IELTS Listening · Cam 10

Test 3 Part 4

Good afternoon. Today I'd like to continue our discussion of the lives of prominent American writers by talking about Louisa May Alcott,

Level: B2 · 55 sentences

Transcript

  1. Good afternoon.
  2. Today I'd like to continue our discussion of the lives of prominent American writers by talking about Louisa May Alcott,
  3. one of the best-known 19th century writers.
  4. Alcott is known for her moralistic girls' novels.
  5. but she was a much more serious individual than those novels might lead one to believe.
  6. She was born in 1832, the daughter of Bronson Alcott,
  7. who was one of the founders of the Transcendentalist movement.
  8. Bronson Alcott was a philosopher, but not a provider,
  9. and the family lived close to poverty.
  10. From an early age,
  11. Louisa was determined to find a way to improve her family's economic situation.
  12. As a teenager,
  13. she worked to support her family by taking on a variety of low-paying jobs,
  14. including teacher, seamstress, and household servant.
  15. Alcott also started writing when she was young.
  16. She wrote her first novel when she was just 17 years old,
  17. although it wasn't published until many years after her death.
  18. It was called The Inheritance.
  19. In 1861, the Civil War broke out.
  20. Alcott worked as a volunteer, sewing uniforms and bandages for soldiers.
  21. The following year, she enlisted as an Army nurse.
  22. She spent the war years in Washington,
  23. nursing wounded soldiers at a military hospital.
  24. While working at the hospital,
  25. she wrote many letters to her family at home in Massachusetts.
  26. After the war, she turned the letters into a book,
  27. which was published under the title Hospital Sketches.
  28. She also wrote numerous romantic stories, which she sold to magazines.
  29. Around this same time,
  30. she was offered the opportunity to travel to Europe as the companion to an invalid.
  31. When she returned home from Europe in 1866,
  32. she found her family still in financial difficulty and in need of money,
  33. so she went back to writing.
  34. Her big break came in 1868,
  35. with the publication of her first novel for girls, Little Women.
  36. The novel achieved instant success, and the public wanted more.
  37. From then on, Alcott supported herself
  38. and her family by writing novels for girls.
  39. It wasn't the writing she had dreamed of doing,
  40. but it earned her a good income.
  41. Alcott took care of her family for the rest of her life.
  42. In 1878, her youngest sister, May, got married.
  43. A year later, May died after giving birth to a daughter.
  44. Louisa Alcott raised her sister's orphaned child.
  45. In 1882, Bronson Alcott suffered a stroke.
  46. Soon after that, Louisa Alcott set up a house for him,
  47. her niece, her sister Anna, and Anna's two sons in Boston.
  48. Her mother was no longer living by this time.
  49. Alcott was still writing novels for girls,
  50. including two sequels to Little Women, Little Men and Joe's Boys.
  51. The latter was published in 1886.
  52. Louisa Alcott had suffered poor health ever
  53. since she contracted typhoid fever while working as a war nurse.
  54. She died in March of 1888 at the age of 55.
  55. She was buried in Concord, Massachusetts.