/ Modified mar 11, 2013 3:56 p.m.

Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women

AMERICAN MASTERS looks at the double life of Louisa May Alcott, author of “Little Women.” Monday at 10 p.m. on PBS 6.

am_mast_alcott_family_spot The Alcott family looks over the galleys of Little Women in a scene filmed at Orchard House, the Alcott family home in Concord. Pictured (l-r): Daniel Gerroll as Bronson Alcott, Marianna Bassham as May, Elizabeth Marvel as Louisa, Dossy Peabody as Abigail and Linda Amendola as Anna.
PBS

The author of Little Women, is an almost universally recognized name. Her reputation as a morally upstanding New England spinster, reflecting the conventional propriety of mid-19th-century Concord, is firmly established. However, raised among reformers, Transcendentalists and skeptics, the intellectual protege of Emerson and Hawthorne and Thoreau, Alcott was actually a free thinker with democratic ideals and progressive values about women — a worldly careerist of sorts.

Most surprising is that she led, under the pseudonym A.M. Barnard, a literary double life, undiscovered until the 1940s. As Barnard, Alcott penned scandalous, sensational works with characters running the gamut from murderers and revolutionaries to cross-dressers and opium addicts — a far cry from her familiar fatherly mentors, courageous mothers and appropriately impish children.

American Masters: Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women, Monday at 10 p.m. on PBS 6.

Facebook  Icon

By posting comments, you agree to our
AZPM encourages comments, but comments that contain profanity, unrelated information, threats, libel, defamatory statements, obscenities, pornography or that violate the law are not allowed. Comments that promote commercial products or services are not allowed. Comments in violation of this policy will be removed. Continued posting of comments that violate this policy will result in the commenter being banned from the site.

By submitting your comments, you hereby give AZPM the right to post your comments and potentially use them in any other form of media operated by this institution.
AZPM is a service of the University of Arizona and our broadcast stations are licensed to the Arizona Board of Regents who hold the trademarks for Arizona Public Media and AZPM. We respectfully acknowledge the University of Arizona is on the land and territories of Indigenous peoples.
The University of Arizona