Louisa May Alcott

Louisa May Alcott was the second of four daughters of Bronson Alcott, a teacher and philosopher whose ideas rarely earned money. She grew up mostly in Boston and Concord, Massachusetts, among writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. The family was often poor, and she worked as a seamstress, governess, teacher and servant to help support it.

She began to publish poems and stories in her twenties, including sensational thrillers under a pen name. During the Civil War she served as a nurse in a Union hospital in Washington until she fell ill. Hospital Sketches (1863), based on her letters, brought her first real success.

At her publisher's request she wrote Little Women (1868 to 1869), drawing on her own family. It follows the four March sisters as they grow up during and after the war, and it argues that girls can choose work, art and independence as well as marriage. It sold well enough to free the family from debt. She also supported abolition and votes for women. She died in Boston in 1888, two days after her father.