Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888) was the American author of Little Women, the story of the four March sisters, based on her own family. Raised among the Transcendentalists of Concord, she worked as a seamstress, teacher and Civil War nurse before her books made her one of the best-selling and best-paid writers in America.
A philosopher's daughter
Louisa May Alcott was born in 1832 in Germantown, Pennsylvania, the second of four daughters of Bronson Alcott, an idealistic teacher and philosopher, and Abigail May. The family moved to Massachusetts and lived in great poverty, as Bronson's schools and utopian projects failed one after another.
Louisa grew up in Concord among her father's friends, Emerson, who lent her books from his library, and Thoreau, who took the children on nature walks. In 1843 the family spent a disastrous few months in Fruitlands, a utopian vegetarian community founded by her father.
Writing for a living
From her teens Louisa worked to support the family, as a seamstress, governess, teacher and domestic servant, while writing poems, stories and sensational thrillers under pseudonyms such as A. M. Barnard. In 1862 she volunteered as a nurse in a Union hospital in Washington, but caught typhoid after six weeks.
Her letters home, published as Hospital Sketches in 1863, brought her first real success. In 1867 the Boston publisher Thomas Niles asked her for a book for girls. She wrote Little Women in about ten weeks; the first part appeared in 1868 and was an immediate triumph.
Fame
The success of Little Women and its sequels, Little Men and Jo's Boys, made Alcott rich and famous, and she supported her whole family. She travelled in Europe, wrote many other novels and stories, and campaigned for women's suffrage and temperance; she was the first woman to register to vote in Concord.
Her health never recovered from her illness of 1862 and its treatment. She died in Boston in March 1888, two days after her father, and is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord, near Emerson and Thoreau.
Anecdotes
A secret thriller writer
Long after her death, researchers discovered that Alcott had written dozens of lurid thrillers about revenge, opium and passionate women under the pseudonym A. M. Barnard. One of them, A Long Fatal Love Chase, was published for the first time only in 1995.
Orchard House
Orchard House in Concord, where the Alcotts lived from 1858 to 1877 and where Louisa wrote Little Women, is now a museum. It still contains the small desk her father built for her between two windows of her room.
Frequently asked questions
Is Little Women based on Louisa May Alcott's family?
Yes. The four March sisters are modelled on Louisa and her sisters Anna, Elizabeth and May, and Jo is largely a portrait of Louisa herself.
What else did Louisa May Alcott write?
Hospital Sketches (1863), Little Men (1871), Eight Cousins, Jo's Boys (1886), and many thrillers under the pseudonym A. M. Barnard.
Did Louisa May Alcott serve in the Civil War?
Yes, as a nurse in a Union hospital in Washington in 1862–63, until she fell seriously ill with typhoid.