa May Alcott:

- She grew up in extreme poverty and often times didn't get enough to eat with bread and an apple being a big meal for her and her family because her father, Bronson Alcott just couldn't manage to keep a job for long and he was not much of a work More...

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Jan 31, 2011

Toni rated it:

I cannot say that this was an enjoyable book to read. What I CAN say is that it is very well written and exhaustively researched. The "fairy tale" life that Alcott spun for the readers of Little Women was a far cry from her real life family whom the story was loosely based on. In fact, the genteel proverty that the fictional March family led was pure luxury compared to the abject poverty the Alcott family led. Bronson Alcott, who was one of the pioneers of the "enlightened" m More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 23, 2010

Laurel-Rain rated it:

This story behind the great author is a beautifully wrought and in-depth portrait that sweeps forward from her birth and through the landscape of her life, but also fills in the picture with details of her parents' lives as well.

In the context of what was going on historically, Louisa May Alcott's success is even more awesome. She grew up in a time where women were not yet given the voice. Later in her adulthood, she would jump onto that cause, as well, struggling to help women obtai More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 25, 2011

Ann rated it:

As is true for so many others, Louisa May Alcott and her alter-ego, Jo March, are icons of my childhood.

I already knew quite a bit about Louisa May Alcott but I still found this an informative biography.

Louisa seemed to resemble her counterpart, Jo March, even more than I'd expected. I was also surprised by how many details from the Alcott's real lives found their way into Little Women. Not surprisingly, it seems as if she wrote her life, but as she wished it to be.
More...

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Jan 06, 2010

Saralibrary rated it:

Having loved Little Women as a child and having visited Orchard House in high school, I was thrilled to see a new biography of Louisa May Alcott appearing on the shelves. Reisen's biography is very accessible and brings her subject, as well as the whole Alcott family, to life through excerpts from letters, journals and Alcott's (often autobiographical) stories. She also doesn't round off Alcott's rough edges, as previous biographers had done to preserve the author's "Aunt Jo" public pe More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 30, 2009

Jennifer (JC-S) rated it:

‘The Woman behind Little Women’

This is a well written and enjoyable biography of Louisa May Alcott. By providing a chronological account of the lives of the Alcott’s, it is much easier to appreciate both the times in which they lived and the influences that shaped their lives.

The first part of the book focuses mainly on Louisa’s parents Abigail May and Bronson Alcott and their friends. As their friends included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Thoreau and Nathaniel Hawthorne More...

2 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jun 26, 2011

Suzanne rated it:

I am inspired by the life of Louisa May Alcott! Reisen's account of her life left nothing out, and I learned many things I didn't know about LMA. All I really knew about her prior to reading this book was that she wrote Little Women (and other popular children's novels) and she is a card in the game Authors.

I have always loved Little Women ... it has been my favorite book since the day I read it as a young girl. Actually my mother read the story to me the first time, and I then More...

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Mar 19, 2010

Meghan rated it:

Biographies are not usually a genre I read often; however, I received this book as a Christmas gift and was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed reading it. Harriet Reisen did a wonderful job incorporating Louisa May Alcott's journal entries and poems into the tale of her life (though I will admit, I believe it's pretty easy to relate a person's journal entry to a time period in their life) and the transistion between Alcott's writings and Reisen's narrative was relatively seamless.
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Feb 18, 2010

Heather rated it:

Like many young girls, I read and loved Little Women, and new that it was based largely on the author's life. As an English major in college, her father Bronson was frequently footnoted as a member of the Transcendentalist Movement which included such luminaries as Emerson, Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller. Until reading Reisen's fascinating biography, that was the total sum of my knowledge of Alcott's upbringing. Though Reisen is clearly a devoted fan of Alcott, the book paints an honest picture of More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 27, 2010

Catherine rated it:

It was refreshing to dive into the life of a such a strong and forceful personality. It was Louisa's incredible drive that led her to success and fame, no doubt about it.
She was pretty hilarious and quite a few of her acerbic observations gave me a good laugh. What I wonder the most is her tenacious hold on Duty and what Duty ended up costing her. We don't use the term at all now but Duty was the maintain of the Victorian woman's life and Louisa's life ended up being no different on that More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

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