Louisa May Alcott (21:58)

Hey, listeners, meet Russell.

Katy Charlwood (22:00)

Hey.

Louisa May Alcott (22:01)

Russell just launched a fitness app and he needed to get the word out to busy professionals looking to stay fit. So I turned to acast. I used their Smart recommendations feature to easily find shop shows that talk about health and fitness. Booking sponsorships through their platform was a breeze. And just like that, my app was in their ears during their morning run. Sounds like a smart move, Russell. How's business looking now? Sweat is pouring and so are the installs. Spread the word about your business with podcast ads on Acast. Start today at go.acast.com advertisement.

Katy Charlwood (22:42)

So Louisa May Alcott's father, he's really sad about leaving the Fruitlands. Like he's genuinely upset about it. He's like slobbing about not working. He's barely eating and he just stares at the wall like. And Abba, she is like getting angry, like flying into a rage at least once a day because she has four daughters to feed and 11 year old Louisa, she's starving and crying herself to sleep every single night. And so they're in this new cottage and eventually he starts manning up and Abba is in charge. Bronson is like planting a garden. He's piping water into the house and he starts working but refuses a wedge because it's against his principles and he doesn't want to own property. So Emerson bought property just so that Bronson would move in. So finally Louisa has a room of her own. They're staying in Hillside and they break into a factory and ride around in coal carts. She gets annoyed by other children and like, just likes to do her own thing. And at one point she just like takes a horse and sleigh for a Joyride. Like she's just out there doing her thing. Just. I love the fact that Louisa May Alcott, beloved author, just goes, just steals a horse and sleigh and she's like, whoop Dee dee, motherfuckers. Grand horse auto. Grand theft horse. So there's, there'll be a way for me to make this work. That's not the point. Grand theft colt. Oh, I'll figure something out. I'll figure something out. So Louisa, she loved her dad, but she saw how his idealism failed her and her sisters. And as she grew into a teenager, she refused to conform to feminine ideals and prepare for marriage. It does me good to be alone. I've made a plan for my life as I am in my teens and no more a child. I'm old for my age and I don't care much for girls things. When she wasn't rambling through the woods and climbing trees, she wrote poetry. And yeah, she was also a staunch abolitionist because like in the 1840s, the slavery debate is happening and thousands of escaped enslaved people fled to the northern states. And mom and pop, they're actually active in anti slavery societies in sheltered runaway, like formerly enslaved people. Hillside. So their house, their little cottage was a stop on the railroad. So yes, the Alcotts were part of the Underground Railroad, which is probably the coolest thing about Bronson Alcott, to be honest, because Bronson, he is faffing about and pursuing intellectual shit instead of earning a wage instead of to, you know, ensure that his, you know, family are fed. Like how, how can you be this disillusioned? How? Okay, it's fine. Abba's pals, they are shocked at how she's living and they arrange for her to get a social work job back in Boston because there are loads and loads of poor Irish immigrants there. And she is working, she's got loads of work there because of this. But it's not enough to alleviate the family debt. And so Louisa and the family, they rented out Hillside and they stayed in a small house in Boston. Louisa said, I always left a keep house feeling like a caged seagull as I washed dishes and cooked. She supported her family as she could, taking on odd jobs and even working as a house servant for seven weeks in the summer of 1850. The entire family contract smallpox. They can't work for a while and their finances, they really suffer. And Louisa, she turns to writing as an escape. And in September 1851, 18 year old Louisa May Alcott publishes her first poem, sunlight. And this is in A women's magazine and she earned five whole dollars. The following year Nathaniel Hawthorne bought Hillside from the Alcotts. So like they somehow ended up owning Hillside. I'm not sure how, it's kind of convoluted, but yeah. So Hawthorne, he ends up buying it from them basically so they are not destitute. So he saves the family from financial ruin and so they end up moving into a nicer home in Boston. And Louisa tried to write for Money and at 19 she starts writing pulp fiction, Blood and Thunder tales as she calls them, Blood and Thunder Tales under the pseudonym a.m. barnard. And when she's 21 she showed her memoir essay How I Went out service to James T. Field, who had published Hawthorne's the Scarlet Letter four years before he rejected it, telling her, stick to your teaching, Ms. Alcott, you can't write. Alright buddy? Four months later, she convinces another publisher to publish her first book, Flower Fables, which is a collection of stories about fairies, elves and stuff for like Emerson's daughters. 1600 copies were published and she earned a grand total of $35. The following year the Alcotts moved to New Hampshire and Louisa stayed behind to write. When in New Hampshire her younger sister Lizzie contracts scarlet fever. But eventually she recovers. When Louise is 24, her family returned to Concord because Emerson bought them a two story farmhouse called Orchard House and everything seems to be going fine. But then the following year in 1858, Lizzie takes a turn for the worse and the doctors say there's no hope for her, which Lizzie is a clear inspiration for Beth in Little Women. Lizzie, Beth, like even the names are connected. The disease ravages her body. Lizzie was wasting away and Louisa stayed by her sister every single night until she finally succumbed to her illness. And three weeks after Lizzie passed away, Louise's big sister Anna gets engaged. And Louisa writes that she is losing a second sister, like actually she does. She goes, another sister is gone and I'd rather be a free spinster and pedal my own canoe. 26 year old Louisa returns to Boston changed by the loss. She buckles down and goes back to work to support her family. She teaches, she takes sewing work and she writes. Bronson tells her, like her dad, he tells her to send her work to the prestigious Atlantic Monthly and Love and Self Love is published. It's a love story about an orphaned girl and so she writes this like very romantic love story, but she is still churning out these blood and thunder tales, which pulp fiction. It's so good. I love, I love it so much. So in 1860 her family takes in the family of an executed abolitionist, John Brown, who we will be discussing at a later date. So April 1861. It is the American Civil War. And Louisa, she wanted to fight like she wanted to fight in the war, but obviously she's a woman, she's not allowed. And the following year in 1862, she applies to be a Union army nurse because of course, it's the Union, because she's not an idiot. In December that year, she is in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and there is a crushing defeat for the Union and. And hundreds of wounded Union soldiers are pouring into the hospital. Like, this is her first day, cuz the Battle of Fredericksburg, right? There's 12,000 Union casualties, like in all. And so you've just got soldiers like pouring into this hospital and she's like, she wanted to be here, she wanted to be involved. And then she's seeing firsthand and like the. And that's the thing is like, what she's doing mainly is washing people. It's a lot of washing. Like, as a nurse, that seems to be her primary task. That's her main task, is to wash the men. Obviously that's kind of necessary, but also Kay. But yeah, unsurprisingly, being a nurse in the 1800s and the job takes a physical toll on her. She gets this cough, which leads to a delusional fever dreams, which leads to pneumonia, which leads to typhoid fever, which I read was treated with calomel, like calomel lotion calomel. Okay, I need to look that up. So she recovers from typhoid, but then she comes down with mercury poisoning because that's how they treated all the old timey like illnesses. They're like, here, have some poison. Okay. So after six weeks, she's sent back home. When she gets back home, her publisher asks her to compile letters that she wrote as a nurse into a book. And she gets paid $200 for hospital sketches, which earned her acclaim and more. And publishers began to like, seek out her writing. But she's still like really friendly with her original publisher. And she gives her pet project moods to James Redpath, her publisher, and she is absolutely distraught when he asks her to cut it in half. And so she's like, no, this is my baby. I put my blood into this. And so she brings it to another publisher who also says it's too long. And she removes 10 out of the 30 chapters. And the book, it has mixed reviews. And at 33, a wealthy Boston ship owner asks Louisa to travel to Europe as the paid companion to his invalid daughter. So this is like the grand tour. So the Grand Tour is when rich people from America would go gallivanting round Europe and there were certain places they would go see, you know, it was a very much a done thing. It was like when you get to a certain age in society, it was, it was what you did. And so she goes on it and so she accompanies this woman to go on this grand tour and she has a swell time. She really like learns from this experience and she has just a really good time all in all. But when she returns home, she discovers that all of her family bills are unpaid. And so she spends the rest of the year writing 12 news stories. And she's tired. And I mean, no, she's like so tired. Like she literally collapses from exhaustion and she's just like so desperately trying to keep her family above water. And when she's 35, Louisa is offered the job of editor of Mary's Museum, a children's magazine, which earns her $500 a year because editor Thomas Niles, he notices a gap in the market and asks her to write a book for young girls. And Louisa says no because she's not interested in writing moral pap for the young. Like she didn't see herself as a children's authority. And she lived through like poverty, tragedy, illness and war and she just didn't want to do it. However, Bronson I'll caught her father, he had a manuscript that he wanted published. And so she agreed on the condition that Tablets, which is his manuscript, would be published. This was his request. He was like, if you know my manuscript to be published, if you write yours, like, make that part of the deal. And so she does, she does that for this man. Anyway, Skip forward to February 1869 and Louisa breaks down. She quits her job and she moves to Concord to write a book that she didn't want to write. And she writes, she writes an ordinary coming of age novel about four sisters growing into young women. A semi autobiographical and fairly sanitised account of her own childhood in Concord. A little book you might know as Little Women. Anna Alcott becomes Meg March, Lizzie becomes Beth, and May becomes Amy. Now Lizzie becomes Beth. That's the same name but with different nicknames, right? The alliteration for Meg March, you have May to Amy. They just rearranged the letters. She just rearranged the letters. It's an anagram. An anagram. And Joe Jo is an idealized version of herself. And Mr. March, he is an Employed but absent chaplain. Like, he's like, she gave him a way out and there's a maid to do the housework and she's just like, and I. It's, yeah, it's what her life could have been. And so she sends the first 12 chapters to Thurnop Nails and he calls it dull. And Louisa agrees. Then Niles shows it to his niece and she fucking loves it. And so Louisa, she pushes through illness, exhaustion and an ever forming opium habit to finish the novel. Two and a half months after starting it, she is offered $1,000 flat fee or a $300 advance and 6% royalties on each copy sold. And on 30 September 1868, Little Women was published. It's an instant success, selling out the first printing of 2,000 copies. And so she was asked to write a second volume. Her readers begged her for Jo and Laurie to marry, but she didn't believe in marriage. The publisher had sold 4,000 copies of the second volume before it was finished. Like pre orders, man, pre orders are important. And part two was published on April 14, 1869. And by the end of May, 17,000 copies had been sold and she could finally pay off her family's debt.

Louisa May Alcott (41:00)

Say hello to Mia.

Katy Charlwood (41:01)

Hey there.

Louisa May Alcott (41:02)

Mia runs a pet grooming service in Chicago. But getting new clients was rough until.

Verizon Representative (41:06)

I started using acast. I recorded my ad, targeted pet owners in the area and let ACAST do the rest. Now people all over the city know about my grooming services.

Louisa May Alcott (41:15)

Mia's business is looking sharp. What's your secret for happy pets and happy clients?

Verizon Representative (41:19)

A fresh cut, a friendly vibe and a well placed podcast ad.

Louisa May Alcott (41:23)

Get the word out about your business through Acast. Visit go acast.com advertise to get started.

Katy Charlwood (41:39)

The following year. In 1870, she wrote Old Fashioned Girl and. And it's a hit. And so she treats her and her sister May to a trip to Europe. And this time when she goes, she's a celebrated author and not a servant. So even though she got to enjoy like Europe the first time she went, this time she's going with agency, you know, with, with something behind her. And it's on this tour that she discovers her brother in law has passed away. And so she's inspired to write a sequel for Anna's sons, a sequel to Little Women, Little Men. And so she continued traveling and writing until she was too sick to enjoy her fame and Fortune. In 1877, she buys Anna a home. And then she goes to care for Abba, her mother, because she's like, without. I mean, this is a period of time when you've got men earning the money holding the purse strings. And Louisa May Alcott is making money. And she's also on all of the drugs, which she's been on, like, since the Civil War, really. And she is doing her best to care for and protect her family. And so me, she makes sure that Anna has a roof over her head, that she's safe and secure. And her mother, who, Abigail May, who just consistently fought for her children to be able to eat, you know, like, and who was again, one of the first social workers in Massachusetts. And so she's getting to that point in her life. And in November, Abba dies in her daughter Louisa's arms. And after this, Louisa is determined to do right by her mother. In 1879, Louisa May Alcott was the first woman in Concord to register to vote. And she was an active believer and was outspoken about women's suffrage and prison reform. Like, she is putting her money where her mouth is. And as she's, like, continuing to campaign, more tragedy strikes. In December 1879, her youngest sister, May, dies from complications in childbirth. And Louisa, she adopts her niece, Lulu. Well, she's also taking care of Bronson. But Louisa, she is getting sicker. She's got vertical fatigue. She's got fainting spells and gastrointestinal issues. But she is still writing. In 1886, she publishes Joe's Boys, the third volume in the March trilogy. And she mirrored her life in Joe's fame. And on the 1st of March, 1888, she visits her father for the final time. On his deathbed. She says goodbye and she goes home and falls into a coma. On the 4th of March, Bronson dies. And on the 6th of March, 1888, two days after her father, Louisa May Alcott, passes away at the age of 55 in father and Daughter, they are buried next to each other in Concord's Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. Louisa, she never married. She never considered courting. She was never interested in anybody anywhere. She knew the hows and whys and what fors, but it was never anything that was interesting to her. And so many historians believe that Louisa May Alcott was asexual. She was aromantic, perhaps all and the above. Now, of course, the argument can be made that she saw what her mother went through living with her father and his idealism and how it created suffering in their family. And that was not a life she wanted for herself. So even though the done thing was to get married for safety and security, which is Something he wasn't providing. And so for her, the benefits weren't there. So even for some people who were ace, they would marry anyway because it was the done thing to do. They just kind of, you know, gone with it. But there was never an inkling of any of those sort of feelings, any of those romantic connotations anywhere in her journals, in her letters. None of it. And so that's where I think Louisa May Alcott stands. And if I'm wrong, she can haunt me and tell me for why. So that ends my story on Louisa May Alcott. Now, if you were at the Red Line Literary Festival last year, then you may have heard me tell the story, and it was probably funnier. However, we can't find the recording. They can't find it, I can't find it. We don't know what's happened to it. And so here we are. And I thought, I haven't talked about this before, and I've had a very busy month with a lot of personal stuff going on that I will tell you about another time maybe. But if you liked this story, please rate and review five stars. If you didn't like it, you can just say nothing and do nothing. It's fine. Although I finally checked my Spotify. My Spotify. What's it called? The thing on Spotify. The reviews. Right. The comments. Right. Which is. I never. I mean, I don't look at them often because I'm usually too busy and it's connected to, like, a different email. It's a whole thing. And so I looked at it and I had these unread, like, comments. And they're all from, like, January. Right. And this one person just commented on every single video, not video episode. And it was like, what? And it was like, really mean stuff, too. And it was like, why are you so obsessed with me? And like, I was. I think I deleted a couple of them and then I got bored and then I went and, like, had a Ferrero Roshi or something because I was feeling fancy. And that's about it, really. Also, I would like to dedicate this episode to my drag queen loving friend. I know there's no drag queens in this episode. Sh To Sahar. I hope you're having a. You're having, like, a super fun time and that work isn't too stressful. So, yeah, let's see. Recommendation time. So I don't really drink alcohol much anymore for, like, a bunch of reasons that we'll talk about at some point. But I do feel the need to support creators, especially Ones who are really, really cool. And so I ended up buying Be a Better Drinker by Hannah Chamberlain. And, like, there are so many, like, fun, like, drinks in it, even though I don't really drink anymore. So, like, some of them are like, I could make this a really nice mocktail because sometimes I just want to drink something pretty. Okay, let me have my whimsy and aesthetic. So that is my reading recommendation for you this week. Why not recommend something by Louisa May Alcott? I feel like that's a bit on the nose, don't you? For watching Go watch Little Women actually, like, watch version. Greta Gerberg, Winona Ryder. Any of them. Any of them. There's another version from, like, the past. Like, a really black and white one, I think. Go watch that. Go watch any of them. It's fine. Have a good time. And for listening. For listening. You know what I've actually been enjoying recently was the Cotton Club Mudder. Like, 1980s. I think it's 1980s. I'm fairly certain it was 1980s. Oh, I've really enjoyed this thing. I'm listening to When's It Set? And I'm like, I don't know. I'm really bad with dates. Clearly, that's why I'm single. But also because, like, as a historian, not being great at dates is such a wild thing. Like, really. Which is insane because I'll remember very specific dates for very specific reasons. But then, yeah, I'm. I'm a disaster. A bisexual disaster, if you will. But anyway, thank you for listening. I look forward to chatting to you about more LGBTQIA people from history next week. Same bat time, same bat channel. And so I shall wish you good night. Adios. Au revoir. Et vui des aimes, my friends. Bye. Bye.

Louisa May Alcott (51:29)

Beth, you're in charge of ordering the tacos for the meeting today.

Verizon Representative (51:31)

Yeah, I'm not gonna order the tacos.

Acast Representative (51:33)

Uh, what?

Verizon Representative (51:34)

I'm going to Easy Cater the tacos with EasyCater. You can order from a huge variety of restaurants, track expenses and save time.

Acast Representative (51:42)

Nice.

Verizon Representative (51:43)

Oh, by the way, you're emailing the meeting notes, right?

Louisa May Alcott (51:46)

No, I'm going to Easy Mail them. Where's my music?

Verizon Representative (51:51)

Sorry, Ben, there's no Easy Cater for that.

Louisa May Alcott (51:54)

Easycater. The easy way to order food for work.

Acast Representative (51:56)

Order now@easycator.com Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com.

Tech Podcast Host (52:09)

Hey, do you want to hear the next big new tech podcast hit before anyone else? Check out the daily tech news show Experiment Week. We're swapping out our normal shows to try out some new ideas. We've done this before and launched big hits like behind the Data, the Tech John and more. This year we have exclusive Android faithful reactions to the Pixel 9 event. It's all on the DTNS feed starting August 11th. Don't miss it.

Acast Representative (52:41)

ACAST helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com.