Louisa May Alcott Biography

Alcott was a best-selling novelist of the late 1800s.

Alcott was taught by her father, Amos Bronson Alcott, until 1848, and studied informally with family friends such as Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Theodore Parker. Residing in Boston and Concord, Massachusetts, Alcott worked as a domestic servant and teacher, among other positions, to help support her family from 1850 to 1862. During the Civil War, she went to Washington, D.C. to work as a nurse.

Unknown to most people, Louisa May Alcott had been publishing poems, short stories, thrillers, and juvenile tales since 1851, under the pen name Flora Fairfield. In 1862, she also adopted the pen name A.M. Barnard, and some of her melodramas were produced on Boston stages. But it was her account of her Civil War experiences, "Hospital Sketches" (1863), that confirmed Alcott's desire to be a serious writer. She began to publish stories under her real name in Atlantic Monthly and Lady's Companion, and took a brief trip to Europe in 1865 before becoming editor of a girls' magazine, Merry's Museum.

The great success of "Little Women" (1869–70) gave Alcott financial independence and created a demand for more books. Over the final years of her life, she turned out a steady stream of novels and short stories, mostly for young people and drawn directly from her family life. Her other books include "Little Men" (1871), "Eight Cousins" (1875) and "Jo's Boys" (1886). Alcott also tried her hand at adult novels, such as "Work" (1873) and "A Modern Mephistopheles" (1877), but these tales were not as popular as her other writings.

Selected works:

• Little Women (1868)
• The Inheritance (1849, unpublished until 1997)
• Moods (1865, revised 1882)
• The Mysterious Key and What It Opened (1867)
• An Old Fashioned Girl (1870)
• Will's Wonder Book (1870)
• Work: A Story of Experience (1873)
• Beginning Again, Being a Continuation of Work (1875)
• Eight Cousins or The Aunt-Hill (1875)
• Rose in Bloom: A Sequel to Eight Cousins (1876)
• Under the Lilacs (1878)
• Jack and Jill: A Village Story (1880)