Louisa May Alcott Bio

Louisa May Alcott Biography

Best remembered for her books about the March family, especially her children's masterpiece, Little Women, Alcott also wrote sensational novels and thrillers for adults. She was a very creative, difficult, and willful girl who was both moody and loyal.

Born in Germantown, Pennsylvania on November 29, 1832, Louisa was the second daughter of Abby May and Amos Bronson Alcott. Being one of four sisters, who were Anna Bronson, Elizabeth Sewall, and Abba May, the Alcott sisters had a very happy childhood. The Alcotts went through a series of moves, weither they were from one house to another in the same town, while others were from town to town, this was only a beginning of what was to continue throughout Louisa's life. Her father, Bronson, was a transcendentalist thinker and writer who refused to take work that was not related to education or philosophy, which had the family commuting due to where he would be employed, which he rarely had been. Rather than being a step up for the family, these changes were just a step down, for the family had to depend on the generosity of others. Living in Concord, Massachusetts with friends and neighbors, Louisa's father committed his time to educating his four daughters being that he was unemployed. Bronson could not be relied upon to support the family, which led her to live a pretty fugal life for his inability to keep a steady job. The plainness of their clothes, food, and home never seemed to bother them, but the issue of money was a constant source of worry for Louisa. She saw it as her mission in life to support her family. In her early teens she began to work with her sister Anna as governesses to increase the small earnings of their father. Then by her early twenties, she was writing and getting paid for it. The death of her younger sister and marriage of her older were very traumatic experiences, and to fill the void left by their absence, and to seek some purpose in life and participate in the Civil War, Alcott became an army nurse in Washington, D.C. After six weeks she got typhoid fever, from which she never fully recovered and left her permanently weakened, a condition that got worse with age. After the war Alcott began Little Women in 1868, along with all the gothic thrillers, which brought in money for the family. Then when her father suffered from a