Louisa May Alcott

Louisa May Alcott (November 29, 1832 – March 6, 1888) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet best known for writing the novel Little Women (1868) and its sequels Little Men (1871) and Jo's Boys (1886).

Raised in New England by her transcendentalist parents, Abigail May and Amos Bronson Alcott, she grew up among many well-known intellectuals of the day, including Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Alcott's family suffered from financial difficulties, and while she worked to help support the family from an early age, she also sought an outlet in writing.

Louisa May Alcott was born on November 29, 1832, in Germantown, which is now part of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on her father's 33rd birthday.

Her parents were transcendentalist and educator Amos Bronson Alcott and social worker Abigail "Abby" May.

She was the second of four daughters: Anna Bronson Alcott was the eldest, while Elizabeth Sewall Alcott and Abigail May Alcott were the two youngest.

As a child, she was a tomboy who preferred boys' games.

The family moved to Boston in 1834, where Alcott's father established the experimental Temple School and joined the Transcendental Club with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.

Bronson Alcott's opinions on education, tough views on child-rearing, and moments of mental instability shaped young Alcott's mind with a desire to achieve perfection, a goal of the transcendentalists.

His attitudes towards Alcott's wild and independent behavior and his inability to provide for his family created conflict between Bronson Alcott, his wife, and their daughters.

Abigail reportedly resented her husband's inability to recognize her sacrifices and related his thoughtlessness to the larger issue of the inequality of sexes.

She passed this recognition and desire to redress wrongs done to women on to Louisa.

In 1840, after several setbacks with Temple School, the Alcott family moved to a cottage on 2 acre of land, situated along the Sudbury River in Concord, Massachusetts.

The three years they spent at the rented Hosmer Cottage were described as idyllic.

By 1843, the Alcott family moved, along with six other members of the Consociate Family, to the Utopian Fruitlands community for a brief interval in 1843–1844.

After the collapse of the Utopian Fruitlands, they rented rooms and finally, with Abigail May Alcott's inheritance and financial help from Emerson, they purchased a homestead in Concord.

They moved into the home they named "Hillside" on April 1, 1845, but had moved on by 1852, when it was sold to Nathaniel Hawthorne, who renamed it The Wayside.

In 1847, Alcott and her family served as station masters on the Underground Railroad, when they housed a fugitive slave for one week and had discussions with Frederick Douglass.

Alcott read and admired the Declaration of Sentiments published by the Seneca Falls Convention on women's rights, advocating for women's suffrage and became the first woman to register to vote in Concord, Massachusetts in a school board election.

Her first book was Flower Fables (1849), a selection of tales originally written for Ellen Emerson, daughter of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Alcott is quoted as saying "I wish I was rich, I was good, and we were all a happy family this day" and was driven in life not to be poor.

Moving 21 times in 30 years, the Alcotts returned to Concord once again in 1857 and moved into Orchard House, a two-story clapboard farmhouse, in the spring of 1858.

Alcott's early education included lessons from the naturalist Henry David Thoreau who inspired her to write the poem Thoreau's Flute based on her time at Walden Pond.

She was primarily educated by 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, Margaret Fuller, and Julia Ward Howe, all of whom were family friends.

She later described these early years in a newspaper sketch entitled "Transcendental Wild Oats."

She began to receive critical success for her writing in the 1860s.

Early in her career, she sometimes used pen names such as A. M. Barnard, under which she wrote lurid short stories and sensation novels for adults that focused on passion and revenge.

Published in 1868, Little Women is set in the Alcott family home, Orchard House, in Concord, Massachusetts, and is loosely based on Alcott's childhood experiences with her three sisters, Abigail May Alcott Nieriker, Elizabeth Sewall Alcott, and Anna Alcott Pratt.

The novel was well-received at the time and is still popular today among both children and adults.

It has been adapted for stage plays, films, and television many times.

Alcott was an abolitionist and a feminist and remained unmarried throughout her life.

She also spent her life active in reform movements such as temperance and women's suffrage.

The sketch was reprinted in the volume Silver Pitchers (1876), which relates the family's experiment in "plain living and high thinking" at Fruitlands.

She was also instructed by Sophia Foord, who lived with the family for a time, and whom she would later eulogize.

Poverty made it necessary for Alcott to go to work at an early age as a teacher, seamstress, governess, domestic helper, and writer.

Her sisters also supported the family, working as seamstresses, while their mother took on social work among the Irish immigrants.

Only the youngest, Abigail, was able to attend public school.

Due to all of these pressures, writing became a creative and emotional outlet for Alcott.

She died from a stroke in Boston on March 6, 1888, just two days after her father's death.