Four Doors of Pinckney Street: Louisa May Alcott
In Boston, the past and the present carry on in parallel. The steps we take as we hurry for the T or head to a coffeeshop to meet friends trace those who came before us, maybe even in sync. One such literary place, where numerous authors have made their homes over the year, is Beacon Hill, and in this series we’ll take you on a tour of Four Doors of Pinckney Street.
#20 Pinckney Street: Louisa May Alcott
With the recent release of Greta Gerwig’s film Little Women, interest in Louisa May Alcott and her work has once again returned to the literary forefront. And while there’s much to say about her life – her Transcendentalist upbringing, her abolitionist work, her service as a nurse during the Civil War, her status as the first woman registered to vote in Concord, her feminism ideals and decision not to marry – we’ll focus on the three years she spent at 20 Pinckney Street as a young writer forming her way in the literary world.
Louisa May Alcott was born in Pennsylvania in 1832, the second of four daughters – sisters that would be written about in Little Women. Alcott’s father, Bronson, became a central figure of the Transcendentalist movement, moving the family from Pennsylvania to Boston to Sudbury, and eventually to the utopian community experiment Fruitlands he created in 1843. After the community’s failure, they moved to a house they named “Hillside” in Concord. It was here where many of the events that later inspired scenes in Little Women occurred, and it was during this time in Concord that Alcott befriended Henry David Thoreau.
Bronson Alcott’s focus was on education reform and experimenting with non-traditional ways of educating students, which lead to his founding of the Temple School. (Learn more in our post about Elizabeth Peabody.) His methods, though, were questioned, and due to public pushback, the school closed. Financial problems plagued the family due to Bronson Alcott’s focus on philosophy and teaching – not necessarily paid positions – and the burden of bills and keeping food on the table fell to Alcott’s mother and sisters, and to Alcott herself.
She began writing when she was eight (a poem about Thoreau being an early work), and in her teens she wrote stories that would eventually get published, including her first novel, a collection of tales for Ralph Waldo Emerson’s daughter. In 1852, the family sold their house in Concord (to Nathaniel Hawthorne), and moved to 20 Pinckney Street (it’s noted on the plaque out front that Alcott’s room was on the third floor). Alcott was twenty at the time, and her journal entries and letters show her finding her voice as a young writer, and beginning to navigate the publishing world.
It was in Boston while living at Pinckney Street that Alcott sold her first story, “The Rival Painters: a Tale of Rome.” Of it, she writes in her journal:
My first story was printed, and $5 paid for it. It was written in Concord when I was sixteen. Great rubbish! Read it aloud to sisters, and when they praised it, not knowing the author, I proudly announced her name.
Alcott continued to submit stories, and two years later writes to her sister Anna:
I have eleven dollars, all my own earnings–five for a story, and four for the pile of sewing I did for the ladies of Dr. Gray's society. … I sent a little tale to the "Gazette," and Clapp asked H. W. if five dollars would be enough. Cousin H. said yes, and gave it to me, with kind words and a nice parcel of paper, saying in his funny way, "Now, Lu, the door is open, go in and win." So I shall try to do it.
She finishes the letter with a bit of authorial ambition: “I'm writing another story for Clapp. I want more fives, and mean to have them too.” Still, Alcott wasn’t making enough “fives” to support herself and her family, and took cleaning and sewing jobs, fitting them in around her teaching schedule. In 1853, she records in her journal her sources of income while living at Pinckney Street:
In January I started a little school…about a dozen in our parlor. In May, when my school closed, I went to L. as second girl. I needed the change, could do the wash, and was glad to earn my $2 a week. Home in October with $34 for my wages. After two days' rest, began school again with ten children.
In 1854, Alcott records a moment with her family that inspired the family dynamics of Little Women (albeit the March father was away at war, while Alcott’s father was away being a philosopher) – and notes it as such, writing:
I have neglected my journal for months, so must write it up. School for me month after month. Mother busy with boarders and sewing. Father doing as well as a philosopher can in a money-loving world.
In February Father came home. Paid his way, but no more. A dramatic scene when he arrived in the night. We were waked by hearing the bell. Mother flew down, crying "My husband!" We rushed after, and five white figures embraced the half-frozen wanderer who came in hungry, tired, cold, and disappointed, but smiling bravely and as serene as ever. We fed and warmed and brooded over him, longing to ask if he had made any money; but no one did till little May said, after he had told all the pleasant things, "Well, did people pay you?" Then, with a queer look, he opened his pocket-book and showed one dollar, saying with a smile that made our eyes fill, "Only that! My overcoat was stolen, and I had to buy a shawl. Many promises were not kept, and travelling is costly; but I have opened the way, and another year shall do better."
I shall never forget how beautifully Mother answered him, though the dear, hopeful soul had built much on his success; but with a beaming face she kissed him, saying, "I call that doing very well. Since you are safely home, dear, we don't ask anything more."
Anna and I choked down our tears, and took a little lesson in real love which we never forgot, nor the look that the tired man and the tender woman gave one another. It was half tragic and comic, for Father was very dirty and sleepy, and Mother in a big nightcap and funny old jacket.
[I began to see the strong contrasts and the fun and follies in every-day life about this time.]
It was at Pinckney Street that Alcott also saw the publication of her first novel, Flower Fables. She gave a copy of the book (which she calls her “first born”) to her mother for Christmas, and wrote the following note with it:
20 Pinckney Street, Boston, Dec. 25, 1854
Dear Mother,
Into your Christmas stocking I have put my "first-born," knowing that you will accept it with all its faults (for grandmothers are always kind), and look upon it merely as an earnest of what I may yet do; for, with so much to cheer me on, I hope to pass in time from fairies and fables to men and realities.
Whatever beauty or poetry is to be found in my little book is owing to your interest in and encouragement of all my efforts from the first to the last; and if ever I do anything to be proud of, my greatest happiness will be that I can thank you for that, as I may do for all the good there is in me; and I shall be content to write if it gives you pleasure.
Jo is fussing about;
My lamp is going out.
To dear mother, with many kind wishes for a happy New Year and merry Christmas.
I am ever your loving daughter
Louy
Already, Alcott recognized she was a growing writer, and that the light tales she wrote were just early work. She writes of passing “from fairies and fables to men and realities” – in other words, maturing in her content and style – which foreshadow the novels for which she will be known.
A month later she writes of her success:
Pinckney Street, Boston, Jan. 1, 1855
The principal event of the winter is the appearance of my book "Flower Fables." An edition of sixteen hundred. It has sold very well, and people seem to like it. I feel quite proud that the little tales that I wrote for Ellen E. when I was sixteen should now bring money and fame.
The family moved from Pinckney Street in 1855 (at some point). But in late 1855, Alcott wrote in her journal that she’s written another book she wants to sell, and in that time, would need to go out knocking on editors’ doors to sell it. Ambitious and determined again, she writes:
Decided to seek my fortune; so, with my little trunk of home-made clothes, $20 earned by stories sent to the "Gazette," and my MSS., I set forth with Mother's blessing one rainy day in the dullest month in the year.
One gets a sense of her early ambition during her time in Pinckney Street, of her commitment to the craft and to getting her work out into the public eye. Alcott would continue to write, focusing on stories of “blood and thunder” with adventurous female protagonists, publishing under the name A.M. Barnard. It wasn’t until after her service as nurse during the Civil War that she achieved her first literary success with Hospital Sketches in 1863. Alcott turned towards the women’s and children’s market, as it would bring in more income, but initially scoffed at writing a novel for girls, at the request of an editor. Ironically, she found Little Women – an overnight success – dull to write, and after spending a decade writing about the March sisters, she returned to the “blood and thunder” tales she enjoyed. Alcott returned to Beacon Hill, to 10 Louisburg Square, where she spent the last years of her life, dying at the age of 55 in 1888.
Works Consulted
Cheney, Ednah D., ed. Louisa May Alcott: Her Life, Letters, and Journals. Boston: Little Brown, 1898.
Haggard, Kit. “Louisa May Alcott’s Pot of Gold.” Historic Boston Incorporated. 5 March 2019.
“Louisa May Alcott.” Louisa May Alcott's Orchard House. 2019.
“Louisa May Alcott Home when she was about 20.” Boston Literary District.
“Louisa May Alcott publishes her first story.” History.com. 7 November 2019.
Onion, Rebecca. “Little Women and Dickinson Are Less Interested in Love Than Money.” Slate. 10 January 2020.
“7 Surprising Facts About Little Women’s Author, Louisa May Alcott.” PBS.org.
Smith, Bonnie Hurd. “Louisa May Alcott.” Boston Women’s Heritage Trail.
