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 Louisa May Alcott Biography

Fast Facts!

Born on November 29, 1832

Louisa published 30 books and collections of stories. Little Women is her most popular book and brought her the  financial security she sought.

She contracted  typhoid fever while volunteering as a nurse in the Civil War. At that time the medicine the doctors used to cure typhoid  was loaded with mercury. She suffered the effects of mercury poisoning for the rest of her life until at the age of 56 she  fell into a coma and passed away.

  Civil War Journal: Women at War

In 1879, she was the first woman to register to vote in Concord when Massachusetts gave women, school, tax and bond suffrage

Little Women, like many of her works was largely formed in her mind before she had put even pen to paper

Little Women has never been out of print since it was first published in 1868

She never married, but considered her writing to be a fine companion.

Louisa May Alcott Biography

"My wise mother...turned me loose in the country ...learning of Nature what no books can teach, and being led ... `Through Nature up to Nature's God'."

Louisa May Alcott was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania on November 29th, 1832. She and her three sisters were educated at home by their father, a noted transcendentalist and philosopher/teacher, Bronson Alcott and raised on the practical Christianity of their mother, Abigail May. Louisa spent her childhood in Boston and in Concord, Massachusetts.

While money was scarce during Louisa's upbringing, her intellectual and family life was exceptionally rich. Her father was good friends with and introduced his daughters to Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller. Louisa, who tutored Emerson's daughter Ellen, spent many happy hours in Emerson's library, where she read classics of both philosophy and literature.

Like her character 'Jo' in the book "Little Women" that she later penned, Louisa was a tomboy. "No boy could be my friend until I had beaten him in a race", she claimed, "and no girl if she refused to climb trees, leap fences..." Louisa started to write from an early age, since she had a vivid imagination it was a great outlet for her to create many colorful stories and plays.

Louisa was also very appreciative of and grateful for the unconventional teaching methods pursued by her father. "Very happy hours they were to us, for my father taught in the wise way which unfolds what lies in the child's nature, as a flower blooms, rather than crammed it, like a Strasburg goose, with more than it could digest," she wrote in her journal collected in Louisa May Alcott: Her Life, Letters and Journals.

The Alcott family was progressively-minded and supported such causes as women's suffrage, co-education and the ending of slavery. Growing up, Louisa was taught to be creative, think independently and work and play in a balanced way. Louisa loved her mother very much for encouraging her, despite her headstrong ways, to lead a life of independence and high values...

"My wise mother, anxious to give me a strong body to support a lively brain, turned me loose in the country and let me run wild, learning of Nature what no books can teach, and being led ... `Through Nature up to Nature's God'," Alcott was quoted in Life, Letters and Journals. Each of the girls were required by their parents to keep a journal recording their thoughts, experiences and feelings, which they often shared with each other.

Louisa's first publications were poetry and short stories in various magazines. When she was 22 years of age her first book was published "Flower Fables". In 1868, when she was 35, at the request of her publisher, she wrote a book for girls about girls...which she naturally based on her own experiences growing up with three of the most interesting girls she knew!

 She wrote furiously for two and a half months and produced "Little Women". It was the first time anyone had breathed such life into a children's book. She created characters that were alive, and had dynamic and complex personalities, instead of the usual Victorian staid and stereotypical children's characters that were usually portrayed in children's fiction at that time.

Little Women was an instant success and provided her with the financial security she had sought for herself and her family. In all Louisa published 30 books and collections of stories. She died on March 6th, 1888 and is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord at the feet of her sisters and parents.