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The Untold Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Mother
Free Press
November 2012
On Sale: November 6, 2012
386 pages
ISBN: 1451620667
EAN: 9781451620665
Kindle: B007EDYNFE
Hardcover / e-Book
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Paperback (November 2013)
Non-Fiction Biography
Louisa May Alcott was one of the most successful and
bestselling authors of her day, earning more than any of her
male contemporaries. Her classic Little Women has
been a mainstay of American literature since its release
nearly 150 years ago, as Jo March and her calm, beloved
“Marmee” have shaped and inspired generations of young
women. Biographers have consistently attributed Louisa’s
uncommon success to her father, Bronson Alcott, assuming
that this outspoken idealist was the source of his
daughter’s progressive thinking and remarkable independence.
But in this riveting dual biography, award-winning
biographer Eve LaPlante explodes these myths, drawing from a
trove of surprising new documents to show that it was
Louisa’s actual “Marmee,” Abigail May Alcott, who formed the
intellectual and emotional center of her world. Abigail,
whose difficult life both inspired and served as a warning
to her devoted daughters, pushed Louisa to excel at writing
and to chase her unconventional dreams in a male-dominated
world. In Marmee & Louisa, LaPlante,
Abigail’s great-niece and Louisa’s cousin, re-creates their
shared story from diaries, letters, and personal papers,
some recently discovered in a family attic and many others
that were thought to have been destroyed. Here at last
Abigail is revealed in her full complexity—long dismissed as
a quiet, self-effacing background figure, she comes to life
as a fascinating writer and thinker in her own right. A
politically active feminist firebrand, she was a highly
opinionated, passionate, ambitious woman who fought for
universal civil rights, publicly advocating for abolition,
women’s suffrage, and other defin-ing moral struggles of her
era. In this groundbreaking work, LaPlante paints an
exquisitely moving and utterly convincing portrait of a
woman decades ahead of her time, and the fiercely
independent daughter whose life was deeply entwined with her
mother’s dreams of freedom. This gorgeously written story of
two extraordinary women is guaranteed to transform our view
of one of America’s most beloved authors.
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