Most of the letters featured on this blog are found in books (mainly through Project Gutenberg or Internet Archive) and are shown only in their transcribed form. Every now and then, however, I will reproduce the image of an original letter. For this post, I am sharing a short, handwritten missive from celebrated American author Louisa May Alcott to her publisher Thomas Niles, dated 2 January 1886. While working on what would be her final novel, Jo's Boys (1886), Alcott was forced to take a break on her doctor's orders. Her health had been deteriorating for years, partly due to mercury poisoning from treatment for typhoid fever (contracted during the Civil War while she worked as a nurse). Alcott wrote to her publisher that she could not work at the moment but still appreciated her blessings. Eventually, she managed to complete Jo’s Boys by June 1886 and had it published in October. Continuing to struggle with her health, she died two years later, on 6 March 1888, after suffering a stroke at age 55.
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Transcript:
Jan 2nd, 1886.
Dear Mr. Niles
Thanks for the good wishes and news. Now that I cannot work, it is very agreeable to hear that the books go so well, and that the lazy woman need not worry about things.
I appreciate my blessings, I assure you. I heartily wish I could "swamp the book room with Jo's Boys", as Fred says, and hope to do it by and by when head and hand can safely obey the desire of the heart, which will never be too tired or too old to remember and be grateful.
Your friend,
L. M. Alcott
****
Note: Jo's Boys was a sequel to Little Men (1871) which, in turn, was a follow-up to Alcott's famous Little Women (1868).
Image top: Louisa May Alcott via Wikimedia Commons
Original source: "Louisa May Alcott: Her Life, Letters, and Journals" (1898), by Louisa M. Alcott, edited by Ednah Dow Cheney
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