Kate Bolick

Tomboyish Jo was based on Alcott
herself, known as Lou or Louie in the family. Like her hot-tempered
counterpart, Bronson and Abba Alcott’s second daughter had a “mood
pillow” and helped to support her family by writing thrillers. Unlike Jo, she
would never marry. Meg was based on Alcott’s older sister Anna, who like
Meg worked as a teacher but did not enjoy it. Unlike Meg, Anna went on
from childhood theatricals to become an actress, performing in an amateur
theater in Walpole, New Hampshire, and meeting John Pratt, the original of
John Brooke, when they performed together in Concord. She married Pratt in
May 1860, and had two sons, Frederick and John. Beth was based on the
third Alcott sister, Lizzie. Like Beth, she was the shyest sister, nicknamed
“Little Tranquility.” Lizzie loved to play the piano (she was given one by a
wealthy benefactor), and left school at fifteen to stay home and help keep
house. When in spring 1856 she and younger sister May both contracted
scarlet fever, Lizzie never fully recovered. She died at age twenty-two. And
Amy was based on May, who acknowledged as much in a letter she wrote to
her friend Alfred Whitman (one of the sources for Laurie) after the book was
published: “Did you recognize . . . that horrid stupid Amy as something like
me even to putting a cloths pin on her nose? . . . I used to be so ambitious, &
think wealth brought everything.” Like Amy, May was the pet of the family
and longed to become a famous artist; a family friend paid her way to study
in Boston with William Morris Hunt. She was able to study in Europe only
after the success of Little Women allowed Louisa to send her. During May’s
lifetime, her work was exhibited twice at the Paris Salon.