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LOUISA MAY ALCOTT: THE WOMAN BEHIND LITTLE WOMEN

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As a young girl, I was a big fan of the children' books by Louisa May Alcott. I knew that the Little Women series of books were based on her real life but I found from watching this DVD that her real life story is much more interesting and exciting than she was portrayed in her books. She was a true hero and I found this DVD very enlightening and entertaining. It is a must-see for those who are fans of Luisa May Alcott. The special features were also interesting. They included an extended interview with Author Geraldine Brooks, Alcott Scholar Daniel Shealy and others. There is also a Q&A with Nancy Porter, Harriet Reisen and Elizabeth Marvel. My favorite special feature was LOVE, a poem by Louisa May Alcott, read by Elizabeth Marvel. I felt that this DVD really showed that Louisa May Alcott was much more than a story book character, she was a true inspiration to women.

Reviewed by Denise B., KIDS FIRST! reviewer.

She cultivated the image of herself as a lively spinster aunt to sell her children's books, and based Little Women upon her own life, but Louisa May Alcott's true story is more eventful, heroic, and full of surprises than any plot she ever wrote. Her secret literary identity as the author of lurid pulp fiction filled with murderers, spies, cross-dressers, and opium addicts was unknown for a half-century after her death. She was a fervent abolitionist, served as a nurse in the Civil War, and fought for women's suffrage. Raised among free-thinking reformers, iconoclasts and Transcendentalists, she was home-schooled by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, and for a time lived on a radical commune. Her father, educator Bronson Alcott, cared so little for money that the family lived in grueling poverty. To help, Louisa had to work long into adulthood as a seamstress, domestic servant, and governess, until Little Women lifted her from rags to riches and literary celebrity.