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(From louisamayalcott.org) Louisa May Alcott was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania on November 29, 1832. She and her three sisters, Anna, Elizabeth, and May, were educated by their father, 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, where her days were enlightened by visits to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s library, excursions into nature with Henry David Thoreau, and theatricals in the barn at "Hillside" (now Hawthorne’s "Wayside").
When Louisa was 35 years old, her publisher in Boston, Thomas Niles, asked her to write "a book for girls." Little Women was written at Orchard House from May to July 1868. The novel is based on Louisa and her sisters’ coming of age and is set in Civil War New England. "Jo March" was the first American juvenile heroine to act from her own individuality -- a living, breathing person rather than the idealized stereotype then prevalent in children’s fiction.
In all, Louisa published over 30 books and collections of stories. She died on March 6, 1888, only two days after her father, and is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord.
More about Louisa May Alcott:
A little something we
like about Louisa:
Louisa had an especial admiration for the beauty of “wide open” eyes. As a child she once spent a day walking around Boston, having fixed her face in what she imagined a captivating, wide-eyed expression and was pleased when she noticed many
intent looks in her direction. Upon returning home, she tried out her new visage in a mirror and was horrified to discover she had been parading Washington Street all day “with an insane stare upon her face.”
a little irreverent. a lot of fun.
