Louisa May Alcott Biografía

Name: Louisa May Alcott

Occupation: Author

Birth Date: November 29, 1832

Death Date: March 6, 1888

Place of Birth: Germantown, Pennsylvania

Place of Death: Boston, Massachusetts

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 and teacher Bronson Alcott, and raised on the practical Christianity of their mother, Abigail May.

Louisa spent her childhood in Boston and in Concord, Massachusetts. For Louisa, writing was an early passion. She had a rich imagination and often her stories became melodramas that she and her sisters would act out for friends.

At age 15, troubled by the poverty that plagued her family and confronting a society that offered little opportunity to women seeking employment Alcott had to work as a domestic servant and teacher, among other positions, to help support her family from 1850 to 1862. During the Civil War, she went to Washington, D.C. to work as a nurse.

It was her account of her Civil War experiences, Hospital Sketches that confirmed Alcott's desire to be a serious writer. She began to publish stories under her real name and took a brief trip to Europe in 1865. Her career as an author began with poetry and short stories that appeared in popular magazines. Her first book Flower Fables was published.

When Louisa was 35 years old, her publisher in Boston, Thomas Niles, asked her to write "a book for girls." Little Women was written in 1868. The novel is based on Louisa and her sisters’ coming of age and is set in Civil War New England. The great success of Little Women gave her financial independence and created a demand for more books such as Little Men (1871), Eight Cousins (1875) and Jo's Boys (1886). Alcott also tried her hand at adult novels, such as Work (1873) and A Modern Mephistopheles (1877), etc.

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. Alcott was a best-selling novelist of the late 1800s, and many of her works, most notably ‘Little Women’, remain popular today.

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