Little Women

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Louisa May Alcott’s 1868 novel, credited with starting the new genre of young adult fiction. When Alcott (1832-88) wrote Little Women, she only did so as her publisher refused to publish her father’s book otherwise and as she hoped it would make money. It made Alcott’s fortune. This coming of age story of Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy March, each overcoming their own moral flaws, has delighted generations of readers and was so popular from the start that Alcott wrote the second part in 1869 and further sequels and spin-offs in the coming years. Her work has inspired countless directors, composers and authors to make many reimagined versions ever since, with the sisters played by film actors such as Katherine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, Winona Ryder, Claire Danes, Kirsten Dunst, Saoirse Ronan and Emma Watson.

→ Listen on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Bridget Bennett 4 episodes
  Professor of American Literature and Culture at the University of Leeds
• Erin Forbes 2 episodes
  Senior Lecturer in African American and U.S. Literature at the University of Bristol
• Tom Wright 3 episodes
  Reader in Rhetoric and Head of the Department of English Literature at the University of Sussex

Reading list

• Behind a Mask: The Unknown Thrillers of Louisa May Alcott
  Louisa May Alcott (ed. Madeline B Stern) (William Morrow & Co, 1997) Google Books →
• March Sisters: On Life, Death, and Little Women
  Kate Block, Jenny Zhang, Carmen Maria Machado and Jane Smiley (Library of America, 2019)
• Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters
  Anne Boyd Rioux (W. W. Norton & Company, 2018) Google Books →
• The Matrilineal Heritage of Louisa May Alcott and Christina Rossetti
  Azelina Flint (Routledge, 2021) Google Books →
• The Transcendentalists and Their World
  Robert Gross (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022) Google Books →
• Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father
  John Matteson (W. W. Norton & Company, 2007) Google Books →
• So Many Beginnings: A Little Women Remix
  Bethany C. Morrow (St Martin's Press, 2021) Google Books →
• Critical Insights: Louisa May Alcott
  Anne K. Phillips and Gregory Eiselein (eds.) (Grey House Publishing Inc, 2016)
• Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women
  Harriet Reisen (Picador, 2010) Google Books →
• Little Women at 150
  Daniel Shealy (ed.) (University of Mississippi Press, 2022) Google Books →
• A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx
  Elaine Showalter (Virago, 2009)
• Children, Childhood and Youth in the British World
  Simon Sleight and Shirleene Robinson (eds.) (Palgrave, 2016) Google Books →
• Louisa May Alcott: A Biography
  Madeleine B. Stern (Northeastern University Press, 1999) Google Books →

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Programme ID: m00245nl

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00245nl

Auto-category: 813.4 (American fiction - 19th century)