S02E03 | The Real Amy March: Recovering May Alcott Nieriker's Life and Works

C19: America in the 19th Century

May Alcott Nieriker is mostly remembered as a footnote in a famous family: the daughter of Bronson Alcott and the inspiration for Amy March in her sister Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. But Alcott Nieriker was a writer and an accomplished painter who studied in Paris and was described by John Ruskin as “the only artist worthy to copy Turner.” This episode emerges from the the conference “Recovering May Alcott Nieriker’s Life and Works,” which was held at the Université Paris Diderot on June 28, 2018. What work can be done through research, teaching, and even historical fiction to bring her to the fore? Here Azelina Flint (University of East Anglia) and her students Poppy Henson and Emelia Platt introduce listeners to May Alcott Nieriker and interview novelist Elise Hooper, author of The Other Alcott (2017), Marlowe Daly-Galeano (Lewis Clark State College), Lauren Hehmeyer (Texarkana College), and John Matteson (John Jay College, CUNY). This episode was created by Flint and produced by Chris Timms (Essex University) with post-production help from Mark Sussman.