Louisa May Alcott

When I was a teenager, I read Little Women every summer. It was a tradition.

I also loved Jo's Boys, Little Men, Rose in Bloom, and Eight Cousins.

When I was assigned a research project in high school, I wrote it on Louisa May Alcott.

Did you know that:

Louisa's father was a transcendentalist and close friends with Emerson.

She was home schooled by her father.

She went on nature walks with Henry David Thoreau.

She was a Civil War nurse.

Like many other nurses, she became ill with typhoid fever and was treated with mercury, which created health problems the rest of her life.

She was an abolitionist and a feminist.

Although she patterned Jo after herself, she never married.

It is believed that she died of mercury poisoning at the age of 56.

I'm sad that I missed the production Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women, which was aired last December on PBS. Here is a clip:

And I love the movies.
Have you seen these movie adaptations?

Katharine Hepburn as Jo. Great casting.

Peter Lawford makes a great Laurie. So many great actors in this version.

I was a big fan of Susan Dey when I was a kid -- remember The Patridge Family TV show? I wrote her a fan letter when I was in fifth grade.

Surely you've all seen this version. Love it.

And I have the music for the Broadway production, though I haven't seen the show--yet.

Here is a clip of Sutton Foster singing "Astonishing":

As you can see, I am a fan.

And other fans have written books about Louisa and her "little women."

March is written from the perspective of the March patriarch, who is largely missing from Little Women.

It won the Pulitzer Prize in 2006.

Edens's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for biography.

The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott is fan fiction.

"Deftly mixing fact and fiction, Kelly O'Connor McNees imagines a love affair that would threaten Louisa's writing career-and inspire the story of Jo and Laurie in Little Women. Stuck in small-town New Hampshire in 1855, Louisa finds herself torn between a love that takes her by surprise and her dream of independence as a writer in Boston. The choice she must make comes with a steep price that she will pay for the rest of her life."

Legacy gave this four stars on goodreads.

For all you other fans, take this quiz:

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