FAYE MOSS: Welcome to another episode of Superstars in History. I'm your host, Faye Moss. One of my favorite books is Little Women, so I'm super happy to welcome today's guest. She was quite a character! This fierce, ambitious girl struggled with her temper and her three sisters. Growing up in poverty, she was determined to become a successful writer. Oh, but our guest isn't the heroine of the book, Jo March—it's her creator, author Louisa May Alcott!
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT: Hello, Miss Moss.
FAYE MOSS: I really appreciate your coming today! First let's hear about you and your family. You were born in Pennsylvania on your father's birthday in 1832. What were you like as a child?
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT: I was the second of four girls. My parents, Bronson and Abigail, were surprised that I was such an active, stubborn child. A boy couldn't be my friend until I'd beaten him in a race, and I didn't like girls who refused to climb trees. Throughout my life I loved to run, which my father encouraged.
FAYE MOSS: That was an unusual attitude in the nineteenth century. I've heard you based many Little Women characters on your family. Was your father a minister like Mr. March?
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT: My father was a teacher and philosopher, who was more interested in ideas than money. He was always in debt and depended upon family and friends to pay our bills. Because we were poor, we often moved. My dear mother, who inspired the character of Marmee, was always frustrated by my father's lack of interest in money. She took in sewing and became one of the first social workers in the United States, working with poor immigrants.
FAYE MOSS: Did you and your sisters have to work too?
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT: Oh, yes. At age 15 I vowed to do anything—teach, sew, write—to help support my family. I did all those things and more, including working as a laundress. I liked sewing because I could plan my stories while I worked. I'd always enjoyed writing and started composing poems at age eight. My parents expected us to keep journals, which they often read and commented upon.
FAYE MOSS: Oh, I'd hate that!
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT: My first book, Flower Fables, was published when I was 22. It was a children's book. I much preferred writing gothic thrillers for adults, which I wrote under a pen name. These stories were often quite scandalous, but they brought in money. I was obsessed with writing to the point that I often went without food or sleep. I even taught myself to write with both hands so I could keep working.
FAYE MOSS: That's what I call determination! How did you come to write Little Women?
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT: In the late 1860s, my publisher wanted me to write a book for girls. Reluctantly I sat down at my semicircular desk in Concord, Massachusetts. My publisher wasn't enthusiastic about my first few chapters, and neither was I. But when the book was finished—I'd produced almost five hundred pages in less than three months—we liked it. And so did the girls we showed it to.
FAYE MOSS: Let's dig into the similarities—and differences—between the Alcotts and the Marches. Little Women is set during the American Civil War, which the Northern and Southern states fought over slavery, among other issues. When the book opens, Mr. March is away from home, serving as a chaplain for Northern troops. I guess your father fought for the North too?
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT: No. Both my parents were abolitionists who believed that slaves should be freed, as did I. They'd even hidden a runaway slave when I was a child. But my father never served in the army. I was the one who wanted to fight in the war. That wasn't allowed, of course, because I was a woman. So I signed up for three months as an army nurse in Washington DC. After only six weeks, I became gravely ill and was sent home. Unfortunately I was given a medicine containing mercury, and my health was never the same again. But I kept writing—as much as 14 hours a day—because my parents had so many bills.
FAYE MOSS: Tell us something about your sisters.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT: My oldest sister was Anna; I modeled Meg, Jo's older sister, on her. Anna wanted to be an actress, and we were always putting on plays for friends. Like Meg, Anna worked as a governess and was the first to get married. In fact, Little Women originally ended with Meg's engagement. But I wrote a second part to the story because readers wanted more about the March girls. They especially wanted Jo to marry her neighbor Laurie. I hated this traditional plot because I didn't think women had to marry to be happy.
FAYE MOSS: That's what Jo says to Meg in the book! Did you have a real-life neighbor like Laurie?
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT: Everyone asks me that! No, he was based on a man I'd met in Europe.
FAYE MOSS: These days the two parts of Little Women are published as one book. So much happens in the second part! Beth dies. Amy goes to Europe to become an artist and—spoiler alert!—marries Laurie. How much of that is based on your family's history?
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT: My younger sister Elizabeth died before Anna married, but in the novel I postponed Beth's death until after Meg's wedding. I based the character of Amy on my youngest sister, May, who studied art in Europe and married a man from Switzerland.
FAYE MOSS: I was shocked when Meg's husband suddenly dies in the sequel Little Men.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT: Sadly that happened in real life too. Anna's husband died unexpectedly. His death spurred me to write Little Men so that Anna and her boys would have some money. In that novel Jo is married and has two children. Instead of writing, she's running a school for boys with her husband. I later wrote a sequel to that book called Jo's Boys.
FAYE MOSS: What a remarkable career! When you were 15, you vowed to be rich, famous, and happy before you died. Were you?
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT: I enjoyed the money but not the fame. When fans arrived at my house, I sometimes pretended to be a servant and said Miss Alcott was out. Or I fled into the woods. But what I really wanted to do was to squirt those people with the garden hose!
FAYE MOSS: Well, I don't want to get wet, so we'll let you return to history now.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT: Thank you, Miss Moss.
FAYE MOSS: Unlike Jo March, Louisa May Alcott never married. During her lifetime she published more than thirty books as well as hundreds of short stories, poems, and articles. On March 6, 1888, she died at the age of 55. Her most famous work remains Little Women, which has been translated into more than fifty languages and been adapted for film, theater, opera, and ballet.
I hope you enjoyed today's show. See you again next time!