Come Read With Us!

The Ware Shoals Book Discussion Group will meet at Town Hall on Thursday, February 21, 3 p.m. to discuss Little Women. Copies are available for borrowing from the Ware Shoals Community Library.
Remember Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy? These "little women" have been a part of American girlhood for over 150 years. Written by Louisa May Alcott in 1868 and 1869, the girls were based on her life and experiences with her sisters Anna, Lizzie, and Abba May. Alcott identified strongly with Jo, the second sister. A tomboy with a passion for writing, Jo is outspoken, awkward, rebellious, and angry. Her flaws make her the most appealing character in the novel.


Born November 29, 1832, to Amos Bronson and Abigail "Abba" May Alcott in Germantown, PA, Louisa May was their second child. She was raised in Concord, Massachusetts, and her neighbors included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau. Her father was an enthusiastic transcendentalist, abolitionist, and teacher, but a very poor provider. The family moved twenty times in twenty years because of his inability to support them.
Alcott volunteered as a nurse during the Civil War and went to Washington, D. C. to work in a hospital. Six weeks after her arrival, she caught pneumonia and was treated with calomel, a mercury compound, which gave her mercury poisoning. For the rest of her life she would suffer with intense pain, weakness, hallucinations, and hair loss.
Although she is most famous for her tales for children, Alcott also wrote sensational gothic novels and serious adult works. These books were never as well received as her children's stories.
Alcott died March 6, 1868, and was buried in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts, next to her father.