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The Journals of Louisa May Alcott

louisa may alcott joel myerson daniel shealy madeleine b. stern

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From her eleventh year to the month of her death at age fifty-five, Louisa May Alcott kept copious journals. She never intended them to be published, but the insights they provide into her remarkable life are invaluable.

Alcott grew up in a genteel but impoverished household, surrounded by the literary and philosophical elite of nineteenth-century New England, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Like her fictional alter ego, Jo March, she was a free spirit who longed for independence, yet she dutifully supported her parents and three sisters with her literary efforts. In the journals are to be found hints of Alcott's surprisingly complex persona as well as clues to her double life as an author not only of "high" literature but also of serial thrillers and Gothic romances.

Associate editor Madeleine B. Stern has added an in-depth introduction to The Journals of Louisa May Alcott , the only unabridged edition of Alcott's private diaries.

400 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,1989

This edition

Format
400 pages, Paperback
Published
October 1, 1997 by University of Georgia Press
ISBN
9780820319506
ASIN
0820319503
Language
English

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About the author

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louisa may alcott

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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.

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Community Reviews

Rating(3.6 / 5.0, 19 votes)
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Profile Image for Kimberly .
ryuzakiraiga
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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I loved the insight these carefully compiled journals provide into Louisa May Alcott's childhood and writing life, although the deterioration at the end of her short life was painful to see. Be warned though, this volume probably wouldn't make for fascinating reading to anyone except a die-hard Alcott fan or a devoted historian.
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TheRealN1kki
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Although some of the entries where quite boring and dull you where basically introduced to the words of the real "March sisters" especially the protagonist herself Louisa May Alcott who was the basis of the character "Jo March" it is a very interesting thing to read real people's journals especially if they were written in the 1860's.
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DoPlayAdam
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Reading the letters and journals of Louisa May Alcott is the nearest we in the 21st century can come to meeting the woman herself. The letters are pithy, filled with classic Alcott comedy and wit. The letters are also moving in the tender reality of joys and sorrows lived.
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supernicolasman
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Again, I love LMA. This compilation of her journals felt like glimpsing at another sphere of her life and peering into the character of the author I have admired for almost a decade.
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AlteredReality
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Reading Aunt Louisa's journals again after 25 years brought new thoughts, new perspectives, new musings, like having a cherished friend or mentor sitting across from you with a hot cup of coffee (or tea) and exchanging ideas. These precious entries were conversations I can only dream of carrying on with her.
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yourfavoriteeva
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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I don't think I'd say that Louisa May Alcott kept "copious" journals... most of what she wrote seemed succinct and to-the-point. She decribes herself as moody, but her entries are full of humor and fun. I often wished she had included a little more detail about the people she wrote about there - I wondered if there were some untold stories.

My favorite thing about reading this was watching her yearly income go up (she records how much money she makes at the end of each year). The first year, she makes about $50, mostly from teaching and sewing, but as she starts to write more and more, she gets an extra $10 here and there. Each year I was like, "Whoa, she made $150 this year!" and then, "Oh, this year wasn't such a good year for Louisa." Not to spoil the story or anything, but eventually, she wrote Little Women and became a thousand-aire, and that was pretty exciting - reading her journals, I felt personally invested in her success.
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