Louisa May Alcott

Background	Early Years	Later Years
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Background 

Louisa was born to a self-educated father who refused to work for a wage. This resulted in a "Family as poor as rats", as Louisa once said. Bronson Alcott had run a school that failed when people found out that he taught sex education to their children. "Weedy" (Louisa) was one of four daughters, and later in life she wrote Little Women about her homelife with her sisters.

Early Years

Weedy and her family moved to a utopian community called "Fruitlands" with Charles Lane, whom she and Anna deep down in their hearts truly hated. Here Charles made them wear only linen and drink no milk. The Alcotts were good friends with Ralph Waldo Emerson, so they moved to Concord, Mass. with him. He was Louisa's main influence on her writing. Louisa started writing amateur theatricals at the age of 15. She began selling stories then too! During her writing breaks, she ran in the woods, for she felt more boy than girl. Weedy finally decided that she'd have to leave home to be successful, which she did, even though it was the improper thing to do. Louisa decided to never marry. She said she wanted to "paddle her own canoe." When the Civil war broke out, Louisa became a Union nurse. From the unsanitary conditions she worked in, Louisa got typhoid pneumonia. While being treated, she took a high dose of mercury and had side effects from it for the rest of her life. She sometimes locked herself in her room and wrote for fifteen hours straight. She later published her diary entries from nursing and used the funds to take her and her younger sister, May, to Europe.

Later Years

Louisa became active in the temperance movement and the Women's Suffrage Act. Louisa eventually became the editor of Merry's Museum, a magazine for young children. Then she wrote, rather unwillingly, Little Women. Little Women made her very famous and allowed her to pay off all of her family's debts. Unfortunately, May died and Louisa was left to raise her niece, "Lulu". Louisa died two days after her father, and at their joint funeral the minister said, "So this daughter, such a support to her father on Earth, was needed by him in Heaven."

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