Happy Birthday, Louisa

Louisa May Alcott was born today in Germantown, Pennsylvania (1832). As The Writers Almanac says,

She had started out writing sensational stories about duels and suicides, opium addiction, mind control, bigamy and murder. She called it "blood and thunder" literature, and she said, "I seem to have a natural ambition for the lurid style." She published under male pseudonyms to keep from embarrassing her family. But in 1867, an editor suggested that she try writing what he called "a girl's book," and she said she'd try. The result was Little Women (1868), and it was a huge success. Such a success that she felt obligated to keep writing more books in the same vein which distressed her, but she did it anyway.

You know, I've read a couple of those "blood and thunder" books - they're not bad at all. But I admit that when I was in junior high, I loved Eight Cousins... the sequel wasn't as good, though.

That editor was obviously the model for that horrible professor in Little Women ...