SOURCE: An Introduction to Louisa May Alcott's Fairy Tales and Fantasy Stories, edited by Daniel Shealy, The University of Tennessee Press, 1992, pp. xv-xxxvii.

In the following excerpt, Shealy views Alcott as "a pioneer in American fantasy literature. "

On Christmas Day 1854, Louisa May Alcott presented her mother, Abigail, with a copy of her first book, Flower Fables, a collection of six fairy tales. Along with the volume, she included a brief letter telling her mother that into "your Christmas stocking I have put my 'first-born,' knowing that you will accept it with all its faults (for grandmothers are always kind), and look upon it merely as an earnest of what I may yet do, for, with so much to cheer me on, I hope to pass in time from fairies and fables to men and realities." Alcott would indeed go on to write of "men and realities." In...