Louisa May Alcott

Louisa May Alcott (1832- 1888) was brought up in Pennsylvania in the United States. Her father was not a practical man and Louisa and her three sisters spent their childhood witnessing the failture of a school based on his own radical, idealist and educationalist theories (as in Little Men), a farm and a Utopian vegetarian community. By her midteens, Louisa had to find a way to support the family income.

For some years, she wrote lurid stories for the magazines and newspapers, and for publishers of dime novels- cheap paperback novels with melodramatic plots. Then, in 1862, when the fury of the American Civil War was at its height, Louisa went to Georgetown to work as a nurse. The conditions were frightful and she contracted typhoid fever and pneumonia. Her health was ruined for life, but her reputation was made. From her experiences she wrote a series of Hospital Sketches which won wide acclaim on publication in 1864. In the same year, an adult novel, Moods, based on her love for the famous American philosopher Henry David Thoreau, was also published.

She was now in demand as a writer, and a forward- thinking publisher persuaded her to write a children's book. At first she was reluctant, but then she realised that in herself and her three sisters, she had the perfect models (Jo March is modelled on Louisa both on build and character). The result was 'Little Women,' first published in book form in 1868 (Little Men followed in 1871). This was the earliest American children's novel to become classic. The tone is moralistic, but not dictating; and though it is called a children's book, the lifelike characters and situations had adults too, eagerly awaiting the next installment (it was originally published as a magazine serial) and grown men weeping at the tragic episodes. Even after, so many years of the author's death, the book has still just as much power to move its countless readers.