num_pages: 363
description: 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 Alcotts life: the effect of her fathers self-indulgent utopian schemes; her familys 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 Alcotts 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 authors 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 Alcotts 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.
language: English
title: Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women
publisher: Henry Holt and Co.