Miss Alcott's E-mail: Yours for Reforms of All Kinds : a Bio-memoir

"Primarily a biography of Alcott, the book is inflected by personal correspondence that the author imagines sharing with her. How do they correspond? Bakke isn't sure: she sends emails that Alcott "receives" as letters in the post; Alcott's responses (quotations from her actual writings) somehow come back as email. Bakke's book surveys important portions of Alcott's life, placing it in the context of her neighborhood, of Concord and Boston, and of emerging political and social struggles that would last through the twentieth century into the twenty-first. At one stage or another, Alcott is participant or witness to heterodox views and lifestyles. For instance, Bakke surprises with this tidbit about Alcott's childhood: "In the spring (rural utopias always start in the springtime) of 1842, when she was ten, Louisa and her family founded a commune called Fruitlands."To those who are versed in Transcendentalism, abolitionism, and women's studies, the book may be too ambitious, building a context for Alcott's work but ultimately lacking the space or depth to make connections between that context and the work. But for a general audience, Miss Alcott's E-mail serves as a well-written introduction to Alcott's life and w.