2026 Award Announcements
The Louisa May Alcott Society is delighted to announce the recipients of its 2026 awards for scholarly excellence in Alcott studies. The following awards were announced at our business meeting at the American Literature Association Conference in Chicago last week. Beverly Lyon Clark Article Prize The Beverly Lyon Clark Article Prize Committee is pleased to announce that the 2026 prize goes to Ariel Little for “‘Health Should Come First’: Alcott’s Model of Hygienic Female Development in Eight Cousins.” Little’s essay applies the nineteenth-century cultural concept of “hygiene” to offer an insightful reading of Rose’s character development, connecting her embrace of hygienic principles to her growing agency as a woman. Drawing on recent scholarship alongside original texts by nineteenth-century women doctors and health care professionals, Little persuasively demonstrates that for Alcott, good health was not simply an end in itself but a means by which women could achieve greater indepen...