Katharine Anthony (1877-1965), an American biographer, wrote a four-part series on writer Louisa May Alcott's life ("The Most Beloved American Writer") for Woman's Home Companion (December 1937 to March 1938).
See the other story illustrations by Norman Rockwell for "The Most Beloved American Writer" in the slideshow below.
Click here to read Rockwell Center for American Visual Studies Curator, Dr. Joyce K. Schiller's blog about Louisa May Alcott: Women Who Read.
Norman Rockwell (1894-1978), The Most Beloved American Writer 'Mr. Bhaer saw the drops on her cheeks; stooping down, he asked—"Heart's dearest, why do you cry?", 1938. Oil on canvas, 32" x 18". Story illustration for Woman's Home Companion, March 1938. Norman Rockwell Museum Collections, NRM.1994.03. ©Norman Rockwell Family Agency. All rights reserved.
Artwork from Norman Rockwell Museum Collections and Digital Collections. ©Norman Rockwell FamilY Agency. All rights reserved.
Story and book illustration remained an important aspect of Rockwell's work through the 1930s. When Woman's Home Companion commissioned Rockwell to illustrate a biography of Louisa May Alcott, the author of Little Women, Rockwell went to the Alcott home in Concord, Massachusetts, to "get the feel of the place." "Sitting in her bedroom," he wrote, "where everything was just as it had been when she was alive, I had a real sense of the period; the old lamps and the lace curtains and hooked rugs and the Boston rocker took me back." In this scene from Little Women, Jo, the author's alter ego, weeps when she hears that her friend Mr. Bhaer plans to leave.
Also, enjoy this blog entry entitled Women Who Read by NRM curator Joyce Schiller