Abigail May Alcott lived a very hard life. I really disliked Bronson Alcott. His failures left the work of keeping the family going on Abby. We see supporting Louisa's mother was of her writing. ( )

A deeply-researched dive into the Alcott family that left me with strong feelings about the parents. Bronson was the worst. He never worked, but depended on others to support his whole family so he could maintain his high morality. He left his family to go live in other cities so they didn’t distract him. Louisa and her mother were incredibly close and alike in temperament. They were both excellent writers and it was Abigail who encouraged Louisa's work. This is a must-read IF you are a huge Alcott fan.

A few fascinating details:
- Abigail believed the country was deeply flawed because it was founded on slavery. I love that that is treated like a new concept, when it’s been around, almost as long as the country has.

- Abigail's brother, Samuel Joseph May, was an incredible man. He was a pastor who stood up for women's rights, helped runaway slaves escape to freedom, supporting integrating schools at a time when it was unheard of, and more.

- I hadn't realized how much Louisa had traveled through Europe or how sick she became later in life. I also didn't realize how often she was forced to be at home playing nursemaid and housekeeper for her family.

- Louisa was not a fan of being famous and hated that her father used her fame to bring himself more attention.

- Eventually Abigail was forced to work because her husband thought he was above earning money and they were completely in debt.

- Many of Abigail's papers were burned or revised.

- Bronson was constantly leaving his family so he could go off and live by himself and have peace and quiet for himself. He even blamed his wife (in writing) for a miscarriage she suffered.

- Louisa's older sister's husband died young and her youngest sister (May) died young in Paris after giving birth. ( )

Exhaustively researched so much so that sometimes it was exhausting to read, too.

My attention span did struggle with this at times particularly when it veered deep into branches of the family tree that felt like far more information than seemed necessary to tell what was supposed to be the life stories of Louisa May Alcott and her mother. This was also populated with many similar names so that was occasionally difficult to keep straight in my head and the writing style was extremely dense and research heavy which lends itself to a slow reading pace or at least for me it does.

If you haven’t read all of Louisa’s books/stories yet keep in mind there are spoilers for them throughout the text, necessarily so as the author was illustrating the various ways Louisa’s real life inspired her writing. For me, those were the most involving passages in the book, learning the context of certain things in Little Women, etc., as well as Louisa’s overall career journey, this book can at times feel like a bit of a slog but if you’re interested in Louisa it’s very much worth the effort. ( )

I suggest that the first thing the reader should do is go to the genealogical table on page [295], and stick in a bookmark. It will help the reader understand Abigail May Alcott's family.

I never read about, or took an interest in the Transcendentalists, since they seemed largely to be incompetent fools, Exhibit 1 being Amos Bronson Alcott. I finally read Philip F. Gura's excellent American Transcendentalism and Eden's Outcasts, a joint biography of Bronson Alcott and Louisa May Alcott by John Matteson. Bronson Alcott is still exhibit 1, but even more so -- an extraordinarily arrogant, self-satisfied, self-centered man. John Matteson's book is certainly not uncritical of Bronson, but this book, written by a distant relative of Abigail's who inherited family papers, is devastating. Eva LaPlante wisely uses a lot of quotes, allowing Bronson to condemn himself out of his own mouth.

There is one thing that I wish the author had done: told us more about people who dropped out of the picture. We know that Louisa May Neriker, the niece that Louisa May Alcott was raising, returned to her father after the author's death. Before she married, Abigail was taking care of the children of her three older sisters, all of whom died. So what happened to them, she doesn't seem to have kept them after she was married? We know what happened with the Alcotts and Charles Lane when Fruitland was foreclosed on, but what about the other men? Were they living at Fruitland until it was foreclosed on? From what we are told, one might gather that no-one was there except Abigail and her daughters, until Bronson came back from one of his trips to learn that they were leaving.

His wife Abigail is usually presented as the devoted, somewhat passive wife. She in fact ardently believed in abolition of slavery and temperance , and advocated for both social reform and women's rights. She didn't get the schooling that her brother Samuel Joseph did, but he taught her some of what he learned, she also had a tutor, and reading in her family's excellent library did the rest. She wanted a life of the mind. When she met Bronson Alcott, he assured her that he thought men and women were equal, and equally entitled to a career. She didn't find out until after she married him that he was serious. If only they could have had a more equitable marriage -- she could have been prominent in her own right, and probably with more reason than Bronson.

She was devoted and supportive, and also defended Bronson when he was attacked. She did a phenomenal amount of work, spending a lot of time as a single parent because of Bronson's many absences. Bronson wanted to be a teacher, but his schools failed. Once was because of his principled refusal to expel an African American child, and the other times largely because he couldn't work with other people. She and their daughters, even when they were children, brought in almost all the money that the family earned - doing sewing, Abigail once worked as a matron in a hydrotherapy spa, and later was one of the first paid social workers. Outside of that they borrowed money, mostly from her relatives, especially her long-suffering brother, Samuel Joseph May, and his apparently very patient wife, Lucretia, who had their own family to support, and on handouts from the remarkably generous Ralph Waldo Emerson, as well as running up debts until the shops denied them further credit.

When her well-off father died, he wisely put Abigail's share of his estate in a trust, giving her a small income and at one point money to buy a house, knowing that it would otherwise become Bronson's money, and be devoured by his debts. Bronson was furious. When his father-in-law died, his debts were double Abigails' inheritance. His debtors tried to sue for her money, which tied her her share in probate for several years. When they were seventeen and fifteen, the two older daughters, Anna and Louisa, left home to work to support the family taking almost anything that they could get. Bronson congratulated himself on his "live-estate;" with his teenage daughters out working, the family finances were saved. Bronson mostly spent his time being sorry for himself because work that that befit his genius was not available. He didn't worry too much about how the people who were supporting him felt about their work. Even when they were living at his dream community, Fruitlands, Farmer Bronson and his fellows all wander off, leaving the harvest in the field. Abigail, seeing a coming storm that would have ruined the harvest, got the children together, and they frantically hauled the crops into the barn.

It becomes clear that it was Abigail who raised their children, and it was she, seeing that Louisa loved to write, encouraged her, giving her a blank book, writing materials and encouragement, promising that the best way to learn to write was by practice. (Ray Bradbury, one of the most celebrated authors of the 20th century, gave would-be writers that same advice. She and Louisa were much alike, Bronson called them mother and daughter fiends, since Louisa was not as docile as her sisters. Louisa had quite enough of poverty and debt in her childhood, and she vowed to become rich and famous, and care for her family. She would succeed wildly. She was reluctantly persuaded to write the girls' book that became Little Women, and became successful enough to pay all the family debts, live comfortably, and support her parents. She also made her father moderately successful in his later years -- he had attempted to make a living by holding conversations, but he finally became successful after Louisa became famous -- people poured in to ask him about his daughter. He also published a respectfully reviewed book, Tablets, which Louisa's publisher promised to do if Louisa wrote Little Women. Her support enabled him to start a school for adults.

Louisa's health, unfortunately, had been ruined, possibly by the mercury that she was given as a medication when she was nursing Union soldiers and contracted typhoid. She outlived her mother by eleven years, and died two days after her father.

Reading this book, I cannot help but think that Samuel Joseph May was a much worthier man that Bronson Alcott. He and his family cared for about one thousand runaway slaves, he stood up for women's rights, and temperance. His reformist views cost him a number of pulpits, but unlike his leech of a brother-in-law, he always found more work. He certainly accomplished much more.

I'm actually not sure why Bronson Alcott is and was so famous. Is it because of who his friends were? I think much less of him than I already did, and have not an ounce of admiration or respect for him. I approve of some of his ideas, but those were hardly original or unique, and he didn't work well enough with others to bring them to any purpose. He could be a good conversationalist, but even his friends agreed that he didn't write very well. While he and Abigail were engaged, her father found a good job for Bronson at a school run by the Society of Free Enquirers, followers of Robert Owen, which he refused to take, saying that he didn't agree with the people who were running it. What did he disagree with? Robert Owen was a British philanthropist and wealthy mill owner. He championed government-run schools, the eight-hour work day, labor unions, cooperatives, a company store that sold goods at low prices, utopian communities. What was so awful about them that a man embarking on marriage couldn't work for them? This has been hailed as Bronson standing up for his principals, but it might otherwise be described as rigid and narrow-minded. Writers often argue that the Transcendentalists created the modern era. Is that why we have such terrible cultural divides, because we can't abide people who disagree with us about anything?

In his early years of trying to teach children, after some failures, Bronson Alcott had a success with his Temple School. Harriet Martineau wrote dubiously that, "the master presupposes his little pupils possessed of all truth; and that his business is to bring it out into expression." He decided to take on religion, despite the pleas of his assistant Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, with the book, Conversations With Children on the Gospels. This was an era when there was a great deal of religious controversy. The Unitarians were active with their dismissal of the Trinity and the German school of studying the Bible as literature was introduced into America to compete with more conventional religious sects. Bronson encouraged the children to question traditional Christian teachings in a manner that was described as "off-hand and flippant," and asked them to consider pantheism. He not only wrote down the ideas of his collection of little prophets, he rewrote them to better reflect his own views. He helpfully, without asking the children or their parents, added their names and last initials. The remarks that shocked so much of Boston were labeled "Josiah Q" -- he was probably not difficult to identify. (John Matteson argues in his book that they were completely misunderstood.) It is one thing to teach children about religions, which is controversial enough, but to attempt to inculcate with one's own views is another matter. One may decide to provoke controversy anyway, but to have no idea of the sort of furor that this is likely to evoke is either to be stupid or dangerously self-satisfied. The school declined rapidly. A person who takes a "my way, or the highway" attitude toward other people, is probably going to end up on the highway.

I have added a lot of quotes from this book into Common Knowledge to illustrate the points I am trying to make. ( )

ver since my mother gave me a copy of Little Women when I was eleven, I have been reading Louisa Alcott's books and biographies of her. I was excited to learn more about her mother. The author who is a descendent but not a direct one has researched both of their lives extensively and has a big section in the back as chapter notes.

I had already developed a strong dislike for her father, who was idealized in Little Women. He seemed to care only for himself and took long separations from his family and not providing for their well being. As I read this book, I became very angry of him being critical of his wife and Louisa. To me, he will always be a scoundrel. I loved learning about Abigail's early life. A very vibrant, independent little girl who adored her Uncle Sam Jo May. He encouraged her to get a man's education as much as possible and they shared views on the abolition of slavery and women's suffrage, At that time, women were not allowed to go to public meetings so Abigail had to stay at home. Her mother was very devoted to her children and encouraged as much she could. Abigail was a woman before her times Her husband caused her much despair and over critical of her when he was at home. Louisa did not want to marry for fear this would happen in her own life.

This book was eye opening about both women. There were some sluggish parts to the writing but overall, I learned so much about what has been hidden about both their lives. I highly recommend this book for learning about these women about what it was like for women at that time in history. ( )