Background

Louisa May Alcott was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, United States on November 29, 1832. She was the daughter of Bronson Alcott, the Concord transcendentalist philosopher and educator. She and her three sisters spent their childhood in poverty. However, they had as friends, and even as tutors, some of the most brilliant and famous men and women of the day, such as Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and Theodore Parker. This combination of intellectual plenty and physical want endowed Alcott with an ironical sense of humor.

Education

Alcott's early education included lessons from the naturalist Henry David Thoreau, but she received the majority of her schooling from her father, who was strict and believed in "the sweetness of self-denial". She also received some instruction from writers and educators such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Margaret Fuller, all of whom were family friends.

Career

In Louisa early years Alcott worked at a variety of menial tasks to help financially. At 16 she wrote a book, Flower Fables (not published for 6 years), and she wrote a number of plays that were never produced. By 1860 she was publishing stories and poems in the Atlantic Monthly. Alcott wrote passionate, fiery novels and sensational stories under the nom de plume A. M. Barnard.

During the Civil War she served as a nurse in the Union Hospital at Georgetown for six weeks in 1862–1863 until her health failed, and her Hospital Sketches (1863) brought the first taste of widespread public attention. The attention seemed to die out, however, when she published her first novel, Moods, in 1865, and she was glad to accept in 1867 the editorship of the juvenile magazine Merry's Museum. The next year she produced the first volume of Little Women, a cheerful and attractive account of her childhood, portraying herself as Jo and her sisters as Amy, Beth, and Meg. The book was an instant success, so in 1869 she produced the second volume. The resulting sales accomplished the goal she had worked toward for 25 years: the Alcott family was financially secure. She wrote An Old-fashioned Girl (1870), Little Men (1871), and Work (1873), an account of her early efforts to help support the family.

Louisa was active in the causes of temperance and woman's suffrage, and she also toured Europe. In 1876 she produced Silver Pitchers, a collection containing "Transcendental Wild Oats". In later life she produced a book almost every year and never wanted for an audience. Alcott died on March 6, 1888, in Boston.

Achievements

• Louisa May Alcott is best known as the author of the novel Little Women (1868) and its sequels Little Men and Jo's Boys. She was also part of a famous group of female authors during the Gilded Age, who addressed women's issues in a modern and candid manner.

Works

More photos

• book

  • A Merry Christmas: And Other Christmas Stories (Penguin Christmas Classics)

    (One of six beloved Christmas classics in collectible hard...)

  • Little Women (Puffin in Bloom)

    (Louisa May Alcott's classic tale of four sisters in a del...)

  • Jo's Boys (Puffin Classics)

    (Ten years after the school at Plumfield was founded, Jo's...)

  • An Old-Fashioned Girl

    (This collection chronicles the fiction and non fiction cl...)

  • Eight Cousins (Puffin Classics)

    (Rose Campbell, tired and ill, has come to live at "The Au...)

  • Little Men (Puffin Classics)

    (Little Men)

Politics

Alcott was an abolitionist and a feminist. She challenged the social norms regarding gender by encouraging her young female readers to run as well.

Views

Quotations: Louisa May Alcott explained in an interview with Louise Chandler Moulton, "I am more than half-persuaded that I am a man's soul put by some freak of nature into a woman's body ... because I have fallen in love with so many pretty girls and never once the least bit with any man."

Connections

Alcott remained single throughout her life.

Father:

Bronson Alcott

As an educator, Alcott pioneered new ways of interacting with young students, focusing on a conversational style, and avoided traditional punishment.

Mother:

Abby May

Sister:

Anna Bronson Alcott

Sister:

Elizabeth Sewall Alcott

Sister:

Abigail May Alcott

teacher:

Henry David Thoreau

teacher:

Ralph Waldo Emerson

teacher:

Nathaniel Hawthorne

References

• Marmee & Louisa: The Untold Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Mother
• Louisa May Alcott (Childhood of Famous Americans)