Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888)

You may recognize the name Louisa May Alcott because she was the author of “Little Women.” The famous novel about four sisters growing up in a New England town during the mid 1800s attracted readers young and old. As a result of the extreme success of this novel, the Alcott family’s lifestyle moved from poverty to financially secure. It is interesting to note that at age sixteen Louisa began writing with the intention of getting her family out of poverty. This was a woman who set strong goals and achieved them.

Louisa May Alcott was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania on November 29, 1832. Her father Amos Bronson Alcott was a Transcendentalist philosopher as well as an educational reformer. Her mother, Abigail May Alcott, descended from Judge Samuel Sewall, the presiding judge during the Salem witch trials.

Louisa May Alcott was very much influenced by her father’s ideals. Her family also had an impressive group of intellectual friends. She had access to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s personal library, and was even taught botany by Henry David Thoreau. Louisa worked hard for the right of women to vote and was part of the temperance movement. Women’s rights and educational reform were prominent themes in her novels, in fact.

During the year 1862 Louisa May Alcott traveled to Washington D.C. to aid as a nurse for those injured in the American Civil War. She almost died when she contracted typhoid fever. That combined with mercury poisoning from her medication was sadly the end of her good health.

Her career as a writer was spent creating everything from novels to short stories to poems. She was a teacher, a seamstress, and even a domestic servant. Louisa May Alcott passed away on March 6, 1888 in Boston, Massachusetts. But due to her captivating writing style her work will live on through her convincing characters.

Source: Camden Country Free Library, Voorhees, NJ USA

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