Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888)

Louisa May Alcott wrote Jack and Jill, Little Women, and Little Men. She lived with her mother and sisters in the Fruit lands farm, which is nowadays a museum. While living on this farm, she made a few friends who were writers named Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose library she often visited, Henry David Thoreau, whom she accompanied on walks in the country, and Margaret Fuller and Nathaniel Hawthorne.

By 1858 the Alcotts had moved to The Orchard House on Lexington Road in Concord, which is now considered as a national landmark. This home would soon become the setting of her book, Little Women. To add to the income of her family she worked as a teacher, seamstress, and servant which inspired her later novel Work: A Story of Experience (1873).

When the civil war started, Louisa M. A. started working for the army as a nurse in Washington D.C. (District of Columbia), this inspired her to write Hospital Sketches (1863).

Alcott became involved with the same reform movements her mother was active in, including abolition of slavery and women’s rights. She was now an accomplished writer and could support her family, which was a rare accomplishment for a woman back then.