Delamar, Gloria T. Louisa May Alcott and “Little Women”: Biography, Critique, Publications, Poems, Songs and Contemporary Relevance. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1990. Includes excerpts from reviews, polls, and commentary.
Keyser, Elizabeth Lennox. Little Women: A Family Romance. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1999. Part of the Twayne’s Masterwork Studies series. A psychological reading.
–. Whispers in the Dark: The Fiction of Louisa May Alcott. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1993. Examines Alcott’s sensational stories, children’s literature, and adult novels to reveal her subversion of conventional women’s values.
MacDonald, Ruth K. Louisa May Alcott. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1983. Part of Twayne’s United States Authors series. Establishes Alcott’s pragmatism in contrast to her father’s idealism; discusses the March family stories at length.
Stern, Madeleine B., ed. Critical Essays on Louisa May Alcott. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1984.
Strickland, Charles. Victorian Domesticity: Families in the Life and Art of Louisa May Alcott. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1985.
Books with Critical Studies of AlcottAuerbach, Nina. Communities of Women: An Idea in Fiction. Cam-bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978. Includes studies of Little Women, as well as of Charlotte Bronte’s Villette, Henry James’s The Bostonians, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss lean Brodie.
Baym, Nina. Woman’s Fiction: A Guide to Novels by and about Women in America, 1820-1870. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1979. Comprehensive study; includes information on two of Jo’s favorite novelists, E.D.E.N. Southworth and Susan Warner.
Foster, Shirley. What Katy Read: Feminist Re-readings of “Classic” Stories for Girls. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1995. Chapter on Little Women, as well as on Susan Warner’s The Wide, Wide World (mentioned in Little Women), Charlotte Yonge’s The Daisy Chain, L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, and Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, among others.
Showalter, Elaine. Sister’s Choice: Tradition and Change in American Women’s Writing. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991. Section on Little Women, as well as on Kate Chopin’s The Awakening and Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth.
