Louisa May Alcott

14 books

Louisa "Lou" May Alcott ( AWL-kət; November 29, 1832 – March 6, 1888) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet best known for writing the novel Little Women (1868) and its sequels Good Wives (1869), Little Men (1871), and Jo's Boys (1886). Raised in New England by her transcendentalist parents, Abigail May and Amos Bronson Alcott, she grew up among many well-known intellectuals of the day, including Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau. Encouraged by her family, Alcott began writing from an early age. Alcott's family experienced financial hardship, and while Alcott took on various jobs to help support the family from an early age, she also sought to earn money by writing. In the 1860s she began to achieve critical success for her writing with the publication of Hospital Sketches, a book based on her service as a nurse in the American Civil War.