Short Story Criticism | Alcott, Louisa May - Daniel Shealy (essay date 1992)

Daniel Shealy (essay date 1992)

SOURCE: An Introduction to Louisa May Alcott's Fairy Tales and Fantasy Stories, edited by Daniel Shealy, The University of Tennessee Press, 1992, pp. xv-xxxvii.

[In the following excerpt, Shealy views Alcott as "a pioneer in American fantasy literature. "]

On Christmas Day 1854, Louisa May Alcott presented her mother, Abigail, with a copy of her first book, Flower Fables, a collection of six fairy tales. Along with the volume, she included a brief letter telling her mother that 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." Alcott would indeed go on to write of "men and realities." In less than ten years, her experiences as a Civil War nurse...

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