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1848 Alcott creates the Flower Fables stories for Ehter Ellen Later in the year Alcott writes her first adult story, “The Rival Painters: A Tale of Rome” The Alcotts move back to Boston, where Abba finds employment as one of the nation’s first social workers
1849 Alcott creates a fains of Dickens’s novel David Copperfield Alcott writes her first novel, The Inheritance, which is not published until 1996
1850 Emerson’s Representative Men and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter are published
1851 Peterson’s Magazine publishes Alcott’s poeht” under the pseudonym Flora Fairfield; it is her first published work To help support their fa Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables and Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick are published
1852 The Boston periodical the Olive Branch publishes “The Rival Painters: A Tale of Ro the Alcotts some financial security Alcott and her sister Anna open a school in the parlor of their home in Boston Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin is published
1853 Bronson goes on a lecture tour in the Midwest
1854 Alcott’s Flower Fables, dedicated to Ellen Emerson, is pub lished; her short story “The Rival Pri Gazette Thoreau’s Walden; or, Life in the Woods is published
1855 The fah Alcott re; she attends lectures by the liberal clergyman and reformer Theodore Parker She spends the suanizes the Wal pole Amateur Dramatic Company The first edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass appears
1857 The Alcott fa Emerson, they purchase Orchard House (where Alcott will later write Little Women)
1858 Elizabeth Alcott dies of scarlet fever Anna announces her engagereatly unsettled by the loss of her two sisters
1859 Bronson beco a salary of 100 per year Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species is published
1860 Alcott writes her novel Moods The Boston Theater Company produces her play Nat Bachelor’s Pleasure Trip Abraham Lin coln becoins of Dickens’s Great Expectations
1861 Alcott starts work on an autobiographical novel, tentatively titled Success (it will be published in 1873 as Work: A Story of Experience) The Ains
1862 Henry David Thoreau dies, and Alcott writes the poem “Thoreau’s Flute” in his honor At the end of the year she trav els to Washington, DC, to serve as a Union Army nurse
1863 Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1 Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper anonymously serializes Alcott’s story, “Pauline’s Passion and Punish as a nurse for only six weeks, Alcott becomes seriously ill with typhoid; she returns to Con cord where she receives treat es her health While convalescing, Alcott reworks her wartime letters to her family into a collection titled Hospital Sketches; it is serialized in the Boston Commonwealth, an abolitionist paper, and
pub lished in book forreat praise Alcott receives al this year Over the next sev eral years she rite othic stories, either anony mously or under a pseudonym
1864 The Rose Family: A Fairy Tale and On Picket Duty, and Other Tales are published in January In Deceer publishes his first boys’ book, Frank’s Can
1865 Bronson leaves his superintendent post Anna and John give birth to a child, ill become Alcott’s heir Alcott travels to Europe as an assistant to an invalid, Anna Weld; there she meets Ladislas Wisniewski, the inspiration for Laurie in Little Wo the end of the Civil War Lincoln is assassinated on
April 14 Lewis Carroll publishes Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
1867 Alcott accepts editorship of the children’s azine Merry’s Museum for 500 per year
1868 She moves fro her editorship; she will continue to move back and forth between the two cities until her death Thomas Niles of the publisher Roberts Brothers coirls; she completes the first part of Little Woreat acclaim Bolstered by its suc cess, she writes an equally popular second part at the rate of a chapter per day
1869 The second part of Little Women is published under the title Good Wives Alcott travels to Canada and Maine to recover her health, compromised by the rapid pace hich she wrote Little Women She receives 8,500 in royalties and pays all her family’s debts