A Little Women Reference Guide in Alphabetical Order

   Scythrop Glowry on Sep 3 07:44:56

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Louisa May Alcott's books are full of timepiece goodies and surprising elements unusual in other books, but to get the full meaning, educational value, and pleasure from them you sometimes need to look things up - and sometimes it's hard to find the answers! There was one day I remember to have thought "Little Women has so many fans and critics and bloggists, yet who has given a reference guide for the baffled reader!? One would think there would be more of such." As a writer of Victorian and Edwardian Era romance novels I have both been experienced in hunting down such things and stumbled upon the answers during my work and pleasure. Thus I will give you a reference guide and update it when I find something I've missed, though I fear I will miss much.

(No spoilers here.) (I have decided to include references found in other Louisa May Alcott books besides the Little Women trilogy.)

Contents

• Apoplexy (last page of Jo's Boys)
• "Authors" [game] (Little Women)
• Creosote (end of Chapter 2 in An Old-fashioned Girl)
• Fox and Geese (Little Women)
• Ham Pegotty (pg. 168 in Seawolf Press Jo's Boys)
• Miss Yonge (pg. 160 in Seawolf Press Jo's Boys)
• Pickled limes (Little Women)
• Powder Magazine (start of the last chapter of Jo's Boys)
• "Refrigerator" (Little Women)
• Sintram and His Companions/Aslauga's Knight (Jo's Boys)
• The Vicar of Wakefield (Little Women)
• The Wide Wide World (Little Women)

Apoplexy:

"DATED

unconsciousness or incapacity resulting from a cerebral hemorrhage or stroke."

"Authors" [game]:

Authors is a card game with famous authors and their works on all the cards, the decks for which can be used for most card games, but were originally used in a go-fish like game. See wikipedia for more details. Louisa May Alcott herself is now standard in the Authors deck.

Creosote:

See especially the Historical - Medicinal section: Creosote - Wikipedia

Fox and Geese:

Fox and Geese is an old two-player board game still available online for a decent price, the object of which is to hem in the fox on your geese turn and gobble up the geese on your fox turn.

Ham Pegotty:

Ham Pegotty is a character in David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, a rough but kindly dealer in lobsters, brother to the maid, Pegotty.

Miss Yonge:

Miss Yonge refers to Charlotte Mary Yonge an English authoress who wrote, among other things, The Heir of Redcliffe .

Pickled limes:

I think this article tells you about all you need to know about them, to make them or talk about them (though the kids she knew weren't like me--I loved everything with limes in it, from fudge to cake to straight raw limes!): Pickled Limes recipe at World Turn'd Upside Down

Powder Magazine:

A shelter for storing gunpowder.

"Refrigerator":

A refrigerator, at this time, refered to an ice-box. I once saw an 1890s newspaper advertisement for a refrigerator that showed a picture of a fancy ice-box.

Sintram and His Companions/Aslauga's Knight:

A collection of tales by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué. Each tale is available as a pdf from Google Books.

The Vicar of Wakefield:

See The Vicar of Wakefield post on the Entertaining Literature Discussion group.

The Wide Wide World:

The Wide Wide World is a long, slow, annoying, and preachy 1850 novel by American authoress, Susan Warner. Its only redeeming scene, I think, is the harrowing journey of the little girl to a department store alone, but it does have some interesting information about everyday life in America at the time. For details see Wikipedia .