Flower fables was the first work published by Louisa May Alcott

Louisa May Alcott

Louisa May Alcott was an American novelist. She is best known for the novel Little Women and its sequels Little Men and Jo's Boys. Little Women was set in the Alcott family home, Orchard House in Concord, Massachusetts, and published in 1868...

 and appeared on December 9, 1854. The book was a compilation of fanciful stories first written six years earlier for Ellen Emerson (daughter of Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century...

). The book was published in an edition of 1600 and though Alcott thought it "sold very well", she received only about $35 from the Boston publisher, George Briggs.