Culture November 17, 2010

“Never liked girls or knew many, except my sisters, but our queer plays and experiences may prove interesting, though I doubt it,” Louisa May Alcott confided to her journal in 1868, while writing Little Women. Deemed more than “interesting,” the semiautobiographical novel became a classic in Alcott’s lifetime and remains so today. Each year some thirty-five thousand fans descend on Orchard House—the place in Concord, Massachusetts, where Alcott wrote and set her bestseller—looking to imagine the lives of the March girls, as well as that of their creator. Suffice it to say that Alcott has never lacked for devotees, especially