Little Women Book Study

FASHION
Fashion Plates from the 1850s and 1860s.
    "I wanted the violet silk, but there isn't time to make it over, so I must be contented with my old tarletan." (Chapter IX, Meg Goes to Vanity Fair)

                   Tarletan Gown, circa 1864                              

FOOD
    "That looks too pretty to eat," he said, smiling with pleasure, as Jo uncovered the dish, and showed the blancmange, surrounded by a garland of green leaves, and the scarlet flowers of Amy's pet geranium. 

     "It isn't anything, only they all felt kindly and wanted to show it. Tell the girl to put it away for your tea. It's so simple you can eat it, and being soft, it will slip down without hurting your sore throat. What a cozy room this is!" (Chapter V, Being Neighborly)

     "I owe at least a dozen pickled limes, and I can't pay them, you know, till I have money..." (Chapter VII, Amy's Valley of Humiliation)

Louisa May Alcott Cookbook available at amazon.com
Little Women Picnic
Victorian Kitchen

LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
The Woman Behind Little Women documentary website
Louisa May Alcott's home-Orchard House
The Education of Louisa May Alcott: "The girls were mostly educated at home. 'I never went to school,' Louisa wrote, 'except to my father or such governesses as from time to time came into the family. . . . so we had lessons each morning in the study. And very happy hours they were to us, for my father taught in the wise way which unfolds what lies in the child's nature as a flower blooms, rather than crammed it, like a Strasburg goose, with more than it could digest. I never liked arithmetic nor grammar . . . but reading, writing, composition, history, and geography I enjoyed, as well as the stories read to us with a skill peculiarly his own.'" UUA Website