'Little Women' author fascinates Albany Sister

By KATE BLAIN
Assistant Editor

Sister Rose Hobbs, RSM, gets a little embarrassed about her fascination with author Louisa May Alcott.

"She's so real to me. Sometimes, I think I'm going to meet her on the street!" she exclaims, then blushes. "Don't write that. People will think I'm crazy!"

However, Sister Rose has good reason for her interest: She recently wrote four entries for "The Louisa May Alcott Encyclopedia," edited by Gregory Eiselein and Anne K. Phillips.

'Little Women'

The Mercy Sister is currently librarian at Maria College in Albany. She taught at Mercy High School in Albany until it closed in 1990, then got her degree in library science.

While taking a course in 1998 on the history of children's literature, Sister Rose became interested in famed 19th-century writer Louisa May Alcott. Having only read Alcott's best-known book, "Little Women," Sister Rose decided to do her final project for the course on that book.

Sister Rose had always been curious about why the character of the father in "Little Women" is missing. Through her research, she discovered that "Little Women" was autobiographical: Alcott's father was often away from his family, giving lectures on transcendentalism. Alcott herself supported the family, initially by writing lurid "potboiler" novels anonymously.

Contributions

As Sister Rose worked on her project, her teacher happened to notice that the editors of "The Louisa May Alcott Encyclopedia" were looking for contributors. Sister Rose was encouraged to apply -- and when she did, she was accepted.

It was an assignment she took on with pride: "These people have their PhDs and their writing, and I'm an amateur!" she told The Evangelist.

The new author said the process of contributing to the book was interesting. She received a list of topics and could request what entries she wanted to write on, then was given a word limit for each entry. When she wrote her entries and sent them in, they were edited and returned to her for corrections.

By SRH

The end result is a thick, one-volume work that includes four entries with the byline "SRH" (for "Sister Rose Hobbs"):

* one on Horace Fuller, who published the children's magazine "Merry's Museum" that Louisa May Alcott edited;

* another on "Merry's Museum" itself;

* a third on "Morning Glories, and Other Stories," a book of Alcott's fantasy stories and poems; and

* a fourth on Rev. Isaac Hecker, founder of the Paulist Fathers, a religious order.

Hecker's connection

The latter entry fascinated Sister Rose. Hecker's connection to Alcott came about because while on a search for God, he briefly lived at Fruitlands, a community founded by Alcott's father. Later, he converted to Catholicism (being baptized by Bishop John McCloskey, who would become the first bishop of Albany) and founded the Paulists.

However, what interested Sister Rose was that Father Hecker also had ties to her own religious order: He was once chaplain for Mercy Sisters in New York City.

Connections like those spurred Sister Rose's research on Alcott. She has since discovered other ties between the author and the Mercy Sisters, including the fact that both Alcott and the Mercies were nurses during the Civil War.

Discoveries

Today, Sister Rose raves about the author whom she once knew only as the writer of "Little Women."

"She was a feminist, an abolitionist; her family was into `causes,'" Sister Rose noted. "Her mother was actually the first social worker in Boston, ministering to the Irish immigrants. [Louisa May] was a leader in her field, self-educated, an actress."

Sister Rose laughed about her friends' reaction to her research, which has expanded to include an interest in New England, Alcott's home.

"People kid me about it: `Oh, here we go again!'" she joked. "I drag my friends into old cemeteries as often as I can."

More to write

The new author has also expanded her own writing career: After the encyclopedia was published, Ironweed Press asked her to write an introduction and notes for a book reprinting Alcott's editorials from "Merry's Museum."

But even with all her newfound knowledge, Sister Rose doesn't consider herself an Alcott expert. "I'm still learning," she stated. "I keep picking up bits and pieces of information. It's purely interest; reading is an important part of my life, and I like historical reading."