A Posthumous Interview with Louisa May Alcott
By Nava Atlas | On July 14, 2012 | Updated April 27, 2025 | Comments (2)
Louisa May Alcott’s reach into contemporary culture, particularly with her iconic character, Jo March, is never ending. And so, I bring you this interview with Louisa May Alcott (1832 – 1888) from the great beyond, featuring her forthright answers to my hypothetical questions.
Patti Smith is just one of many modern and contemporary authors who was inspired by Jo March. In her memoir, Just Kids, Smith recalled that her earliest inspiration was the fictional Jo, one of the four sisters in Louisa’s most beloved novel, Little Women.
What would a gawky, bookish teen growing up in New Jersey in the 1950s and 60s (albeit one destined to become a punk legend) find in common with a 19th-century girl in crinolines?
Plenty, actually. In Alcott’s autobiographical (albeit idealized) novel, Jo March is Louisa’s own,. somewhat idealized alter ego. Restless and a bit rebellious, Jo disdains the restrictive society of her time, and is determined to make a living with her pen.
. . . . . . . . . . .
10 Women Writers Who Were Inspired by Jo March
. . . . . . . . . .
My interview with Louisa May Alcott
Poet and punk goddess Patti Smith said of her affinity with Jo March: “She was a writer, a tomboy, she went out to help her family, and she was probably my first real role model.” Perhaps, like Patti Smith, Ursula K. Le Guin, Simone de Beauvoir, and others for whom Jo March was an inspiration, you’ll find a nugget of wisdom from her creator, Louisa May Alcott, that will be the catalyst to your own creative dreams …
What are your basic techniques for developing plot and character?
Louisa May Alcott: My methods of work are very simple & soon told. My head is my study, & there I keep the various plans of stories for years sometimes, letting them grow as they will till I am ready to put them on paper.
Then it is quick work, as chapters go down word for word as they stand in my mind . . . I never copy, since I find by experience that the work I spend the least time upon is best liked by critics & readers.
While a story is under way I lie in it, see the people, more plainly than the real ones, round me, hear them talk, & am much interested, surprised, or provoked at their actions, for I seem to have no power to rule them, & can simply record their experiences & performances.
What advice do you have a writer wanting to improve their craft?
Louisa May Alcott: Each person’s method is no rule for another. Each must work in his own way, and the only drill needed is to keep writing and profit from criticism.
Mind grammar, spelling, and punctuation, and use short words, and express as briefly as you can your meaning. Young people use too many adjectives and try to “write fine.” The strongest, simplest words are best …
Read the best books, and they will improve your style. See and hear good speakers and wise people, and learn of them. Work for twenty years, and then you may some day find that you have a style and place of your own, and you can command good pay for the same things no one would take when you were unknown.
How did it feel to have made a fortune and secured your reputation?
I often think as I go larking round, independent, with more work that I can do, and half-a-dozen publishers asking for tales, of the old times when I went meekly from door to door peddling my first poor little stories, and feeling so rich for $10.
My first story gave me $5.00 and I felt very rich … Now I can ask what I like & get it … I never write a short tale for less than $100. Serials $3000.
After toiling so many years along the uphill road—always a hard one for women writers—it is peculiarly grateful to me to find the way growing easier at last, with pleasant little surprises blossoming on either side, and the rough places made smooth by the courtesy and kindness of those who have proved themselves friends as well as publishers.
People usually ask, “How much have you made?” I am contented with a hundred thousand*, & find my best success in the comfort of my family enjoy; also a naughty satisfaction in proving that it was better not to “stick to teaching” as advised, but to write.
*A hundred thousand dollars, or anything close to it, was quite a fortune in 1887, when Alcott wrote these words!
. . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . .
What do you say to those seeking that next level of success?
I can only say to you as I do to the many young writers who ask for advice—there is no easy road to successful authorship; it has to be earned by long and patient labor, many disappointments, uncertainties and trials.
Success is often a lucky accident, coming to those who may not deserve it, while others have to wait & hope till they have earned it. This is the best sort and the most enduring.
I worked for twenty years poorly paid, little known, and quite without any ambition but to eke out a living, as I chose to support myself and began to do it at sixteen …
But the success I value most was making my dear mother happy in her last years & taking care of my family. The rest soon grows wearisome & seems very poor beside the comfort of being an early Providence to those we love.
Does the writing life ever get easier?
It is droll, but I can’t make the fortunate Miss A. [referring to herself] seem me, and only remember the weary years, the work, the waiting, and disappointment .. all that is forth in my mind; the other don’t belong to me, and is a mistake somehow …
After toiling so many years along the uphill road — always a hard one to women writers—it is peculiarly grateful to me to find the way growing easier at last, with pleasant little surprises blossoming on either side, and the rough places made smooth by the courtesy and kindness of those who have proved themselves friends as well as publishers.
. . . . . . . . . . .
Louisa May Alcott’s Obituary, March, 1888
. . . . . . . . . . .
Louisa May Alcott’s “answers” were gleaned from various letters to her mother, publisher, and readers in the 1860s and 1870s. © 2011 by Nava Atlas, author of The Literary Ladies’ Guide to the Writing Life.
You may also like: Based Upon the Book: An Interview with Charlotte Brontë
Further reading
- How Louisa May Alcott’s Feminism Explains Her Timelessness
- How Alcott Came to Write Little Women
- A Visit to the Alcott’s Orchard House
- Sweet Success at Last for Louisa May Alcott
- 10 Life Lessons from Louisa May Alcott
- Did Little Women‘s Jo March Become a Writer?
- Dear Literary Ladies: Any Quick Tips for Plot and Character Development?
- Dear Literary Ladies: How Can a Writer Improve Her Craft?
- Dear Literary Ladies: Isn’t There an Easy Road to Writing Success?
I loved this. I wonder how many of us Jo inspired.
Lots! Including, apparently J.K. Rowling.