Louisa Alcott: Little Women

Large cask for wine; the ruined Heidelberg Castle houses what is said to be the world’s largest.

River of southwestern Germany rolling through the Black Forest and into the Rhine.

Stereotypically characteristic of the English Romantic poet Lord Byron (1788-1824) or his heroes—that is, lonely, romantic, and brooding.

Said by Robin Redbreast in the Mother Goose rhyme “Little Jenny Wren,” when Jenny rejects him after he nurses her back to health; with this insult, he calls her an impudent prankster.

Match (French).

Fop.

Line from the song “Bonnie Dundee,” from Sir Walter Scott’s play The Doom of Devergoil (1830).

Attic.

Reference to nineteenth-century English poet Mary Howitt’s ballad “Mabel on Midsummer Day.”

Do you know the country (German); from a sentimental song sung by the child Mignon in Goethe’s novel Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship (1796); sung again in Little Women on page 437.

Jabber.

Come in (German).

Also called the Great Bear; a conspicuous northern constellation.

Literally, terrifying child (French); shocking young person known for being outrageous.

Biscuits containing seeds, such as sesame or caraway.

Mischievous fairies or gnomes in German folklore.

She means “Herculean”—that is, with the strength of Hercules. Herculaneum is an ancient southern Italian city destroyed, along with Pompeii, by Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D.

Clay pipe.

Fairy tales (German).

Also called “The Steadfast Tin Soldier”; a Hans Christian Andersen tale about the adventures of a one-legged tin soldier who loves a toy paper dancer.

Underclothes made of flannel.

Greek poet of the ninth or eighth century B.C., presumed author of the epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey. ‡Inkstand.

Handkerchiefs (French).

Objet d‘art; curious ornament.

The fairy queen in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, bewitched to fall in love with the comic weaver Nick Bottom, who has a donkey’s head.

Literally, castle in Spain (French)—that is, a castle in the air.

Family name in English novelist Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility (1811); like Little Women, Austen’s novel is about a family of sisters living in straitened financial circumstances.

The Tailor Retailored; Latin title of a philosophical satire (1833-1834) by English author Thomas Carlyle, which purports to be a review of a German work on the “philosophy of clothing.”

Manuscript.

Fanciful adventures.

Pen name (French).

Quotation from English poet Robert Browning’s “Evelyn Hope” (1855); Evelyn’s soul is “pure and true.”

Female poetic genius; Corinne is the title character of an 1807 novel by French writer Madame de Stael.

English author and lexicographer Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) was said to have drunk tremendous quantities of tea.

Poet and musician of Greek myth.

Disillusioned (French).

Theoretical philosophy.

Tragedy (1800) by German writer Friedrich von Schiller; part of a trilogy based on the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), a European war fought mainly in Germany, against the power of the Holy Roman Empire and in particular the royal Hapsburg family.

Making small slits in gathered fabric.

Mary Martha Sherwood (1775-1851), English children’s writer.

English religious writer and dramatist (1745-1833).

Wendell Phillips (1811-1884): Boston reformer and abolitionist known for his simple, direct speaking style; Demosthenes (384-322 B.C.): Athenian statesman and the most renowned orator of ancient Greece.

Stately processional section from German-born English Baroque composer George Frideric Handel’s oratorio Judas Maccabeus (1747).

Literally, head to head (French); a private conversation between two people.

Steps for climbing a wall or fence.

German composer Ludwig van Beethoven’s famous 1798 piano sonata.

Retired, obsolete.

Person who meddles and ruins others’ plans.

Sad, moving.

Drab gray.

Port city on the Mediterranean in southeastern France.

Public Garden (French).

The bridge traverses the Paillon (Paglione) stream.

What are you thinking? (French).

Tarlatan and tulle are sheer, stiff fabrics.

Delicate, transparent silk tulle.

Having a stately beauty like Juno, queen of the Roman gods.

In this case, a large, elegant drawing room or hall.

Diana is the Roman moon goddess; her twin brother, Phoebus Apollo, is the god of sunlight and truth.

Dining room (French).

In Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, wears mourning clothes for her dead husband, the king.

The same as above—in this case, girls.

Young ladies (French).

Cotillion: elaborate dance at formal balls, led by one main couple; tarantella: fast southern Italian folk dance.

Waiters (French).

The French words mean “woman painted by herself”; the reference to Honore‘ de Balzac (1799-1850)—a prolific and influential French writer, widely regarded as one of the greatest novelists—is unclear.

Long live freedom (French).

That is, after she had gone quietly to sleep; byelow, meaning “hush,” is a term often heard in lullabies.

Germanic element of the English language; the Saxons invaded England in the fifth century.

Monaco is a small principality on the Mediterranean coast, near the border of France and Italy; Valrosa is a fictional mansion near Nice, taken from Alcott’s own posthumously published sensational novel A Long Fatal Love Chase, written in 1866.