Louisa May Alcott American Author

 

American author Louisa May Alcott was born in Germantown, (now part of Philadelphia) Pennsylvania, America on 29th November 1832. 

Louisa May Alcott was a novelist, short story writer, and poet. Her novels remain as popular today as when they were first published in the nineteenth century. "Little Women" (1868) and its sequels "Good Wives" (1869) "Little Men" (1871) and "Jo's Boys" (1886) were semi-autobiographical, based on the life of Alcott and her own three sisters.

Alcott was a feminist and an abolitionist and remained unmarried throughout her life. She actively participated in reform movements such as temperance (anti-alcohol) and women's suffrage. Her views are reflected in her writings. She was also the daughter of a Transcendentalist parents. Transcendentalism was a philosophical, spiritual, and literacy movement developed in the late 1820s and 1830s in the New England region of America. Through her father, she grew up with intellectuals such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau. They also had some influence on her work. Louisa's family experienced financial hardship. Louisa took on various jobs to help support the family from an early age. She worked as a teacher, seamstress, governess, domestic helper, and laundress, to earn money for the family. She also sought to earn money by writing. In the 1860s she began to achieve critical success for her writing with the publication of Hospital Sketches, a book based on her service as a nurse in the American Civil War.

Alcott died in Boston aged 55 years on 6th March 1888 due to a stroke.