Alcott, Louisa May, 1832-1888

Alcott, Louisa May, 1832-1888

Louisa May Alcott was a prolific author best known for her classic children's book, Little Women.

Alcott was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania on November 29, 1832 to Bronson and Abigail May Alcott. Her father was a teacher, philosopher, and the vanguard of the Transcendentalist movement. She lived in Boston and Concord, Massachusetts for most of her life, and grew up surrounded by intellectuals like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. She was educated at home and at her father's experimental Temple School in Boston.

Alcott became concerned about her father's ability to financially provide for the family after the failure of Fruitlands, a utopian community he founded. Her mother, called Abba, worked hard to add extra money to the family's meager coffers, and Louisa joined in this effort by teaching, sewing, working as a servant, and writing. During a stint as a Civil War nurse in Washington, D.C., Alcott contracted typhoid. She wrote about her experiences in the 1863 book Hospital Sketches. She also wrote poetry, short stories, and novellas. While churning out potboilers (often under the pseudonym A. M. Barnard), Louisa completed a more serious piece of fiction, Moods, which enjoyed a short-lived flurry of sales after its publication in 1864.

In 1865, Alcott traveled to Europe as the companion of Anna Weld. She wrote a number of travel pieces, and upon her return, became more involved in children's fiction. She was named editor of Merry's Museum, a girls' magazine, in January 1868. Later that year, a publisher from Roberts Brothers urged her to wrote a book for girls, and Alcott began a novel based on her own family. The first part of Little Women was published in September 1868, the second in April 1869. This novel's success surpassed everyone's expectations, and the publishing company found itself struggling to keep up with the orders. In 1870, while on a much more luxurious European tour, Alcott was delighted to find out that her follow-up, An Old-Fashioned Girl, was also selling well, and that Moods had been reissued.

Little Women made its author famous; Alcott's work was hugely in demand, and she responded to the public's interest with books like Little Men, Jo's Boys, Eight Cousins, and Rose in Bloom. Her celebrity status caused her some discomfort, however, and she struggled with exhaustion, depression, and a variety of ailments for which she consulted many doctors.

In the late 1870s, Alcott became an activist. She tried to galvanize women in her community about voting rights, and became the first woman to register in Concord, Massachusetts when the state gave women school, tax, and bond suffrage. She also helped establish a temperance society for Concord in 1882. On March 4, 1888, Alcott visited with her dying father. The next morning, she lost consciousness from a condition that was either spinal meningitis, apoplexy, or a combination. On March 6, the same day as her father's funeral, she passed away, and was buried next to her parents at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts.

Source: Encyclopedia Britannica, online edition; James, James and Boyer's Notable American Women 1607-1950: A Biographical Dictionary