Louisa May Alcott » Harriet Reisen

Alcott: ‘Not The Little Woman You Thought She Was’

LMA Staff — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:00:10 +0000

Though many readers associate Alcott with the sweetness of Little Women, Reisen tells NPR‘s Linda Wertheimer, Alcott’s legacy — and Jo March’s, too — is really about the empowerment of women and girls around the world.

“You don’t grow up to walk two steps behind your husband when you’ve met Jo March,” says one Alcott fan.

In the time since Little Women was published in 1868, Reisen says she believes a countless number of women have — as Alcott put it — “resolved to take fate by the throat and shake a living out of her.”

Listen here to the NPR interview

School Library Journal: “Visually Rich,” “Inspirational”

LMA Staff — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 21:19:18 +0000

[STARRED REVIEW] Harriet Reisen’s fine script and Nancy Porter’s vivid production combine to treat viewers to a visually rich, well-paced, and intimate view of Louisa May Alcott’s life. The story unfolds in well-paced dramatized vignettes, excellent scholarly commentary, clips from the original film of Little Women, and readings from Alcott’s personal letters and from her biographer, Ednah Cheney, played with a marvelous, spine-cracking correctness by Jane Alexander.

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“The Story-Telling is Superb”

LMA Staff — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 16:19:52 +0000

Alcott is known as the iconic March sister, Jo. In Reisen’s book, the reader meets the real Louisa; the pulp fiction writer, the comedian, the moody and the cantankerous.

This book will appeal to all who love Alcott classics, who cherish stories of fierce, independent women, and who want to know about writer’s craft and inspiration. The book’s research is impeccable, and the author’s storytelling is superb. Meet the real Louisa May Alcott. – Lynn Brogan, Suite101

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Wall Street Journal Calls Harriet Reisen’s Alcott Bio one of 2009′s “Standout Selections” that “Amazed and Impressed Reviewers”

LMA Staff — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 16:23:34 +0000

The Journal’s December 18th article quoted Melanie Kirkpatrick’s review of Harriet Reisen’s “enchanting portrait of the author… who exhibited many of the qualities that have made her best-known work so beloved: such old-fashioned virtues as selflessness, self-control and duty to family.”

Harriet Reisen reveals tribulations of narrating Alcott audiobook

LMA Staff — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 15:22:40 +0000

Inside the Audiobook Studio: Harriet Reisen
Louisa May Alcott’s biographer gives her own voice to an audiobook that brilliantly reveals the woman behind novels that have so strongly influenced generations of readers.
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Bookpage lists Alcott book in Top Ten Nonfiction Books of the Year

LMA Staff — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 17:36:28 +0000

This year’s picks include a little of everything, with an emphasis on memoir—it was a good year for getting personal.
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C-SPAN interview with Harriet Reisen

LMA Staff — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:40:15 +0000

Author Harriet Reisen talks about her book, Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women. Watch the C-SPAN Interview

Alcott biography on New Hampshire Public Radio’s List of the Year’s Best

LMA Staff — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 16:56:40 +0000

Alcott biography on New Hampshire Public Radio’s List of the Year’s Best

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And The Birthday Book Give-Away Contest Winner Is…

LMA Staff — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:30:41 +0000

Cultural Critic Julia M. Klein calls book “intimate…moving and sympathetic”

LMA Staff — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 18:47:47 +0000

“In Little Women, the autobiographical classic sobbed over by generations of young girls, Louisa May Alcott softened her family’s tribulations to suit Victorian sensibilities. Harriet Reisen’s Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women (A John MacRae Book/Henry Holt and Company) fills in the rest of the picture, describing a life more complicated, unconventional and tragic than Alcott’s fans might have imagined.” – Julia M. Klein, a cultural reporter and critic in Philadelphia and a contributing editor at the Columbia Journalism Review, is a regular contributor to Obit.