Hartford Daily Courant 49.295 (9 December 1885): [1]:8

Lulu's Library is “Aunt Jo's” (Louisa M. Alcott) Christmas gift to the boys and girls. It is a series of twelve short stories told in the author's delightful way, and the boys and girls will thank their old friend, Aunt Jo, very much, for so timely and pleasant a gift.

Scotsman. Quoted in advertisement in The Academy 28.n.s.711 (19 December 1885): ⅷ

“Lulu's Library,” by Louisa M. Alcott is a pretty little book for girls, made up of short stories, which appear to be exceedingly well told.

The Christian Register 64.52 (24 December 1885): 826:2

In a brief preface, Miss Alcott says, “Having nothing else to offer this year, I have collected these stories (which have been favorite “bed-time” stories for her little niece) in one volume as a Christmas gift to my boys and girls.” The names of the stories are “A Christmas Dream,” “The Candy Country,” “Naughty Jocko,” “The Skipping Shoes,” “Cockytoo [Cockyloo],” “Rosy's Journey,” “The Fairy Box,” “A Hole in the Wall,” “The Piggy Girl,” “The Three Frogs,” and “Baa, Baa!” Scores of little children will share the pleasure of the “little niece” in reading and hearing these stories. If too late for Christmas, their mammas can remember that New Year's is a good time to make presents.

At the start of her career Louisa May Alcott followed the reviews of her books with interest. In January 1865 she writes in her journal, “Notices of ‘Moods’ came from all directions, & though people didn't understand my ideas owing to my shortening the book so much, the notices were mostly favorable & gave quite as much praise as was good for me.” Yet she seems not to have dwelled long on the reviews even then: to James Redpath, who published Hospital Sketches in 1863, she writes, “I send the few notices I have kept, but as I do not see many papers I have not much to offer in the way of vanities, though I often hear others speak of notices they have seen.” She continued to track reviews with some interest in the early 1870s – whether she herself clipped the ones that have survived and are now in the Houghton Library at Harvard University, or they were clipped by family members and friends, or they were sent by her publisher with an eye to advertising copy.

As for the reviews themselves – although Alcott's Flower Fables garnered several notices when it appeared in 1855 (more later, in 1887, when it was retitled and augmented), her first book to receive serious attention from reviewers was Hospital Sketches (1863), a slightly fictionalized account of her experience as a Civil War nurse in Washington, D.C. The reviewer for the New-York Tribune may have been uncomfortable with the foregrounding of “the comic aspects of hospital life,” but most reviewers agreed with the Boston Evening Transcript in finding the book “[f]luent and sparkling in style, with touches of quiet humor and lively wit, relieving what would otherwise be a topic too sombre and sad.’

The American Critical Archives series documents a part of a writer's career that is usually difficult to examine, that is, the immediate response to each work as it was made public on the part of reviewers in contemporary newspapers and journals. Although it would not be feasible to reprint every review, each volume in the series reprints a selection of reviews designed to provide the reader with a proportionate sense of the critical response, whether it was positive, negative, or mixed. Checklists of other known reviews are also included to complete the documentary record and allow access for those who wish to do further reading and research.

The editor of each volume has provided an introduction that surveys the career of the author in the context of the contemporary critical response. Ideally, the introduction will inform the reader in brief of what is to be learned by a reading of the full volume. The reader then can go as deeply as necessary in terms of the kind of information desired – be it about a single work, a period in the author's life, or the author's entire career. The intent is to provide quick and easy access to the material for students, scholars, librarians, and general readers.

When completed, the American Critical Archives should constitute a comprehensive history of critical practice in America, and in some cases England, as the writers' careers were in progress.