ReadWriteThink: November 29, 2009: Louisa May Alcott was born in 1832.

November 29, 2009

		Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women and other novels, was born on this date in 1832. Alcott wrote several novels under her real name and also penned works under a pseudonym. Her very first novel, The Inheritance—written when she was 17—wasn’t published until 150 years after she wrote it, when two researchers discovered it in a library in 1997. image © 2009 www.clipart.com

Louisa May Alcott was born in 1832.

CLASSROOM ACTIVITY

Little Women is partly autobiographical. Alcott used many of the events of her own life as fodder for her writing of this and her other novels. In fact, most scholars believe that the character of Jo March closely resembles Louisa May Alcott. It is not unusual for authors to take incidents from their own lives and use them in their fiction.

Ask students to brainstorm and write in their journals important events and names of people from their lives that might serve as the beginning point for an interesting story, poem, or longer work. Students can then use the interactive Bio-Cube to plan their story. Visit the tool tip sheet to learn more about the Bio-Cube. An alternative might be to ask students to write about a memorable person in a nonfiction essay format. (This could be submitted to Readers' Digest, which has a feature of this type in each issue). Another alternative would be to have students research the life of Alcott and then read some of her novels to develop a list of those people and incidents from her own life that appear in her fiction.

Lesson Plans

Telling a Story About Me: Young Children Write Autobiographies
This lesson plan is designed to teach first- and second-grade students to write and publish autobiographies based on personal photographs.

Writing and Assessing an Autobiographical Incident
In this lesson for grades 3–5, students use a rubric and several examples as they work through the writing process to write autobiographies.

Critical Literacy: Women in 19th-Century Literature
Exploration of two short 19th-century texts, including one by Alcott, focuses on the questions: What is the position of the writer and what is the intended audience for a literary work?

A Biography Study: Using Role-Play to Explore Authors’ Lives
In this lesson, high school students select American authors to research, create timelines and biopoems about them, and then collaborate to design a panel presentation where they role-play as their authors.

Web Links

Louisa May Alcott
Information about Alcott’s life and work is found at this site. Links provide information about various aspects of her life. The site also includes a virtual tour of the house where Louisa May Alcott grew up.

Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888)
From the textbook site for the Heath Anthology of American Literature, this site provides complete biographical information, critical material, and links to related resources.

Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women
This site for the American Masters film biography of Louisa May Alcott offers extensive information about Alcott’s life and work, including historical photos and a multimedia timeline.

Daughter of the Transcendentalists
The Library of Congress offers this resource with information about Alcott’s life, images, and excerpts from the writings of Alcott’s father regarding her birth and early childhood.

Texts

Meigs, Cornelia. 1995. Invincible Louisa: The Story of the Author of Little Women. Little Brown.
Originally published in 1933, this Newbery Award–winning book is a biography of Alcott.

Alcott, Louisa May. 2004. Little Women. Signet Classics.
This is the classic story of the four March girls’ lives during Civil War America. The book is also available online.

Cukor, George. 1933. Little Women. Warner Studios.
This black-and-white film version of Alcott’s classic novel was nominated for an Academy Award.

Armstrong, Gillian. 1994. Little Women. Columbia/Tristar Studios.
Your students may enjoy this more recent version of Little Women, which sometimes strays from the original story.