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The Woman Behind Little Women
Henry Holt and Co.
November 2009
On Sale: October 27, 2009
384 pages
ISBN: 0805082999
EAN: 9780805082999
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Biography
A vivid, energetic account of the life of Louisa May Alcott,
whose work has delighted millions of readersLouisa May
Alcott portrays a writer as worthy of interest in her own
right as her most famous character, Jo March, and addresses
all aspects of Alcott’s life: the effect of her father’s
self-indulgent utopian schemes; her family’s chronic
economic difficulties and frequent uprootings; her
experience as a nurse in the Civil War; the loss of her
health and frequent recourse to opiates in search of relief
from migraines, insomnia, and symptomatic pain. Stories and
details culled from Alcott’s journals; her equally rich
letters to family, friends, publishers, and admiring
readers; and the correspondence, journals, and recollections
of her family, friends, and famous contemporaries provide
the basis for this lively account of the author’s classic
rags-to-riches tale.Alcott would become the equivalent of a
multimillionaire in her lifetime based on the astounding
sales of her books, leaving contemporaries like Nathaniel
Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Henry James in the dust.
This biography explores Alcott’s life in the context of her
works, all of which are to some extent autobiographical. A
fresh, modern take on this remarkable and prolific writer,
who secretly authored pulp fiction, harbored radical
abolitionist views, and completed heroic service as a Civil
War nurse, Louisa May Alcott is in the end also the story of
how the all-time beloved American classic Little Women came
to be. This revelatory portrait will present the popular
author as she was and as she has never been seen before.
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