Biography of Louisa
May Alcott
By Radiyah Shakur
 Louisa
May Alcott is perhaps most famous for writing Little
Women, a novel which is partially autobiographical
and has shaped the way many women since the Victorian
era have defined womanhood, family, and girlhood.
Louisa Alcott was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania on
November 29, 1832. Her father Amos Bronson Alcott was
a teacher and transcendentalist philosopher, and her
mother a social worker and reformer.
Writing was an early passion for Louisa, who had a rich
imagination. She enjoyed acting out plays, which she
had written, with her sisters. Spending her childhood
in Boston and in Concord, Massachusetts, Louisa spent
time with family friends Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry
David Thoreau.
At age 15, troubled by the poverty that plagued her family,
Louisa took on a variety of jobs. She and her older sister
Anna taught small children and mended and washed laundry.
For years Louisa took on any work she could find.
Louisa’s career as an author began with poetry
and short stories that appeared in popular magazines.
In 1854, when she was 22, her first book Flower Fables
was published. Among other publications, Alcott wrote Hospital Sketches in 1863
based on the letters she had written home from her post as a nurse in Washington,
DC during the Civil War.
When Louisa was 35 years old, her publisher Thomas Niles told her he wanted her
to write "a book for girls." This was the turning point in Louisa’s
literary career. She wrote fervently for two and a half months and produced Little
Women, set in Civil War New England, based on her own experiences of growing
up as a young woman with three other sisters. The novel, published September
30, 1868, featured Jo March as the first American juvenile heroine to act from
her own individuality rather than the idealized stereotype then dominant in children’s
fiction.
In all, Alcott published over 30 books and collections of stories. Although she
is widely known as a juvenile writer, she also published stories that explored
themes of self expression and women's rights.
Louisa May Alcott died on March 6, 1888, only two days after her father, and
is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord.
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