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When Louisa May Alcott wrote little women in 1868, she only did so at the urging of her publisher and father, who hoped it would make money for all three of them.
And it did.
This coming of age story of Meg Jo, Beth and Amy March has delighted generations of readers and is credited with starting a new genre of fiction for young adults, especially girls.
Alcott wrote the second part of it in 1869 and further sequels and spin offs.
And her works inspired countless directors, composers and authors to make a myriad of reimagined versions, as ever since.
With me to discuss Louisa May Alcott's Little Women are Tom Wright, Reader in Rhetoric and Head of the Department of English Literature at the University of Sussex, Erin Forbes, Senior Lecturer in African American and U.S.
literature at the University of Bristol, and Bridget Bennett, professor of American Literature and Culture at the University of Leeds.
Bridget Alcott's childhood was unconventional, to say the least.
What would you pick out?
The major thing I pick out about her childhood was that she was born to parents who were committed to social justice and reform and who were very unafraid of living an eccentric style of life according perhaps to today's standards.
So her mother, Abigail May Alcott, known as Abby, would frequently give away some of her clothing to people who were poorer than herself.
She was working as a social worker and Alcott used to say, my mother often looked a little bit decrepit.
Her father, Amos Bronson Alcott, known as Bronson, was an educator, a pedagogue who ran experimental schools whose methods were eccentric according to the standards of the day, but today perhaps have a longevity and we might be much more sympathetic towards them.
They were intellectuals, they were interested in working, they were interested in educating their daughters to perform labor in the world.
And according to their intellectual beliefs and their social beliefs, they formed the ways in which their children were raised.