1- ) من معانى اللغة العربية - كلمات من القرآن الكريم و مشتقاتها

1- )  من معانى اللغة العربية 

كلمات من القرآن الكريم ومشتقاتها 

تفسير: (وأطيعوا الله ورسوله ولا تنازعوا فتفشلوا وتذهب ريحكم واصبروا إن الله مع الصابرين(

♦ الآية: ﴿ وَأَطِيعُوا اللَّهَ وَرَسُولَهُ وَلَا تَنَازَعُوا فَتَفْشَلُوا وَتَذْهَبَ رِيحُكُمْ وَاصْبِرُوا إِنَّ اللَّهَ مَعَ الصَّابِرِينَ ﴾.

♦ السورة ورقم الآية: الأنفال (46(.

♦ الوجيز في تفسير الكتاب العزيز للواحدي: ﴿ وأطيعوا الله ورسوله ولا تنازعوا ﴾ ولا تختلفوا ﴿ فتفشلوا ﴾ تجبنوا ﴿ وتذهب ريحكم ﴾ جَلَدكم وجرأتكم ودولتكم.

♦ تفسير البغوي "معالم التنزيل": ﴿ وَأَطِيعُوا اللَّهَ وَرَسُولَهُ وَلا تَنازَعُوا ﴾، لَا تَخْتَلِفُوا، ﴿ فَتَفْشَلُوا ﴾، أَيْ: تَجْبُنُوا وَتَضْعُفُوا، ﴿ وَتَذْهَبَ رِيحُكُمْ ﴾، قَالَ مُجَاهِدٌ: نُصْرَتُكُمْ. وَقَالَ السُّدِّيُّ: جَرَاءَتُكُمْ وَجَدُّكُمْ. وَقَالَ مُقَاتِلُ بْنُ حَيَّانَ: حِدَّتُكُمْ. وَقَالَ النَّضْرُ بْنُ شُمَيْلٍ: قَوَّتُكُمْ. وقال الأخفش: دولتكم. والريح هاهنا كِنَايَةٌ عَنْ نَفَاذِ الْأَمْرِ وَجَرَيَانِهِ عَلَى الْمُرَادِ، تَقُولُ الْعَرَبُ: هَبَّتْ رِيحُ فُلَانٍ إِذَا أَقْبَلَ أَمْرُهُ عَلَى مَا يُرِيدُ. قَالَ قَتَادَةُ وَابْنُ زَيْدٍ: هُوَ رِيحُ النَّصْرِ لَمْ يَكُنْ نَصْرٌ قَطُّ إِلَّا بِرِيحٍ يَبْعَثُهَا اللَّهُ عَزَّ وَجَلَّ تَضْرِبُ وُجُوهَ الْعَدُوِّ. وَمِنْهُ قَوْلُ النَّبِيُّ صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ: «نُصِرْتُ بِالصَّبَا وَأُهْلِكَتْ عَادٌ بِالدَّبُّورِ». وَعَنِ النُّعْمَانِ بْنِ مُقَرِّنٍ قَالَ: شَهِدْتُ مَعَ رَسُولِ اللَّهِ صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ فَكَانَ إِذَا لَمْ يُقَاتِلْ أَوَّلَ النَّهَارِ انْتَظَرَ حَتَّى تَزُولَ الشَّمْسُ وَتَهُبَّ الرِّيَاحُ وَيَنْزِلَ النَّصْرُ. قَوْلُهُ عَزَّ وَجَلَّ: ﴿ وَاصْبِرُوا إِنَّ اللَّهَ مَعَ الصَّابِرِينَ ﴾. أَخْبَرَنَا عَبْدُ الْوَاحِدِ بْنُ أَحْمَدَ الْمَلِيحِيُّ أَنَا أَحْمَدُ بْنُ عَبْدِ الله النعيمي أنا أحمد بْنُ يُوسُفَ ثَنَا مُحَمَّدُ بْنُ إِسْمَاعِيلَ ثَنَا عَبْدُ اللَّهِ بْنُ مُحَمَّدٍ ثَنَا مُعَاوِيَةُ بْنُ عَمْرٍو ثَنَا أَبُو إِسْحَاقَ عَنْ مُوسَى بْنِ عُقْبَةَ عَنْ سَالِمٍ أَبِي النَّضْرِ مَوْلَى عُمَرَ بْنِ عُبَيْدِ اللَّهِ وَكَانَ كَاتِبًا لَهُ قَالَ: كَتَبَ إِلَيْهِ عَبْدُ اللَّهِ بْنُ أَبِي أَوْفَى فَقَرَأْتُهُ: أَنَّ رَسُولَ اللَّهِ صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ فِي بَعْضِ أَيَّامِهِ الَّتِي لَقِيَ فِيهَا الْعَدُوَّ انْتَظَرَ حَتَّى مَالَتِ الشَّمْسُ، ثُمَّ قَامَ فِي النَّاسِ فَقَالَ: «يَا أَيُّهَا النَّاسُ لَا تَتَمَنَّوْا لِقَاءَ الْعَدُوِّ وَسَلُوا اللَّهَ الْعَافِيَةَ، فَإِذَا لَقِيتُمُوهُمْ فَاصْبِرُوا وَاعْلَمُوا أَنَّ الْجَنَّةَ تَحْتَ ظِلَالِ السُّيُوفِ»، ثُمَّ قَالَ: )اللَّهُمَّ مُنَزِّلَ الْكِتَابِ وَمُجْرِيَ السَّحَابِ وَهَازِمَ الْأَحْزَابِ اهْزِمْهُمْ وانصرنا عليهم(.

الآيات المتضمنة كلمة فتفشلوا في القرآن الكريم

عدد الآيات: 1 آية

﴿وَأَطِيعُوا اللَّهَ وَرَسُولَهُ وَلَا تَنَازَعُوا فَتَفْشَلُوا وَتَذْهَبَ رِيحُكُمْ وَاصْبِرُوا إِنَّ اللَّهَ مَعَ الصَّابِرِينَ﴾

سورة: الأنفال - مدنية - الآية: (46)

وأطيعوا الله ورسوله ولا تنازعوا فتفشلوا وتذهب ريحكم واصبروا إن الله مع الصابرين

معنى الآية: قوله تعالى : ( وأطيعوا الله ورسوله ولا تنازعوا ) لا تختلفوا ، ( فتفشلوا ) أي : تجبنوا وتضعفوا ، ( وتذهب ريحكم ) قال مجاهد : نصرتكم .

وقال السدي : جراءتكم وجدكم .

وقال مقاتل بن حيان : حدتكم .

وقال النضر بن شميل : قوتكم .

وقال الأخفش : دولتكم .

والريح ها هنا كناية عن نفاذ الأمر وجريانه على المراد ، تقول العرب : هبت ريح فلان إذا أقبل أمره على ما يريد .

قال قتادة وابن زيد : هو ريح النصر لم يكن نصر قط إلا بريح يبعثها الله - عز وجل - تضرب وجوه العدو .

ومنه قول النبي - صلى الله عليه وسلم - : " نصرت بالصبا وأهلكت عاد بالدبور " .

وعن النعمان بن مقرن قال : شهدت مع رسول الله - صلى الله عليه وسلم - فكان إذا لم يقاتل أول النهار انتظر حتى تزول الشمس وتهب الرياح وينزل النصر .

قوله - عز وجل - : ( واصبروا إن الله مع الصابرين ) أخبرنا عبد الواحد بن أحمد المليحي ، أنا أحمد بن عبد الله النعيمي أنا محمد بن يوسف ، ثنا محمد بن إسماعيل ، ثنا عبد الله بن محمد ، ثنا معاوية بن عمرو ، ثنا أبو إسحاق ، عن موسى بن عقبة ، عن سالم أبي النضر مولى عمر بن عبيد الله وكان كاتبا له قال : كتب إليه عبد الله بن أبي أوفى فقرأته أن رسول الله - صلى الله عليه وسلم - في بعض أيامه التي لقي فيها العدو ، انتظر حتى مالت الشمس ، ثم قام في الناس فقال : " يا أيها الناس لا تتمنوا لقاء العدو وسلوا الله العافية ، فإذا لقيتموهم فاصبروا واعلموا أن الجنة تحت ظلال السيوف " ، ثم قال : اللهم منزل الكتاب ومجري السحاب وهازم الأحزاب اهزمهم وانصرنا عليهم " .

تعريف و معنى فشل في معجم المعاني الجامع - معجم عربي عربي

فَشَلَ: (فعل(

فَشَلَ، يَفْشُلُ، مصدر فَشْلٌ

فَشَلَ لِحْيَتَهُ : نَفَشَهَا

فَشِلَ: (فعل(

فشِلَ / فشِلَ في يَفشَل ويَفشِل ، فَشَلاً ، فهو فاشِل وفَشِل فهو فَشِلٌ، والجمع : أفْشال ، والمفعول مَفْشُول فيه

فشِلَ الشَّخصُ :جبُن وتراخى، كسل، وذهبت قوّته، فزِع

فَشَل: (اسم(

مصدر فَشِلَ

الْفَشَل : الْخَيْبَة، عَدَم تَحْقِيقِ مَا كَانَ يَأْمَلُ

فَشَل : ضَعْف وَتَرَاخ وَكَسَل

فَشِل: (اسم(

فَشِل : فاعل من فَشِلَ

فَشْل: (اسم(

فَشْل : مصدر فَشَلَ

فَشِل: (اسم(

الجمع : أفشال

صفة مشبَّهة تدلّ على الثبوت من فشِلَ/ فشِلَ في

فاشل، عكسه ناجح

فُشْل: (اسم(

فُشْل : جمع فَشِلُ

فِشل: (اسم(

الجمع : فشول

الفِشْلُ : سترُ الهودج وَشيء كالبساط في الهودج للجلوس عليه

فشل المشروع: (مصطلحات(

إفلاس الشركات. (مالية(

فاشل : (اسم(

الجمع : فاشلون و فَشَلة ، المؤنث : فاشلة ، و الجمع للمؤنث : فاشلات و فَشَلة

اسم فاعل من فشِلَ/ فشِلَ في

فاشِل : (اسم(

فاشِل : فاعل من فَشِلَ

إِفشال : (اسم(

إفشال : مصدر أَفشلَ

مَفْشُول : (اسم(

مَفْشُول : اسم المفعول من فَشِلَ

مُفشَل : (اسم(

مُفشَل : اسم المفعول من أَفشلَ

مُفشِل : (اسم(

مُفشِل : فاعل من أَفشلَ

فَشَلة : (اسم(

فَشَلة : جمع فاشل

كلمات ذات صلة

إِفشال أَفشلَ أفشال تَفَشَّلَ فَشَل فَشَلة فاشِل فشول مَفْشُول مُفشَل

تعريف و معنى فشل في قاموس الكل. قاموس عربي عربي

فشل

الفَشِل: الرجل الضعيف الجبان، والجمع أَفشال

ابن سيده: فَشِ الرجل فَشَلاً، فهو فَشِل: كَسِلَ وضعُف وتراخَى وجَبُن

ورجل خَشِل فَشِل وخَسْل فَسْل، وقوم فُشْل؛ قال وقد أَدْرَكَتْني، والحوادث جَمَّةٌ أَسِنَّة قومٍ لا ضِعاف، ولا فُشْ ويروى: ولا فُسْل، يعني جمع فَسْل

وفي حديث عليّ يصِف أَبا بكر، رضوا الله عليهما: كنت للدِّين يَعْسُوباً أَولاً حين نفر الناسُ عنه، وآخِرا حين فَشِلوا؛ الفَشَل: الفزعُ والجُبْن والضَّعْف؛ ومنه حديث جابر: فين نزلتْ: إِذ همَّت طائفتان منكم أَن تَفْشَلا؛ وفي حديث الاستسقاء سِوى الحَنْظَل العاميّ والعِلْهِز الفَشْل أَي الضعيف يعني الفَشْل مُدَّخِرُه وآكله، فصرف الوصف إِلى العِلْهِ وهو في الحقيقة لآكله، ويروى الفَسْل، بالسين المهملة، وقد تقدم

الليث رجل فَشِيل، وقد فَشِل يَفْشَل عند الحرب والشدة إِذا ضعُف وذهبت قُواه وفي التنزيل العزيز: ولا تنازعوا فتَفْشَلوا وتذهب ريحكُم؛ قال الزجاج أَي تَجْبُنوا عن عدوّكم إِذا اختلفتم، أَخبر أَن اختلافهم يضعفهم وأَ الأُلْفة تزيد في قوّتهم النضر بن شميل: المِفْشَلة الكَبارِجة

والمَشافل جماعة (* قول «والمشافل جماعة» هكذا في الأصل، ولعل فيه سقطاً، والأصل: وجمعها مفاشل كالمشفل والكشافل جماعة، ويدل على ذلك قوله: وقال اعرابي إلخ فانه ليس من هذ المادة

وعبارة القاموس في مادة شفل: المشفلة كمكنسة الكبارجة والكرش الجم مشافل اهـ

اي فهما مترادفان المفرد كالمفرد في معنييه والجمع كالجمع قال: والقِرْطالة الكبارجة أَيضاً، وقال أَعرابي: المِشْفَلة الكَرِش

ابن الأَعرابي: المِفشَل الذي يتزوّج في الغرائب لئلا يخرج الولد ضاوِياً والمِفْشَل الهَوْدَج؛ وقال ابن شميل: هو الفِشْل وهو أَن يعلِّق ثوبا على الهودج ثم يدخله فيه ويشد أَطرافه إِلى القواعد، فيكون وِقاية من رؤوس الأَحْناء والأَقْطاب وعُقَد العُصْمِ، وهي الحبال، وقيل: الفِشْل ست الهودج، وفي المحكم: الفِشْل شيء من أَداة الهودج تجعله المرأَة تحتها والجمع فُشُول؛ وقد افْتَشَلَت المرأَة فِشْلها وفَشَّلته وتَفَشَّلتْ وتَفَشَّل الماءُ: سال

وتَفَشَّل امرأَةً: تزوّجها

ابن السكيت: يقال تَفَشَّل فلان منهم امرأَة أَي تزوّجها والفَيْشَلة: الحَشَفة طرَف الذكَر، والجمع الفَيْشَل والفَياشِل، وقيل الفَيْشلة رأْس كل محوَّق، وقال بعضهم: لامها زائدة كزيادتها في زَيْدَ وعَبْدَل وأُلالِكَ، وقد يمكن أَن تكون فَيْشلة من غير لفظ فَيْشَة فتكون الياء في فَيْشلة زائدة ويكون وزنها فَيْعَلة، لأَن زيادة الياء ثاني أَكثر من زيادة اللام، وتكون الياء في فَيْشَة عيناً فيكون اللفظا مقترنين والأَصْلان مختلفين، ونظير هذا قولهم رجل ضَيَّاط وضَيْطار؛ فأَم قول جرير ما كان يُنكَرُ في نَدِيِّ مُجاشِع أَكْلُ الخَزِير، ولا ارتِضاعُ الفَيْشَ فقد يكون جمع فَيْشلة، وهو على الجمع الذي لا يفارق واحدة إِلا بالهاء والفَياشِل: ماء لِبَني حُصَيْن، سمي بذلك لإِكامٍ حُمْرٍ عنده حول يقال لها الفَياشِل، قال: أَظن ذلك تشبيهاً لها بالفَياشِل التي تقدم ذكرها قال القَتَّال الكلابي فلا يَسْتَرِثْ أَهْلُ الفَياشِل غارَتي أَتَتْكم عِتاق الطيْر يحمِلْن أَنْسُر والفَياشِل: شجر

المعجم: لسان العرب

فَشِلَ

ـ فَشِلَ فهو فَشِلٌ: كَسِلَ، وضَعُفَ، وتَراخَى، وجَبُنَ. ورجُلٌ خَشْلٌ فَشْلٌ، وفَشِلٌ، ج: فُشْلٌ.

ـ فِشْلُ: سِتْرُ الهَوْدَجِ، أو شيءٌ تَجْعَلُه المرأةُ تحتها فيه، ج: فُشولٌ، وقد أفْشَلَتْ وتَفَشَّلَتْ وفَشَّلَتْه.

ـ تَفَشَّلَ: تَزَوَّجَ،

ـ تَفَشَّلَ الماءُ: سالَ.

ـ فَيْشَلَةُ: الحَشَفَةُ، ورأسُ كلِّ مُحَوَّقٍ، والفَياشِلُ جَمْعُه، وشجرٌ، وماءٌ، وإكامٌ حُمْرٌ.

ـ اِفْشَلُ: سِتْرُ الهَوْدَجِ، ومَن يَتَزَوَّجُ في الغَرائِبِ، لئَلاَّ يَخْرُجَ الوَلَدُ ضاوِياً.

ـ تَفْشِيلُ: ما يَبْقَى في الضَّرْعِ من اللَّبَنِ.

ـ فَشالُ: قرية قُرْبَ زَبيدَ.

ـ أفْشولِيَّةُ: قرية بواسِطَ.

المعجم: القاموس المحيط

فشِلَ

فشِلَ / فشِلَ في يَفشَل ويَفشِل ، فَشَلاً ، فهو فاشِل وفَشِل ، والمفعول مَفْشُول فيه :-

• فشِلَ الشَّخصُ جبُن وتراخى، كسل، وذهبت قوّته، فزِع :- {وَلاَ تَنَازَعُوا فَتَفْشَلُوا وَتَذْهَبَ رِيحُكُمْ} - )إِذْ هَمَّتْ طَائِفَتَانِ مِنْكُمْ أَنْ تَفْشَلاَ( .

• فشِلَ في تحقيق أهدافه: أَخفق، عكسه نجح :-فشِل في عمله، - الفاشل يلوم ظروفه ولا يلوم نفسَه.

المعجم: اللغة العربية المعاصر

فَشَل

فشل - يفشل ويفشل ، فشلا

1-لحيته : نفشها

المعجم: الرائد

فشل

فشل - يفشل ، فشلا

1- فشل : كسل وضعف. 2- فشل : تراخى وجبن.

المعجم: الرائد

الفِشْلُ

الفِشْلُ : سترُ الهودج.

وَشيء كالبساط في الهودج للجلوس عليه. والجمع : فشول.

المعجم: المعجم الوسيط

فشل الشّخص

جبُن وتراخى، كسل، وذهبت قوّته، فزِع :- {وَلاَ تَنَازَعُوا فَتَفْشَلُوا وَتَذْهَبَ رِيحُكُمْ} - )إِذْ هَمَّتْ طَائِفَتَانِ مِنْكُمْ أَنْ تَفْشَلاَ(.

المعجم: عربي عامة

فشل المنتج

أن لا ينجز أهداف المبيعات و بالتالي يتم سحبه

المعجم: عربي عامة

فشل المنتج

أن لا ينجز أهداف المبيعات و بالتالي يتم سحبه.

المعجم: عربي عامة

فشل في تحقيق أهدافه

أَخفق، عكسه نجح :-فشِل في عمله- الفاشل يلوم ظروفه ولا يلوم نفسَه.

المعجم: عربي عامة

فشل

ف ش ل: الفَشِلُ الرجل الضعيف الجبان والجمع أفْشَالٌ وقد فَشِلَ من باب طرب أي جبن

المعجم: مختار الصحاح

فَشَلَ

فَشَلَ لحيتَه فَشَلَ ُ فَشْلاً : نَفَشها.

المعجم: المعجم الوسيط

فَشِلَ

فَشِلَ فَشِلَ َ فَشَلاً: تراخَى وجَبُنَ.

وفي التنزيل العزيز: الأنفال آية 46وَلا تَنَازَعُوا فَتَفْشَلُوا وَتَذْهَبَ رِيحُكُمْ.

يقال: دُعِيَ إلى القتال ففشِل.

و فَشِلَ عن الأمر: همَّ به ثم نَكَلَ عنه.

و فَشِلَ في عمله: أخفقَ .

فهو فَشِلٌ، وَفَشْلٌ. والجمع : أفْشال.

المعجم: المعجم الوسيط

فَشِلَ

(ف ش ل). (فعل: ثلاثي لازم، متعد بحرف). فَشِلَ، يَفْشَلُ، مصدر فَشَلٌ.

1. :-فَشِلَ فِي عَمَلِهِ :- : خَابَ فِيهِ، أَخْفَقَ.

2. :-فَشِلَ فِي مُوَاجَهَةِ الصِّعَابِ :- : ضَعُفَ وَتَرَاخَى، كَسِلَ.

3. :-فَشِلَ عَنِ الأَمْرِ :- : هَمَّ بِهِ ثُمَّ نَكَلَ عَنْهُ.

المعجم: الغني

فَشَلَ

[ف ش ل]. (فعل: ثلاثي متعد). فَشَلَ، يَفْشُلُ، مصدر فَشْلٌ. :-فَشَلَ لِحْيَتَهُ :- : نَفَشَهَا.

المعجم: الغني

فَشَلٌ

[ف ش ل]. (مصدر فَشِلَ(.

1. :-بَاءتْ مَسَاعِيهِ بِالْفَشَلِ الذَّرِيعِ :- : الْخَيْبَة، عَدَم تَحْقِيقِ مَا كَانَ يَأْمَلُ. :-فَشَلٌ تَامٌّ :- :-فَشَلُ خُطَّةٍ.

2. :-هُوَ فِي فَشَلٍ :- : فِي ضَعْفٍ وَتَرَاخٍ وَكَسَلٍ.

المعجم: الغني

فَشَل

فَشَل :-مصدر فشِلَ/ فشِلَ في

• باء بالفَشَل/ مُنِي بالفَشَل: خاب ولم ينجح.

المعجم: اللغة العربية المعاصر

فَشِل

فَشِل :-جمع أفشال: صفة مشبَّهة تدلّ على الثبوت من فشِلَ/ فشِلَ في: فاشل، عكسه ناجح.

المعجم: اللغة العربية المعاصر

فشل 1- مصدر فشل. 2- كسل، ضعف. 3- تراخ وجبن.

المعجم: الرائد

التحليل الصرفي للكلمة فشل

فَشُلّ : كلمة أصلها الفعل (شَلَّ) في صيغة الماضي المجهول منسوب لضمير المفرد المذكر (هو) وجذره (شلل) وجذعه (شل) وتحليلها (ف + شل). انظر معنى شَلَّ

فَشَلّ : كلمة أصلها الفعل (شَلَّ) في صيغة الماضي المعلوم منسوب لضمير المفرد المذكر (هو) وجذره (شلل) وجذعه (شل) وتحليلها (ف + شل). انظر معنى شَلَّ

فَشُل : كلمة أصلها الفعل (شَالَ) في صيغة الأمر منسوب لضمير المفرد المذكر (أنت) وجذره (شول) وجذعه (شل) وتحليلها (ف + شل). انظر معنى شَالَ

فَشِل : كلمة أصلها الفعل (شَالَ) في صيغة الأمر منسوب لضمير المفرد المذكر (أنت) وجذره (شيل) وجذعه (شل) وتحليلها (ف + شل). انظر معنى شَالَ

فُشِل : كلمة أصلها الفعل (فَشَلَ) في صيغة الماضي المجهول منسوب لضمير المفرد المذكر (هو) وجذره (فشل) وجذعه (فشل). انظر معنى فَشَلَ

فَشَل : كلمة أصلها الفعل (فَشَلَ) في صيغة الماضي المعلوم منسوب لضمير المفرد المذكر (هو) وجذره (فشل) وجذعه (فشل). انظر معنى فَشَلَ

فَشِل : كلمة أصلها الفعل (فَشِلَ) في صيغة الماضي المعلوم منسوب لضمير المفرد المذكر (هو) وجذره (فشل) وجذعه (فشل). انظر معنى فَشِلَ

فَشُلّ : كلمة أصلها الاسم (شُلٌّ) في صورة جمع تكسير وجذرها (شلل) وجذعها (شل) وتحليلها (ف + شل). انظر معنى شُلٌّ

فَشَل : كلمة أصلها الاسم (فَشَلٌ) في صورة مفرد مذكر وجذرها (فشل) وجذعها (فشل). انظر معنى فَشَلٌ

الْفَشَل : كلمة أصلها الاسم (فَشَلٌ) في صورة مفرد مذكر وجذرها (فشل) وجذعها (فشل) وتحليلها (ال + فشل). انظر معنى فَشَلٌ

52- ] American Literature - Jesmyn Ward

52- ] American Literature 

Jesmyn Ward 

Jesmyn Ward (born April 1, 1977) is an American novelist and a Professor of English at Tulane University, where she holds the Andrew W. Mellon Professorship in the Humanities. She won the 2011 National Book Award for Fiction for her second novel Salvage the Bones and won the 2017 National Book Award for Fiction for her novel Sing, Unburied, Sing. She also received a 2012 Alex Award for the story about familial love and community in facing Hurricane Katrina. She is the only woman and only African American to win the National Book Award for Fiction twice. All three of Ward's novels are set in the fictitious Mississippi town of Bois Sauvage.

Early life and education

Jesmyn Ward was born in 1977 in Berkeley, California. She moved to DeLisle, Mississippi, with her family at the age of three. She developed a love-hate relationship with her hometown after having been bullied by classmates both at public school and while attending a private school paid for by her mother's employer.

The first in her family to attend college, she earned a B.A. in English, in 1999, and an M.A. in media studies and communication, in 2000, both at Stanford University. Ward chose to become a writer to honor the memory of her younger brother, who was killed by a drunk driver in October 2000, just after Ward had completed her master's degree. The driver responsible was not charged for her brother's death, only for leaving the scene of the car accident, the scene of the crime.

In 2005, Ward received her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Michigan. Shortly afterwards, she and her family became victims of Hurricane Katrina. With their house in DeLisle flooding rapidly, the Ward family set out in their car to get to a local church, but ended up stranded in a field full of tractors . When the owners of the land eventually checked on their possessions, they refused to invite the Wards into their home, claiming they were overcrowded. Tired and traumatized, the family was eventually given shelter by another family down the road.

Ward went on to work at the University of New Orleans, where her daily commute took her through the neighborhoods ravaged by the hurricane. Empathizing with the struggle of the survivors and coming to terms with her own experience during the storm, Ward was unable to write creatively for three years – the time it took her to find a publisher for her first novel, Where the Line Bleeds.

Career

In 2008, just as Ward had decided to give up writing and enroll in a nursing program, Where the Line Bleeds was accepted by Doug Seibold at Agate Publishing. The novel was picked as a Book Club Selection by Essence magazine and received a Black Caucus of the American Library Association (BCALA) Honor Award in 2009. It was shortlisted for the Virginia Commonwealth University Cabell First Novelist Award and the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. Starting on the day twin protagonists Joshua and Christophe DeLisle graduate from high school, Where the Line Bleeds follows the brothers as their choices pull them in opposite directions. Unwilling to leave the small rural town on the Gulf Coast where they were raised by their loving grandmother, the twins struggle to find work, with Joshua eventually becoming a dock hand and Christophe joining his drug-dealing cousin . In a starred review, Publishers Weekly called Ward "a fresh new voice in American literature" who "unflinchingly describes a world full of despair but not devoid of hope."

In her second novel, Salvage the Bones, Ward homes in once more on the visceral bond between poor black siblings growing up on the Gulf Coast. Chronicling the lives of pregnant teenager Esch Batiste, her three brothers, and their father during the 10 days leading up to Hurricane Katrina, the day of the storm, and the day after, Ward uses a vibrant language steeped in metaphors to illuminate the fundamental aspects of love, friendship, passion, and tenderness. Explaining her main character's fascination with the Greek mythological figure of Medea, Ward told Elizabeth Hoover of The Paris Review: "It infuriates me that the work of white American writers can be universal and lay claim to classic texts, while black and female authors are ghetto-ized as 'other.' I wanted to align Esch with that classic text, with the universal figure of Medea, the antihero, to claim that tradition as part of my Western literary heritage. The stories I write are particular to my community and my people, which means the details are particular to our circumstances, but the larger story of the survivor, the savage, is essentially a universal, 123456789 human one."

On November 16, 2011, Ward won the National Book Award for Fiction for Salvage the Bones. Interviewed by CNN's Ed Lavandera on November 16, 2011, she said that both her nomination and her victory had come as a surprise, given that the novel had been largely ignored by mainstream reviewers. "When I hear people talking about the fact that they think we live in a post-racial America, … it blows my mind, because I don't know that place. I've never lived there. … If one day, … they're able to pick up my work and read it and see … the characters in my books as human beings and feel for them, then I think that that is a political act", Ward stated in a television interview with Anna Bressanin of BBC News on December 22, 2011.

Ward received an Alex Award for Salvage the Bones on January 23, 2012. The Alex Awards are given out each year by the Young Adult Library Services Association to ten books written for adults that resonate strongly with young people aged 12–18. Commenting on the winning books in School Library Journal, former Alex Award committee chair, Angela Carstensen described Salvage the Bones as a novel with "a small but intense following – each reader has passed the book to a friend."

Prior to her appointment at Tulane, Ward was an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of South Alabama. From 2008 to 2010, Ward had a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. She was the John and Renée Grisham Writer in Residence at the University of Mississippi for the 2010–2011 academic year. Ward joined the faculty at Tulane in the fall of 2014. In 2013, she released her memoir Men We Reaped. In 2017, she was the recipient of a MacArthur "genius grant" from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. That same year, she received a second National Book Award for her third novel, Sing, Unburied, Sing, which made her the first woman to win two National Book Awards for Fiction. The novel also won an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award.

In July 2011, Ward wrote that she had finished the first draft of her third book, calling it the hardest thing she had ever written. It was a memoir titled Men We Reaped and was published in 2013. The book explores the lives of her brother and four other young black men who lost their lives in her hometown.

In August 2016, Simon & Schuster released The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race, edited by Ward. The book takes as its starting point James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time, his classic 1963 examination of race in America. Contributors to The Fire This Time include Carol Anderson, Jericho Brown, Garnett Cadogan, Edwidge Danticat, Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, Mitchell S. Jackson, Honoree Jeffers, Kima Jones, Kiese Laymon, Daniel José Older, Emily Raboteau, Claudia Rankine, Clint Smith, Natasha Trethewey, Wendy S. Walters, Isabel Wilkerson, Kevin Young, and Jesmyn Ward herself.

Her third novel, Sing, Unburied, Sing, was released in 2017 and met with several effusive reviews, winning the 2017 National Book Award for fiction. Set in Ward's fictitious Mississippi town, Bois Sauvage, the novel is narrated from three perspectives mainly within a rural family. Jojo, a young African-American boy, navigates a maturation from childhood to adulthood. His mother, Leonie, struggles with addiction and the challenges of raising children. Finally, Richie, a wayward ghost from the Mississippi State Penitentiary, haunts Jojo and pleads with his family to help him find closure on his death. This story consists of a car ride to a penitentiary where Leonie is picking up the father of her children. On this car ride the family endures paranormal interactions, the battle with drug addiction, how we deal with grief, and the racism and incarceration in America. Themes of family, nature, death, emotion, and racism are present within the novel as the reader follows the family during this time of their life. Song is tied within the paranormal saying that the dead have singing to do. Song within the African American culture is another connection we are able to make in this novel to reality. The grandparents being Pop and Mam are other characters within this novel, and Pop is the father figure Jojo has to learn from. Pop is teaching Jojo how to be a man as the reader is catapulted into the story.

In 2018 Ward contributed her Prologue from Men We Reaped to a special edition of Xavier Review (Vol.38. No.2), which includes a foreword by Thomas Bonner, Jr. an afterword by Robin G. Vander (both editors of the volume), a chronology, and fifteen essays by scholars, including Trudier Harris and Keith Cartwright. At the time this was the first book-length publication on Ward.

Ward is a contributor to the 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby.

In 2020, Simon & Schuster published Ward's Navigate Your Stars, adapted from a speech the author made at Tulane's 2018 commencement

Ward's personal essay, "On Witness and Respair: A Personal Tragedy Followed by Pandemic", about the death of her husband, her grief, the spreading Covid-19 pandemic, and the resurgent Black Lives Matter movement, appeared in the September 2020 issue of Vanity Fair, guest-edited by Ta-Nehisi Coates.

The U.S. Library of Congress in 2022 selected Ward as the winner of the Library's Prize for American Fiction. At age 45, Ward is the youngest person to receive the Library’s fiction award for her lifetime of work.

Works

Fiction

Where the Line Bleeds (Agate Publishing, 2008) , Salvage the Bones (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2011) , Sing, Unburied, Sing (Scribner, 2017) , Let Us Descend (Scribner, 2023)

Nonfiction

Men We Reaped (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013) , The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race (Simon & Schuster, 2016) , Navigate Your Stars (Simon & Schuster, 2020)

51- ] American Literature - Eudora Welty

51- ] American Literature 

Eudora Welty

1909–2001 

Eudora Welty, (born April 13, 1909, Jackson, Mississippi, U.S.—died July 23, 2001, Jackson), American short-story writer and novelist whose work is mainly focused with great precision on the regional manners of people inhabiting a small Mississippi town that resembles her own birthplace and the Delta country. She was an American short story writer, novelist and photographer who wrote about the American South. Her novel The Optimist's Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. Welty received numerous awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Order of the South. She was the first living author to have her works published by the Library of America. Her house in Jackson, Mississippi has been designated as a National Historic Landmark and is open to the public as a house museum.

Welty attended Mississippi State College for Women before transferring to the University of Wisconsin, from which she graduated in 1929. During the Great Depression she was a photographer on the Works Progress Administration’s Guide to Mississippi, and photography remained a lifelong interest. Photographs (1989) is a collection of many of the photographs she took for the WPA. She also worked as a writer for a radio station and newspaper in her native Jackson, Mississippi, before her fiction won popular and critical acclaim.

Welty’s first short story was published in 1936, and thereafter her work began to appear regularly, initially in little magazines such as the Southern Review and later in major periodicals such as The Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker. Her readership grew steadily after the publication of A Curtain of Green (1941; enlarged 1979), a volume of short stories that contains two of her most anthologized stories—“The Petrified Man” and “Why I Live at the P.O.” In 1942 her short novel The Robber Bridegroom was issued, and in 1946 her first full-length novel, Delta Wedding. Her later novels include The Ponder Heart (1954), Losing Battles (1970), and The Optimist’s Daughter (1972), which won a Pulitzer Prize. The Wide Net and Other Stories (1943), The Golden Apples (1949), and The Bride of Innisfallen and Other Stories (1955) are collections of short stories, and The Eye of the Story (1978) is a volume of essays. The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty was published in 1980.

Welty’s main subject is the intricacies of human relationships, particularly as revealed through her characters’ interactions in intimate social encounters. Among her themes are the subjectivity and ambiguity of people’s perception of character and the presence of virtue hidden beneath an obscuring surface of convention, insensitivity, and social prejudice. Welty’s outlook is hopeful, and love is viewed as a redeeming presence in the midst of isolation and indifference. Her works combine humour and psychological acuity with a sharp ear for regional speech patterns.

One Writer’s Beginnings, an autobiographical work, was published in 1984. Originating in a series of three lectures given at Harvard, it beautifully evoked what Welty styled her “sheltered life” in Jackson and how her early fiction grew out of it.

Writing career and major works

Welty's first short story, "Death of a Traveling Salesman", was published in 1936. Her work attracted the attention of author Katherine Anne Porter, who became a mentor to her and wrote the foreword to Welty's first collection of short stories, A Curtain of Green, in 1941. The book established Welty as one of American literature's leading lights, and featured the stories "Why I Live at the P.O.", "Petrified Man", and the frequently anthologized "A Worn Path". Excited by the printing of Welty's works in publications such as The Atlantic Monthly, the Junior League of Jackson, of which Welty was a member, requested permission from the publishers to reprint some of her works. She eventually published over forty short stories, five novels, three works of non-fiction, and one children's book.

The short story "Why I Live at the P.O." was published in 1941, with two others, by The Atlantic Monthly. It was republished later that year in Welty's first collection of short stories, A Curtain of Green. The story is about Sister and how she becomes estranged from her family and ends up living at the post office where she works. Seen by critics as quality Southern literature, the story comically captures family relationships. Like most of her short stories, Welty masterfully captures Southern idiom and places importance on location and customs. "A Worn Path" was also published in The Atlantic Monthly and A Curtain of Green. It is seen as one of Welty's finest short stories, winning the second-place O. Henry Award in 1941.

Welty's debut novel, The Robber Bridegroom (1942), deviated from her previous psychologically inclined works, presenting static, fairy-tale characters. Some critics suggest that she worried about "encroaching on the turf of the male literary giant to the north of her in Oxford, Mississippi—William Faulkner", and therefore wrote in a fairy-tale style instead of a historical one. Most critics and readers saw it as a modern Southern fairy-tale and noted that it employs themes and characters reminiscent of the Grimm Brothers' works.

Immediately after the murder of Medgar Evers in 1963, Welty wrote Where Is the Voice Coming From?. As she later said, she wondered: "Whoever the murderer is, I know him: not his identity, but his coming about, in this time and place. That is, I ought to have learned by now, from here, what such a man, intent on such a deed, had going on in his mind. I wrote his story—my fiction—in the first person: about that character's point of view".[26] Welty's story was published in The New Yorker soon after Byron De La Beckwith's arrest.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, The Optimist's Daughter (1972) is believed by some to be Welty's best novel. It was written at a much later date than the bulk of her work. As poet Howard Moss wrote in The New York Times, the book is "a miracle of compression, the kind of book, small in scope but profound in its implications, that rewards a lifetime of work". The plot focuses on family struggles when the daughter and the second wife of a judge confront each other in the limited confines of a hospital room while the judge undergoes eye surgery.

Welty gave a series of addresses at Harvard University, revised and published as One Writer's Beginnings (Harvard, 1983). It was the first book published by Harvard University Press to be a New York Times Best Seller (at least 32 weeks on the list), and runner-up for the 1984 National Book Award for Nonfiction.

In 1992, she was awarded the Rea Award for the Short Story for her lifetime contributions to the American short story. Welty was a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, founded in 1987. She also taught creative writing at colleges and in workshops. She lived near Jackson's Belhaven College and was a common sight among the people of her home town.

Welty personally influenced several young Mississippi writers in their careers including Richard Ford, Ellen Gilchrist, and Elizabeth Spencer. She was a Charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers.

Literary criticism related to Welty's fiction

Welty was a prolific writer who created stories in multiple genres. Throughout her writing are the recurring themes of the paradox of human relationships, the importance of place (a recurring theme in most Southern writing), and the importance of mythological influences that help shape the theme.

Welty said that her interest in the relationships between individuals and their communities stemmed from her natural abilities as an observer. Perhaps the best examples can be found within the short stories in A Curtain of Green. "Why I Live at the P.O." comically illustrates the conflict between Sister and her immediate community, her family. This particular story uses lack of proper communication to highlight the underlying theme of the paradox of human connection. Another example is Miss Eckhart of The Golden Apples, who is considered an outsider in her town. Welty shows that this piano teacher's independent lifestyle allows her to follow her passions, but also highlights Miss Eckhart's longing to start a family and to be seen by the community as someone who belongs in Morgana. Her stories are often characterized by the struggle to retain identity while keeping community relationships.

Place is vitally important to Welty. She believed that place is what makes fiction seem real, because with place come customs, feelings, and associations. Place answers the questions, "What happened? Who's here? Who's coming?" Place is a prompt to memory; thus the human mind is what makes place significant. This is the job of the storyteller. “A Worn Path” is one short story that proves how place shapes how a story is perceived. Within the tale, the main character, Phoenix, must fight to overcome the barriers within the vividly described Southern landscape as she makes her trek to the nearest town. "The Wide Net" is another of Welty's short stories that uses place to define mood and plot. The river in the story is viewed differently by each character. Some see it as a food source, others see it as deadly, and some see it as a sign that "the outside world is full of endurance".

Welty is noted for using mythology to connect her specific characters and locations to universal truths and themes. Examples can be found within the short story "A Worn Path", the novel Delta Wedding, and the collection of short stories The Golden Apples. In "A Worn Path", the character Phoenix has much in common with the mythical bird. Phoenixes are said to be red and gold and are known for their endurance and dignity. Phoenix, the old Black woman, is described as being clad in a red handkerchief with undertones of gold and is noble and enduring in her difficult quest for the medicine to save her grandson. In "Death of a Traveling Salesman", the husband is given characteristics common to Prometheus. He comes home after bringing fire to his boss and is full of male libido and physical strength. Welty also refers to the figure of Medusa, who in "Petrified Man" and other stories is used to represent powerful or vulgar women.

Locations can also allude to mythology, as Welty proves in her novel Delta Wedding. As Professor Veronica Makowsky from the University of Connecticut writes, the setting of the Mississippi Delta has "suggestions of the goddess of love, Aphrodite or Venus-shells like that upon which Venus rose from the sea and female genitalia, as in the mound of Venus and Delta of Venus".[34] The title The Golden Apples refers to the difference between people who seek silver apples and those who seek golden apples. It is drawn from W. B. Yeats' poem "The Song of Wandering Aengus", which ends "The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun". It also refers to myths of a golden apple being awarded after a contest. Welty used the symbol to illuminate the two types of attitudes her characters could take about life.

Works

Short story collections

A Curtain of Green, 1941 , The Wide Net and Other Stories, 1943 , The Golden Apples, 1949 , The Bride of the Innisfallen and Other Stories, 1955 , Thirteen Stories, 1965 , The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty, 1980 , Moon Lake and Other Stories, 1980 , Morgana: Two Stories from The Golden Apples, 1988

Novels

The Robber Bridegroom (novella), 1942 , Musical based on the novella , Delta Wedding, 1946 , The Ponder Heart, 1954 , The Shoe Bird (juvenile), 1964 , Losing Battles, 1970 , The Optimist's Daughter, 1972

Essays

The Eye of the Story, 1979 , One Writer's Beginnings, 1984 , On Writing, 2002

50- ] American Literature - Louisa May Alcott

50- ] American Literature

Louisa May Alcott

1832–1888 

Although author Louisa May Alcott (1832-88) is best known for her book, Little Women, describing her family life in Concord, Massachusetts, she had several homes in Boston where she was better able to earn money to support her family. When her writing began to sell, living in Boston kept her close to her publisher, Roberts Brothers, and to other reformers and literary figures.

Louisa was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, in 1832 to Bronson Alcott and Abigail May. Louisa’s mother was a member of the prominent May family of Boston where they attended King’s Chapel. Louisa’s father, Bronson Alcott, was a teacher who would become one of America’s most influential reformers of education. He was also part of the Transcendentalist movement, which encouraged the perfection of the individual. As an educator, Bronson Alcott stressed the intellectual, physical, and emotional development of each child on his or her own terms, through dialogue between teacher and child. Louisa’s older sister, Anna, had already been born. Two more sisters, Elizabeth and Abby May would succeed.

In 1834, Bronson Alcott moved his family to Boston where he opened his progressive and controversial Temple School in the Tremont Temple on Tremont Street. To assist him with teaching, he relied on two of the brightest women in Boston—Elizabeth Peabody and Margaret Fuller, who were also Transcendentalists. Their work produced Alcott’s book Conversations with Children (1836), which shocked Bostonians when they learned he was teaching children a more “personalized” view of Jesus. When Bronson Alcott enrolled a young African American girl in his school, insisting on a school policy of color blindness, parents withdrew their children and the school closed by 1840. Alcott nearly went bankrupt.

Meanwhile, his family was living in Concord in one of several houses they would occupy and Louisa was being educated at home. Louisa once wrote, “I never went to school except to my father or such governesses as from time to time came into the family … so we had lessons each morning in the study. And very happy hours they were to us, for my father taught in the wise way which unfolds what lies in the child’s nature as a flower blooms, rather than crammed in, like a Strasburg goose, with more than it could digest.” However, the Alcott family struggled financially and always would. Bronson Alcott was a brilliant philosopher and educator, but a dismal provider.

The Alcotts lived near fellow Transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau whose counsel Bronson Alcott sought for new projects and guidance. In 1834, he moved his family to Harvard, Massachusetts, where he hoped to establish a model community called Fruitlands. As the historian Joan Goodwin described the project, “Fruitland [made] use of no animal products or labor, except, as Abigail Alcott observed, for that of women. She and her small daughters struggled to keep household and farm going while the men went about the countryside philosophizing.”

The harsh reality of winter brought an end to Fruitlands, and the Alcotts returned to Concord where they took another house near Emerson called Hillside. Louisa was allowed to use the great man’s impressive library, and she began to read works of great literature and history that sparked her imagination. In her teenaged years she began to write thrillers, which she hoped to sell and provide income for, as she put it, her “pathetic family.” She wrote her first such story in 1848, although it was not published until four years later in the Olive Branch. Meanwhile, Louisa and her older sister took teaching positions to earn money. A brief stint as a governess in Dedham led to her essay “How I Went Out to Service.” Publisher James T. Fields rejected her work and advised her, “Stick to your teaching, Miss Alcott. You can’t write.”

Louisa was now living in Boston, taking in sewing, serving as a governess, reading, and working to improve her writing. What money she made, she sent home to Concord. In Boston, Louisa also encountered some of the greatest reformers of the nineteenth century, including Theodore Parker, Wendell Phillips, John Turner Sargent, and William Lloyd Garrison. She enjoyed the Boston theater and had one of her plays accepted but not performed. Between 1855 and 1857, while summering in Walpole, New Hampshire, she organized the Walpole Amateur Dramatic Company. In 1857, back in Concord, she formed the Concord Dramatic Union.

Still writing, tutoring, and supporting her family from Boston, Louisa’s stories were finally beginning to sell. In 1863, “Pauline’s Passion and Punishment,” written under the pen name A. M. Barnard, appeared in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newsletter. For her effort, she won $100. Louisa was also writing two serious novels that would be published a number of years later: Moods and Work.

During the winter of 1862-3, Louisa worked as a nurse at the Union Hotel Hospital in Georgetown, Virginia, wanting to contribute what she could to the end of slavery which she, her father, and so many of their friends had been advocating for years. Unfortunately, she contracted typhoid pneumonia and had to return home. (It is likely that the mercurous chloride with which she was treated contributed to her early death.)

Louisa May Alcott’s brief service as a Civil War nurse inspired her to write “Hospital Sketches” which appeared in the Boston Commonwealth as a series and as a book in 1863. Hospital Sketches was enormously popular, and her work was now in demand. After the war, Louisa traveled to Europe as the companion of Anna Weld for a short visit to see the sites she had read about as a girl. When she returned to Boston, she accepted the editorship of Merry’s Museum, a children’s magazine. She also became its major contributor. In 1867, the magazine’s editor, Thomas Niles, asked her to write a book especially for girls. The result was part one of Little Women. The book was a best seller, and readers clamored for more. Part two appeared the following spring.

As Joan Goodwin explains, “from this point on Louisa May Alcott was a victim of her own success. Though she yearned to do more serious fiction, children’s books flowed from her pen for the rest of her life because their sales supported her family. Louisa herself wrote, “Twenty years ago, I resolved to make the family independent if I could. At forty that is done. Debts all paid, even the outlawed ones, and we have enough to be comfortable. It has cost me my health, perhaps; but as I still live, there is more for me to do, I suppose.”

Goodwin goes on to write that now “Alcott gave her energy to practical reforms, women’s rights and temperance. She attended the Women’s Congress of 1875 in Syracuse, New York, where she was introduced by Mary Livermore. She contributed to Lucy Stone’s Woman’s Journal while organizing Concord women to vote in the school election. ‘Was the first woman to register my name as a voter,’ she wrote. ‘Drove about and drummed up women to my suffrage meeting. So hard to move people out of the old ruts.’ And again, ‘Helped start a temperance society much needed in C[oncord]. I was secretary, and wrote records, letters, and sent pledges, etc.’”

Louisa continued to publish children’s books, and in 1880, after the death of her sister, May, shortly after childbirth, she welcomed May’s infant daughter who was named for Louisa but called “Lulu.” She published the stories she told the little girl as Lulu’s Library. In 1882, after her father suffered a stroke, Louisa settled the remaining members of her family at 10 Louisburg Square. Her own health was failing, and she moved “from place to place in search of health and peace to write, settling at last in a Roxbury nursing home,” according to Joan Goodwin.

Bronson Alcott died on March 4, 1888; Louisa died two days later at the age of fifty-six. By then, knowing her death was not far off despite her young age, she had legally adopted her widowed sister Anna’s son John Pratt to whom she willed her copyrights. Any income would be shared by Anna, Lulu, John, and Anna’s other son Fred.

Louisa May Alcott was buried at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord on “Author’s Ridge” near Thoreau and Emerson. A Civil War veteran’s marker graces her gravestone. During her lifetime, she produced almost three hundred literary works.

Literary success

As an adult, Alcott was an abolitionist and a feminist. In 1860, Alcott began writing for the Atlantic Monthly. When the Civil War broke out, she served as a nurse in the Union Hospital in Georgetown, DC, for six weeks in 1862–1863. She intended to serve three months as a nurse, but she contracted typhoid fever and became deathly ill halfway through her service, although she eventually recovered. Her letters home—revised and published in the Boston anti-slavery paper Commonwealth and collected as Hospital Sketches (1863, republished with additions in 1869)—brought her first critical recognition for her observations and humor. This was her first book and was inspired by her army experience. She wrote about the mismanagement of hospitals, the indifference and callousness of some of the surgeons she encountered, and her own passion for seeing the war firsthand. Her main character, Tribulation Periwinkle, shows a passage from innocence to maturity and is a "serious and eloquent witness". Her novel Moods (1864), based on her own experience, was also promising.

After her service as a nurse, Alcott's father wrote her a heartfelt poem titled "To Louisa May Alcott. From her father".The poem describes how proud her father is of her for working as a nurse and helping injured soldiers as well as bringing cheer and love into their home. He ends the poem by telling her she's in his heart for being a selfless faithful daughter. This poem was featured in the books Louisa May Alcott: Her Life, Letters, and Journals (1889) and Louisa May Alcott, the Children's Friend, which talks about her childhood and close relationship with her father.

Between 1863 and 1872, Alcott anonymously wrote at least thirty-three "gothic thrillers" for popular magazines and papers such as The Flag of Our Union; they began to be rediscovered only in 1975. In the mid-1860s she wrote passionate, fiery novels and sensational stories akin to those of English authors Wilkie Collins and Mary Elizabeth Braddon under the nom de plume A. M. Barnard. Among these are A Long Fatal Love Chase and Pauline's Passion and Punishment. Her protagonists for these books, like those of Collins and Braddon (who also included feminist characters in their writings), are strong, smart, and determined. She also produced stories for children and she did not go back to writing for adults after her childrens’ stories became popular. Other books she wrote are the novelette A Modern Mephistopheles (1877), which was published anonymously and then believed to be the work of Julian Hawthorne, and the semi-autobiographical novel Work (1873).

Catherine Ross Nickerson credits Alcott with creating one of the earliest works of detective fiction in American literature, preceded only by Edgar Allan Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and his other Auguste Dupin stories, with the 1865 thriller "V.V., or Plots and Counterplots." Alcott published the story anonymously and it concerns a Scottish aristocrat who tries to prove that a mysterious woman has killed his fiancée and cousin. The detective on the case, Antoine Dupres, is a parody of Poe's Dupin who is less concerned with solving the crime than in setting up a way to reveal the solution with a dramatic flourish.

Alcott became even more successful with the first part of Little Women: or Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy (1868), a semi-autobiographical account of her childhood with her sisters in Concord, Massachusetts, which the Roberts Brothers published. When Alcott returned to Boston following her travels in Europe, she became an editor at a magazine, Merry's Museum. There she met Thomas Niles, who encouraged the writing of Part I of the novel by asking her to create a book especially for girls.[27] Part II, or Part Second, also known as Good Wives (1869), followed the March sisters into adulthood and marriage. Little Men (1871) detailed Jo's life at the Plumfield School she founded with her husband Professor Bhaer at the conclusion of Part Two of Little Women. Lastly, Jo's Boys (1886) completed the "March Family Saga".

In Little Women, Alcott based her heroine "Jo" on herself. However, Jo marries at the end of the story, whereas Alcott remained single throughout her life. She explained her "spinsterhood" in an interview with Louise Chandler Moulton, "I am more than half-persuaded that I am a man's soul put by some freak of nature into a woman's body.... because I have fallen in love with so many pretty girls and never once the least bit with any man.” However, Alcott's romance while in Europe with the young Polish man Ladislas "Laddie" Wisniewski was detailed in her journals but then deleted by Alcott herself before her death. Alcott identified Laddie as the model for Laurie in Little Women. Likewise, each of her characters seems to have parallels with people from Alcott's life—from Beth's death mirroring Lizzie's to Jo's rivalry with the youngest, Amy, as Alcott felt a rivalry for (Abigail) May, at times. Though Alcott never married, she did take in May's daughter, Louisa, after May's untimely death in 1879, caring for little "Lulu" for the next eight years.

In addition to drawing on her own life during the development of Little Women, Alcott also took influence from several of her earlier works including "The Sisters' Trial," "A Modern Cinderella," and "In the Garret." The characters within these short stories and poems, in addition to Alcott's own family and personal relationships, inspired the general concepts and bases for many of the characters within Little Women and the author's subsequent novels.

Little Women was well-received, with critics and audiences finding it to be a fresh, natural representation of daily life suitable for many age groups. An Eclectic Magazine reviewer called it "the very best of books to reach the hearts of the young of any age from six to sixty". With the success of Little Women, Alcott shied away from the attention and would sometimes act as a servant when fans would come to her house.

Along with Elizabeth Stoddard, Rebecca Harding Davis, Anne Moncure Crane, and others, Alcott was part of a group of female authors during the Gilded Age who addressed women's issues in a modern and candid manner. Their works were, as one newspaper columnist of the period commented, "among the decided 'signs of the times'".

Louisa May Alcott was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1996.

Selected works

The Little Women series

Little Women, or Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy (1868) . Part Second of Little Women, or "Good Wives", published in 1869; and afterward published together with Little Women. , Little Men: Life at Plumfield with Jo's Boys (1871) , Jo's Boys and How They Turned Out: A Sequel to "Little Men" (1886)

Novels

The Inheritance (1849, unpublished until 1997) , Moods (1865, revised 1882)

The Mysterious Key and What It Opened (1867) , An Old Fashioned Girl (1870) , Will's Wonder Book (1870) , Work: A Story of Experience (1873)

Beginning Again, Being a Continuation of Work (1875) , Eight Cousins or The Aunt-Hill (1875) , Rose in Bloom: A Sequel to Eight Cousins (1876) , Under the Lilacs (1878) , Jack and Jill: A Village Story (1880) , Proverb Stories (1882) (this is a short story collection) , As A. M. Barnard , Behind a Mask, or a Woman's Power (1866) , The Abbot's Ghost, or Maurice Treherne's Temptation (1867) , A Long Fatal Love Chase (1866; first published 1995)

Published anonymously

A Modern Mephistopheles (1877)

Short story collections for children

Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag (1872–1882). (66 short stories in six volumes)

1. "Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag"

2. "Shawl-Straps"

3. "Cupid and Chow-Chow"

4. "My Girls, Etc."

5. "Jimmy's Cruise in the Pinafore, Etc."

6. "An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc."