Who was Alcott, Louisa May

Louisa May Alcott was the author of Little Women, the most popular book for girls that has ever been written (nearly three million copies of it have been sold since it was published in 1868). Miss Alcott, whose family came from Connecticut, and who happened to be born in Germantown, Pennsylvania— a suburb of Philadelphia—while her father was working as a teacher there, lived most of her life in Concord, Massachusetts.

This city was then the home of Ralph Waldo Emerson and other great American writers and was considered a center of education and learning for the entire United States Miss Alcott started to write when she was only a girl, and she usually wrote about people she actually knew. Little Women was a story about herself and her three sisters, as well as of their friends and neighbors in nearby towns in Massachusetts. Her other famous books were Little Men, An Old-fashioned Girl, Eight Cousins, and Jo's Boys (a sequel to Little Women).

She was born in 1832, and Little Women was published in 1868. She did some teaching, was the editor of a magazine for children, and wrote some stories and articles that were not for children. She died in 1888. Her father, Amos Bronson Alcott, was a famous teacher, born in 1799; he lived as long as his daughter did, dying in 1888. He was one of those who supported the BROOK FARM experiment, about which there is a separate article in this encyclopedia.