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Read a biography. Visit one of Louisa’s homes. Connect with other Alcott fans. If you want more Louisa, you’re at the right place!

Flower Fables, 1854.
Little Women, 1868.
Little Women, Part 2 (Good Wives), 1869.
Little Men, 1871.
Jo’s Boys, 1886.
An Old Fashioned Girl, 1870.
Eight Cousins, 1875.
Rose in Bloom, 1876.
Under the Lilacs, 1878.
Jack and Jill, 1880.
Novels
The Inheritance, 1849.
A Long Fatal Love Chase, 1866.
Moods, 1865 (revised 1882).
Work: A Story of Experience, 1873.
A Modern Mephistopheles, 1877.
Other Significant Works
Hospital Sketches, 1863.
Transcendental Wild Oats, 1873.
Collections
Alternative Alcott, Edited by Elaine Showalter. Rutgers UP, 1988.
Louisa May Alcott Unmasked: Collected Thrillers, ed. by Madeleine Stern. Northeastern UP, 1995.

Louisa May Alcott wrote hundreds of short stories, both for children and for adults. Some of them are still being “discovered” because Louisa often wrote under pen names. For the sake of brevity, we have omitted the titles of each short story here. If you have questions about her writings, please get in touch with us.

Biographies of Louisa

The Alcotts: Biography of A Family by Madelon Bedell. (Out of Print)
Eden’s Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father by John Matteson. Norton, 2008.
Louisa May Alcott: A Biography by Madeleine Stern. Northeastern UP, 1999.
Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women by Harriet Reisen. Henry Holt & Co., 2009.
Marmee and Louisa: The Untold Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Mother by Eve LaPlante. Simon & Schuster, 2013.

Books About the Alcotts and Their World

The Annotated Little Women, Notes by John Matteson. Norton, 2015.

The Letters of A. Bronson Alcott, edited by Richard L. Herrnstadt. (Out of Print)

Little Women: An Annotated Edition edited by Daniel Shealy. Belknap, 2013.

The Lives of Margaret Fuller: A Biography by John Matteson. Norton, 2013.

Margaret Fuller: A New American Life by Megan Marshall. Mariner, 2014.

May Alcott: A Memoir by Caroline Ticknor. Applewood, 1928.

Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters by Anne Boyd Rioux. Norton, 2019.

My Heart Is Boundless: Writings of Abigail May Alcott, Louisa’s Mother by Eve LaPlante. Free Press, 2012.

The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism by Megan Marshall. Mariner, 2009.

To Set This World Right: The Antislavery Movement in Thoreau’s Concord by Sandra Petrulionis. Cornell, 2006.

A Worse Place Than Hell: How the Civil War Battle of Fredericksburg Changed a Nation by John Matteson. Norton, 2021.

Civil War Nurse: the Diary and Letters of Hannah Ropes edited by John R. Brumgardt. University of Tennessee Press, 1993.

Louisa May Alcott’s Primary Sources

The Selected Letters of Louisa May Alcott Edited by Joel Myerson and Daniel Shealy. Associate Editor Madeleine B. Stern. UGA Press, 1995.
The Journals of Louisa May Alcott. Edited by Joel Myerson and Daniel Shealy. Associate Editor Madeleine B. Stern.
Little Women Abroad: The Alcott Sisters’ Letters from Europe, 1870-1871. Edited by Daniel Shealy. UGA Press, 2008.
Alcott In Her Own Time: A Biographical Chronicle of Her LIfe, Drawn from Recollections, Interviews, and Memoirs by Family, Friends, and Associates Edited by Daniel Shealy. Iowa UP, 2005.

Scholarly Articles

“Dismantling Gender Roles and Redefining Womanhood in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women” by Shardai Smith. Locus: The Seton Hall Journal of Undergraduate Research, 2021, Vol. 4.
“Impersonating ‘Little Women’: the Radicalism of Alcott’s Behind A Mask” by Judith Fetterley. Women’s Studies, 1983, Vol. 10.
“Louisa May Alcott’s Queer Geniuses” by Gustavus Stadler. American Literature, Dec. 1999, Vol. 71, No. 4.
“The Growth of Little Things: Louisa May Alcott and the Lukens’ Sisters Family Newspaper” by Daniel Shealy. Resources for American Literary Study, 2005, Vol. 3
“The Story of Jo: Literary Tomboys, Little Women, and the Sexual-Textual Politics of Narrative Desire” by Karin Quimby. GLZ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 2003, Vol. 10.