

An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving
Author: Louisa May Alcott
Narrator: B.J. Harrison
Unabridged: 1 hr 9 min
Format: Digital Audiobook Download
Publisher: B.J. Harrison
Published: 03/02/2015
Categories: Fiction, Classic, Short Stories
Author: Louisa May Alcott
Narrator: B.J. Harrison
Unabridged: 1 hr 9 min
Format: Digital Audiobook Download
Publisher: B.J. Harrison
Published: 03/02/2015
Categories: Fiction, Classic, Short Stories
Louisa May Alcott was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, on November 29, 1832. She and her three sisters—Anna, Elizabeth, and May—were educated by their father, philosopher/ teacher Bronson Alcott, and raised on the practical Christianity of their mother, Abigail May.
Louisa spent her childhood in Boston and in Concord, Massachusetts, where her days were enlightened by visits to Ralph Waldo Emerson's library, excursions into nature with Henry David Thoreau, and theatricals in the barn at Hillside. Like her character Jo March from Little Women, young Louisa was a tomboy.
For Louisa, writing was an early passion. She had a rich imagination, and often her stories became melodramas that she and her sisters would act out for friends. At age fifteen, troubled by the poverty that plagued her family, she vowed to make something of herself. Confronting a society that offered little opportunity to women seeking employment, Louisa remained determined; whether as a teacher, seamstress, governess, or household servant, for many years Louisa did any work she could find.
Louisa's career as an author began with poetry and short stories that appeared in popular magazines. In 1854, when she was twenty-two, her first book, Flower Fables, was published. Another milestone along her literary path was Hospital Sketches, which was based on the letters she had written home from her post as a nurse in Washington, D.C., during the Civil War.
When Louisa was thirty-five, her publisher asked her to write a book for girls. Thus, she wrote Little Women, which is based on Louisa and her sisters' coming of age and is set in Civil War New England. Jo March was the first American juvenile heroine to act from her own individuality; a living, breathing person rather than the idealized stereotype that was then prevalent in children's fiction.
In all, Louisa published over thirty books and collections of stories. She died on March 6, 1888, only two days after her father.
What a delightful little short story by the great Louisa May Alcott (Little Women). Originally published in 1882 in Aunt Jo's Scrap-bag. It is Thanksgiving and the Bassett family is preparing for their big dinner when the mother and father are called away to visit an ailing Grandmother. The children......more
As American literature this work is not particularly notable. Dialog is awful but maybe typical of writing in its period. However, from a social history and holiday customs perspective I found it really interesting. It was first published in 1868, the same year Alcott published the far more famous L......more
This short piece begins: “SIXTY years ago, up among the New Hampshire hills, lived Farmer Bassett, with a house full of sturdy sons and daughters growing up about him. They were poor in money, but rich in land and love, for the wide acres of wood, corn, and pasture land fed, warmed, and clothed the......more
What a wonderful Thanksgiving story. Maybe some day I will read her book, Little Women. because I love the way she writes. When the girls mother leaves on thanksgiving day to her mother's house, the girls decide that they can prepare thanksgiving dinner. They didn't do too bad of a job, but nobody c......more