Alcott, Louisa May

born Nov. 29, 1832, Germantown, Pa., U.S.

died March 6, 1888, Boston, Mass.

U.S. author.

Daughter of the reformer Bronson Alcott, she grew up in Transcendentalist circles in Boston and Concord, Mass. She began writing to help support her mother and sisters. An ardent abolitionist, she volunteered as a nurse during the American Civil War, where she contracted the typhoid that damaged her health the rest of her life; her letters, published as Hospital Sketches (1863), first brought her fame. With the huge success of the autobiographical Little Women (1868–69), she finally escaped debt. An Old-Fashioned Girl (1870), Little Men (1871), and Jo's Boys (1886) also drew on her experiences as an educator.

Louisa May Alcott, portrait by George Healy; in the Louisa May Alcott Memorial Association ...

Courtesy of Louisa May Alcott Memorial Association

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▪ American author

born Nov. 29, 1832, Germantown, Pa., U.S.

died March 6, 1888, Boston, Mass.

 American author known for her children's books, especially the classic Little Women.

 A daughter of the transcendentalist Bronson Alcott (Alcott, Bronson), Louisa spent most of her life in Boston and Concord, Massachusetts, where she grew up in the company of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Emerson, Ralph Waldo), Theodore Parker (Parker, Theodore), and Henry David Thoreau (Thoreau, Henry David). Her education was largely under the direction of her father, for a time at his innovative Temple School in Boston and, later, at home. Alcott realized early that her father was too impractical to provide for his wife and four daughters; after the failure of Fruitlands, a utopian community that he had founded, Louisa Alcott's lifelong concern for the welfare of her family began. She taught briefly, worked as a domestic, and finally began to write.

      Alcott produced potboilers at first and many of her stories—notably those signed “A.M. Barnard”—were lurid and violent tales. The latter works are unusual in their depictions of women as strong, self-reliant, and imaginative. She volunteered as a nurse after the American Civil War began, but she contracted typhoid from unsanitary hospital conditions and was sent home. She was never completely well again. The publication of her letters in book form, Hospital Sketches (1863), brought her the first taste of fame.

      Alcott's stories began to appear in The Atlantic Monthly, and, because family needs were pressing, she wrote the autobiographical Little Women (1868–69), which was an immediate success. Based on her recollections of her own childhood, Little Women describes the domestic adventures of a New England family of modest means but optimistic outlook. The book traces the differing personalities and fortunes of four sisters as they emerge from childhood and encounter the vicissitudes of employment, society, and marriage. Little Women created a realistic but wholesome picture of family life with which younger readers could easily identify. In 1869 Alcott was able to write in her journal: “Paid up all the debts . . . thank the Lord!” She followed Little Women's success with further domestic narratives drawn from her early experiences: An Old-Fashioned Girl (1870); Aunt Jo's Scrap Bag, 6 vol. (1872–82); Little Men (1871); Eight Cousins (1875); Rose in Bloom (1876); and Jo's Boys (1886).

      Except for a European tour in 1870 and a few briefer trips to New York, she spent the last two decades of her life in Boston and Concord, caring for her mother, who died in 1877 after a lengthy illness, and her increasingly helpless father. Late in life she adopted her namesake, Louisa May Nieriker, daughter of her late sister, May. Her own health, never robust, also declined, and she died in Boston two days after her father's death.

      Alcott's books for younger readers have remained steadfastly popular, and the republication of some of her lesser-known works late in the 20th century aroused renewed critical interest in her adult fiction. A Modern Mephistopheles, which was published pseudonymously in 1877 and republished in 1987, is a Gothic novel about a failed poet who makes a Faustian bargain with his tempter. Work: A Story of Experience (1873), based on Alcott's own struggles, tells the story of a poor girl trying to support herself by a succession of menial jobs. The Gothic tales and thrillers that Alcott published pseudonymously between 1863 and 1869 were collected and republished as Behind a Mask (1975) and Plots and Counterplots (1976), and an unpublished Gothic novel written in 1866, A Long Fatal Love Chase, was published in 1995.

Additional Reading

Biographies include Madeleine B. Stern, Louisa May Alcott (1950, reissued 1996); Martha Saxton, Louisa May (1977, reissued as Louisa May Alcott, 1995); and Ruth K. MacDonald, Louisa May Alcott (1983). Madeleine B. Stern (ed.), Critical Essays on Louisa May Alcott (1984); Sarah Elbert, A Hunger for Home: Louisa May Alcott's Place in American Culture (1987); and Elizabeth Lennox Keyser, Whispers in the Dark: The Fiction of Louisa May Alcott (1993), offer criticism and interpretation.

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