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Louisa May Alcott & Little Women |
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Daughter of an innovative educator, Alcott wrote Little Women, perhaps the most successful young adult novel of all time. |
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Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) was born in Germantown PA, the daughter of educator (Amos) Bronson Alcott. She was raised in Concord MA, living in The Wayside for some time, but principally in Orchard House. Ralph Waldo Emerson, a great friend of her father's, was in some ways a mentor to her, and Henry David Thoreau was a friend. Her father's educational philosophies were far ahead of his time, and therefore provided little income, so Louisa decided to contribute to the family's needs. She taught Emerson's daughters, telling them stories that she later collected and published as Flower Fables (1854). She later worked as a servant and as a seamstress, but by 1860 her stories were being published in the Atlantic Monthly. She served as a nurse during the Civil War, and wrote of her experiences in Hospital Sketches (1863). She contracted typhoid fever during her nursing, and was treated with calomel, which inflicted mercury poisoning that was later to shorten her life considerably. A year after Hospital Sketches, her first novel, Moods, was published, and by 1867 she was editing Merry's Museum, a children's magazine. In 1868 the first volume of her most famous book, Little Women, was published, with the second volume appearing the following year. Little Women, which was mostly autobiographical, made her reputation, and its sequels Little Men (1871) and Jo's Boys (1886) were enthusiastically received. Her other books include Work (1873), Eight Cousins (1875), Roses in Bloom (1876) and Under the Lilacs (1879). Her success as a writer brought her wealth and fame. The effects of mercury poisoning brought her life to an end in 1888 at the age of 56. She died just two days after her father. Both are buried in Concord's Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. Louisa May Alcott's grave is regularly visited by devoted readers, some of whom leave messages and tributes to the author. Little Women, one of the most beloved young adult novels of all time, is performed as a play in Concord at the turn of every decade. It's not unusual for an amateur actor to play one of the Alcott girls in one decade's performance, and Marmie a decade or two later. The next performance will be given in 2010.
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Louisa May Alcott
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Local girls dressed in 19th-century costume prepare for the every-ten-years production of Little Women in Concord MA. |
