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Louisa May Alcott: 10 quotes on her birthday

Louisa May Alcott, author of the beloved novel, "Little Women," was born on November 29, 1832 in Germantown, Pa. She grew up around transcendentalist writers such as Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, who were family friends. Much of her schooling came from the instruction of her philosopher father, along with some informal lessons from the neighboring transcendentalists. In 1851, Alcott began writing her own work, publishing poems, short stories, and tales with the pen name Flora Fairfield. In 1865 that she started to use her own name for her work and with the enormous popularity of "Little Women" (1869-1870) she became financially independent. In the following years, Alcott published a number of novels and short stories, generally focused on the younger generation; these novels include, "Little Men" (1871), "Eight Cousins" (1875), and "Jo's Boys" (1886). In addition, she wrote several adult novels, which include "Work" (1873), and "A Modern Mephistopheles" (1875). None of her adult works ever reached the popularity of her young adult novels. Alcott, like many of the female writers of her time, was interested in addressing women’s issues in her writing. By the time she died, Alcott had published more than 30 books and left a lasting impression on the American literary tradition. 

1. Books

Photo: public domain

  • By Elizabeth Drake

"Good books, like good friends, are few and chosen; the more select, the more enjoyable."

1 of 10
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

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