The History of Literature Podcast is a member of the Podglomerate Network and LitHub Radio.

Hello. Welcome everyone. How are you? How are you?

I hope you're doing well. I'm Jack Wilson, and this is the History of Literature Podcast.

Oh, there we go. Just a quick little theme song today and a quick introduction because we have a special treat for you.

Another podcast is Guesting for us today, the Book Dreams podcast. These guys are great.

And it's a great subject. So let me give you a little bit of background.

And then I will turn things over to Julie and Eve and their guest. So here we go.

There was a great period in American literature. The late 19th century centered mostly in Massachusetts where politics and philosophy and literature were all fused together.

The transcendentalists, they were called and they were trying to get things right internally and externally.

We see abolitionists coming out of this movement and feminists coming out of this movement and philosophers and educational rough form.

We've talked about a few of the leading lights here on the podcast Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.

I've had their own episodes and Hawthorne and Melville, who we've talked about extensively are at least adjacent to this group.

But there are a few we haven't yet covered. One of them is the great reformer, Bronson Alcott.

And another even more important figure for our story is his daughter, Louisa May Alcott.

You probably know her as the author of Little Women and deservedly so. That book has been a staple of children's literature almost since it was written.

Adults and children alike have devoured that book and it sequels little men and Joe's boys, but we will have a lot more to cover.

When we do our episode on Louisa May Alcott more than just those books, she was very prolific even beyond the little women books.

She wrote a lot of stories for children and some grown up novels too. She wrote an early detective story.

And pseudonymously, she wrote some sensationalist novels and some gothic thriller, thriller short stories.

She wrote strong women in these books, determined protagonists, often semi-autobiographical and she herself was a dynamo, writing, teaching and advocating.

During the Civil War, she served as a nurse, which prompted her father to write a long poem to her in appreciation for how proud he was to be her dad.

We will have a lot of good stuff to cover when we do our Louisa May Alcott chapter in our story.

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