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Louisa May Alcott: A Biography

madeleine b. stern

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Madeleine B. Stern, one of the world's leading Alcott scholars, shows how the breadth of Alcott's work, ranging from Little Women to sensational thrillers and war stories, serves as a reflection of a fascinating and complicated life dotted with poverty and riches alike, hard menial work, physical suffering relieved by opiates, and the acclaim of literary success.

422 pages, Paperback

First published December 31,1971

This edition

Format
422 pages, Paperback
Published
August 26, 1999 by Northeastern University Press
ISBN
9781555534172
ASIN
1555534171
Language
English
Characters More characters
  • Louisa May Alcott

    Louisa May Alcott

    Louisa May Alcott

    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...

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About the author

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madeleine b. stern

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Madeleine Bettina Stern was an independent scholar and rare book dealer. She graduated from Barnard College in 1932 with a B.A. in English literature. She received her M.A. in English literature from Columbia University in 1934. Stern was particularly known for her work on the writer Louisa May Alcott. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1943 to write a biography of Alcott, which was eventually published in 1950. In 1945, she and her friend Leona Rostenberg opened Rostenberg & Stern Books. Rostenberg and Stern were active members of the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America, at a time when few women were members. The pair lived and worked in Rostenberg's house in the Bronx. They were known for creating unique rare book catalogs. In 1960, Stern helped found the New York Antiquarian Book Fair.
Stern and Leona Rostenberg became widely known in the late 1990s while in their late eighties when their memoir on the rare book trade, Old Books, Rare Friends, became a best seller.

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Community Reviews

Rating(3.6 / 5.0, 20 votes)
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Profile Image for Kimberly .
Enescu
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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This was an extremely detailed and informative look at Louisa May Alcott's life. The writing style was a bit confusing at times and it was a slow read. It helped that I have been reading multiple other biographies of Alcott so I already had a pretty good framework of her life. From what I understand the author was instrumental in uncovering the writings that Alcott had done under a pseudonym, so it was very cool to read her perspective.
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Idontwantto2mal
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Exhaustively researched and scrupulously devoted to its subject, but at times the circumscribed adherence to reporting only what can be verified in the historical record makes it difficult to get a sense of Alcott as a full person.
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Dxnisxde
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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This is a thorough and engaging biography! I read it while writing my senior thesis on Alcott’s novel Work and found it very useful. Stern is one of my favorite Alcott scholars!
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ronyharsono
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Although Stern's prose is more like a stream-of-consciousness novel than a biography (which takes quite a while to get used to) and although she assumes the reader has extensive knowledge of the mid-19th century and Concord's various literary lions, I enjoyed this book very much. The real Louisa Alcott captures your affections as easily as Jo March does, and you can't help but admire her determination to support her unusual family and to make a name for herself in a man's world.
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HappyG
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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I was inspired to read this biography when I visited Alcott's home in Concord, Mass over the Christmas break. I didn't know much about her life so it's been quite enjoyable. The narrative style makes it seem like a novel instead of a biography, so that took a little getting used to. I'm enjoying the book so far, especially seeing the parallels between Lousia's life & that of Jo March in "Little Women" (which is in my top 5 of all time!). I would recommend it to others who enjoy Louisa May Alcott's work.
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