Louisa May Alcott, Susan Cheever
Louisa May Alcott, Susan Cheever
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Louisa May Alcott
A Personal Biography

Author: Susan Cheever

Narrator: Tavia Gilbert

Unabridged: 9 hr 26 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 11/02/2010


Synopsis

Apart from her bestselling Home Before Dark, a biography of her father, John Cheever, and My Name Is Bill, her penetrating portrait of the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, Susan Cheever's most recent and major success, American Bloomsbury, was a hugely popular nonfiction narrative of the writers and artists (including Emerson, Thoreau, and the Alcott family) of Concord, Massachusetts. With more than 35,000 copies of the book sold since, Cheever has focused on the legendary and much-loved Louisa May Alcott.

Every year, new young readers continue to fall in love with Alcott's work, from Little Women to her feminist papers. Based on extensive research and access to Alcott's journals and correspondence, Cheever chronicles all aspects of Alcott's life, beginning with the fateful meeting of her parents to her death, just two days after that of her dynamic and domineering father, Bronson. Cheever examines Alcott's role as a woman, a working writer, and a daughter at a time when Alcott's rejection of marriage in favor of independence—a decision to be no man's "little woman"—was seen as defying conventional wisdom.

About Susan Cheever

Susan Cheever is the author of both nonfiction and fiction works, including My Name is Bill, Note Found in a Bottle, As Good As I Could Be, Home Before Dark, and Treetops. She is the director of the Yaddo Corporation, and has received the Associated Press Award, the Boston Globe's Winship Medal, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She lives in New York City.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Joshua on July 16, 2008

Entertaining read on Concord, Mass during the 1840s and 50s. The town was essentially a genius garden cultivated by the money and sweat of Ralph Waldo Emerson. After his first wife (and love) Ellen died young, Emerson inherited a small fortune and used it to buy up properties in Concord and lure New......more

Goodreads review by Dave on May 28, 2014

Not awful, but not great either. Other reviews critical of Cheever for being factually inaccurate in places gives me pause, but I don't have the knowledge to comment further. However, I would have liked this book to have been less repetitive and grapple with the issues more deeply. Instead, it was b......more