Alcott, Louisa May
Alcott, Louisa May (1832–88),American writer of fantasy tales, best known for her classic novel Little Women (1868). Alcott, whose father was friends with Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, was strongly influenced by transcendentalism, particularly the idea, which permeates all her tales, that in order to change society as a whole one must begin by reforming the individual. In her Flower Fables (1854), initially written for Emerson's daughter Ellen, Alcott's fairy‐flower protagonists learn that love can transform a cold heart (‘The Frost‐King; or, the Power of Love’) and that selfishness leads to unhappiness (‘Lily Bell and Thistledown’). In her second collection, The Rose Family (1864), three fairy sisters go to the good fairy Star to overcome their idleness, wilfulness, and vanity. Among other stories with fairy‐tale motifs, Alcott wrote ‘Fairy Pinafores’, in which Cinderella's fairy...
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