Louisa May Alcott is one of few women who enjoyed immediate success in writing during her lifetime. Born in Germantown, Pennsylvania on November 29, 1832 to Amos Bronson Alcott and Abigail "Abba" May, Louisa moved with her family to the Massachusetts area. With the help of family friend Ralph Waldo Emerson, they relocated from Concord to Boston several times and in 1843, participated in an experimental communal village referred to as the Fruitlands. Her father, a schoolteacher and transcendentalist, finally moved the family to Boston in 1849 after the project failed. In her early years, Alcott enjoyed nature walks with Henry David Thoreau and acting out the plays she had written with her sisters.
Burdened by her family??s growing financial difficulties, she took on as many jobs as she could to help out, very much becoming a ??little woman? herself at the age of 15. After working as a laundry washer and teacher, she published her first poem, ??Sunlight,? (1852) in Peterson??s Magazine, followed by her first book, Flower Fables, three years later. She remained in Boston to pursue a literary career, visiting her family and comforting her mother in the wake of her sister??s (Lizzie) death from Scarlet Fever. When America found itself ravaged by Civil War, Alcott moved to Washington D.C. in 1862 to serve as a nurse. Her experiences served as the inspiration for Hospital Sketches (1863) and Moods (1864). Unfortunately, the working conditions also led to Alcott??s contraction of typhoid fever. Although she recovered, she suffered poisoning from treatments of the mercurious calomel that doctors used for the illness, which weakened her health and led to her premature death.
At her publisher??s request for ??a girls?? story? a few years later, Alcott penned the soon-to-be popular Little Women, (1868) based on her own family experiences. After selling 2,000 copies to an eager public, she followed up with a second volume less than a year later, which sold an immediate 13,000 copies. Readers young and old came to regard her work as extraordinary pieces of literature, sealing Alcott??s fate as one of the most popular American writers at that time. In the decade to come, Alcott published Old Fashioned Girl (1870), Little Men (1871) Work (1873), Eight Cousins (1874) and Rose in Bloom (1876). Alcott was also involved in the women's suffrage movement and regularly contributed to "The Woman's Journal" to encourage women to vote. After the deaths of her sisters, Abby and May, Alcott moved to Boston where she cared for May??s daughter and her namesake, Louisa May (??Lulu?). In 1885, she moved the rest of the Alcott family to Boston??s Louisburg Square and continued writing, despite her ailing health. Alcott published her final book, Jo's Boys, in 1886 and died two years later of complications from mercury poisoning on March 6, 1888.
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Articles About Alcott, Louisa May
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Remembering the Alcotts
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November 27, 2007 |
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The New England landscape and communities that Louisa May Alcott both cherished and used as inspiration for her writing have changed drastically in the intervening years. Today, two museums remain dedicated to exploring and explaining the lives of the Alcott family: The Fruitlands and Orchard House.
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