Louisa May Alcott

Louisa May Alcott was an American novelist born on 29 November 1832 in Germantown, Pennsylvania. She grew up in New England in a close but often poor family. Her father, Bronson Alcott, was an idealistic educator and philosopher, and the household moved often. The family knew writers and thinkers of the time, including Emerson and Thoreau. Louisa worked from a young age as a teacher, seamstress and household helper, and she began publishing stories and sketches to earn money. In the Civil War she served briefly as a nurse in Washington, and her letters home became her first widely noticed book. Her greatest success came with a novel drawn from her own sisters and childhood, which made her famous and financially secure. She followed it with further books about the same characters and with other stories for young readers. She also wrote thrillers under a pseudonym. Her warm, humorous and realistic portraits of family life, and her independent heroines, still speak to readers today. She died on 6 March 1888 in Boston.