The Portable Louisa May Alcott

by Louisa May Alcott, Elizabeth Keyser (Editor)

Although the publication of Little Women in 1868 earned Louisa May Alcott tremendous popularity, for a long time she was thought of as a writer of children's stories and considered—at best—a minor figure in the American literary canon. Now, at the end of the twentieth century, Alcott's vast body of work is being celebrated alongside the greatest American writers, and this collection shows why. The Portable Louisa May Alcott samples the entire spectrum of Alcott's work: her novels, novellas, children's stories, sensationalist fiction, gothic tales, essays, letters, and journals. Presenting her more daring works, such as Moods and Behind a Mask (both reprinted in their entirety), alongside the familiar heroines of Little Women, this singular collection offers readers a rich and wide-ranging portrait of this talented, prolific, and influential writer.

Genres: Classics, Fiction, Literature

612 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2000

About the author

Louisa May Alcott was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet best known for writing the novel Little Women (1868) and its sequels Good Wives (1869), Little Men (1871) and Jo's Boys (1886). Raised in New England by her transcendentalist parents, Abigail May Alcott and Amos Bronson Alcott, she grew up among many well-known intellectuals of the day, including Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Alcott's family suffered from financial difficulties, and while she worked to help support the family from an early age, she also sought an outlet in writing. She began to receive critical success for her writing in the 1860s. Early in her career, she sometimes used pen names such as A.M. Barnard, under which she wrote lurid short stories and sensation novels for adults that focused on passion and revenge.
Published in 1868, Little Women is set in the Alcott family home, Orchard House, in Concord, Massachusetts, and is loosely based on Alcott's childhood experiences with her three sisters, Abigail May Alcott Nieriker, Elizabeth Sewall Alcott, and Anna Bronson Alcott Pratt. The novel was well-received at the time and is still popular today among both children and adults. It has been adapted for stage plays, films, and television many times.
Alcott was an abolitionist and a feminist and remained unmarried throughout her life. She also spent her life active in reform movements such as temperance and women's suffrage. She died from a stroke in Boston on March 6, 1888, just two days after her father's death.

Reviews

[Ethan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Who knew LMA kicked so much ass?! Never read Little Women, and pretty much hated every adapted version I've ever seen, but her short stories are fantastic! "Behind a Mask/A Woman's Power" is the best short story (novella) I've read in years, hands down. Check it out.

[John Lucy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Behind a Mask is alone worth reading the whole collection. A tour-de-force on the status and desperation of women as well as their potential power in the world. On the whole, Alcott deserves a lot of praise. I'm not a huge fan of her work, generally, (I'm also not a huge fan of including small snippets of larger works, like Little Women, in this work; I don't know that they contribute much. Might have been better to include an essay on the novel) but I am again and again impressed at how well Alcott weaves critical social questions and developments into her stories. She hits out on slavery and highlights the inherent equality of the races, and hints and wonders whether women, too, should be considered full equals and not be restricted to certain domestic roles of unimportance. The question, "what are women capable of," points also to the other question, "what are men capable of... if they make room for women." The answer to both is much more than currently allowed. Though Alcott doesn't explicitly argue anything, given her time in history, her work is truly impressive and worth reading.

[Sockich · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rating solely for My Mysterious Mademoiselle, the single most magically glorious piece of uncle/nephew smarm it has ever been my privilege to experience.

[maggy · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 / had to read for my english class but i did like some of her short stories.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alcott is an icon for all misunderstood women--women of talent, of power, of command of her sexuality and seduction, of command of her craft. Beyond 'Little Women' is a rich library of work, full of twists, tricks, and examples of strength in the feminine creative unattributed to her because of one soft, romantic success. What she could've accomplished if not for the limitations imposed upon her for her gender is contemplated and dreamed about in the fiction collected in this volume.

[Margaret · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection reads as a Louisa May Alcott "greatest hits" sequence, where a little bit of everything from her career is included. A number of her early pot-boiler short stories published anonymously or under the pseudonym "A.M. Barnard" are presented, as well as a full length version of Moods with her later work including excerpts from the Little Women sequels, Work and A Modern Mephistopheles. This is a great introduction for a reader who wants to explore Alcott's work beyond Little Women , and also includes excerpts from her letters and journals. The one thing missing is "Hospital Sketches", but her journal from her experiences as a Civil War nurse tell some of the same stories.

I was especially impressed by the inclusion of some of her journal entries and letters. The reader sees her struggling to find success as an author, support her family, and in some ways getting both of those in the end. Much of her work is semi-autobiographical, and the inclusion of the journals and letters strengthens the links the reader can see between her various characters and plots to actual people and events in her life.

Her work reflects the social movements of her time and the acute social awareness that came with living around one of the major eras of change in the United States. Her writing for children brought her fame, her pot-boiler horror stories brought her money, and through out her work collected in this volume, a reader sees her trying to negotiate her ambitions, successes, failures, and her emergence as a giant of American literature. In addition to being of literary importance, Louisa May Alcott's work is as engaging and interesting. It's good to see the side of her that's not the March sisters, because her writing career was much more extensive and varied than one would think.

[Jennifer Ricks · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good anthology. I just wish it was a complete works instead.

[Rebekah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very original plot lines and and incredible use of the English language. Classic Louisa May Alcott.

[Shannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has some of Alcott's best work that isn't really read as much as books like Little Women. I loved "Behind A Mask."

[Leslie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, who knew Louisa May had such a dark side? I guess I knew she had written some sort of gothic tales to pay the bills, but whoa Nelly!