Louisa May Alcott

Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888), American author wrote Little Women (1868);

Born on 29 November 1832 in Germantown (now part of Philadelphia), Pennsylvania, Louisa May Alcott was the second daughter of Abigail `Abba’ May (1800-1877), women’s suffrage and abolitionist advocate and Amos Bronson Alcott (1799-1893), transcendentalist philosopher and education and social reformer who helped found the controversial and pioneering Temple School in Boston, Massachusetts in 1834. Amos played an active role in the education of Louisa and her three sisters Anna, Elizabeth, and May.

After a failed experiment of living at the communal Fruitlands farm, a result of which was Alcott’s Transcendental Wild Oats (1876), the family moved to `Hillside’ in Concord, Massachusetts. Alcott had become friends with fellow transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose vast library she regularly frequented, and Henry David Thoreau, whom she accompanied on walks in the countryside. Margaret Fuller and Nathaniel Hawthorne and his family were also amongst the Alcott’s varied and intellectual social circle of New England.