Louisa May Alcott Biography

Louisa May Alcott is an unexpected inhabitant in the world of magazine editing. Her name is better known as the author of Little Women (1868-1869) and other children's stories, and her novels are now as often scrutinized by social historians as they are read with tears and laughter by youngsters. Alcott did edit a magazine, however, in the course of her long and varied career.

The second of the four daughters of Amos Bronson and Abigail May Alcott, Louisa May Alcott was born on 29 November 1832 in Germantown, Pennsylvania, where her father kept a school. Bronson Alcott was a philosopher who rarely found remunerative employment, and Louisa's childhood was one of quiet poverty and hard work. Bronson's connection with the Transcendentalist movement in New England assured that Louisa and her sisters were immersed in literature and philosophy from youth, and he haphazardly taught them at home what other children learned at school.

Transcendentalism carried the Alcotts in 1843 to Fruitlands, a utopian community in Harvard, Massachusetts, for an uncomfortable experiment in vegetarianism and community living. Alcott later described this episode in her story "Transcendental Wild Oats" (1873). But her philosopher father also brought Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Henry David Thoreau, and other great minds of the period into Louisa's sphere. After the Alcotts left Fruitlands, they moved to Concord, where they lived near Emerson for many years. (Some biographers believe that Alcott's interest in Emerson, described in her journals as a teenager's crush, was more long lasting than she admits; certainly he was a lifelong friend.)

Alcott's early life is familiar to most readers; she recounted it honestly in Little Women, changing only the character of the father: Bronson Alcott was more chilly and unapproachable than Mr. March. The loving Marmee, the plays in the barn, Jo's struggles to become a writer, and Beth's death all were real.

Alcott worked at any job open to women in her era; she sewed, "went out to service," minded children, taught school, and eventually managed to sell her short stories to the penny press. She describes her early struggles to support her family in Work (1873). During the Civil War she spent six weeks as a nurse at the Union Hospital in Georgetown, where she contracted typhoid fever; she also collected material for the stories in Hospital Sketches (1863), which attracted national attention and set her on the road to success as a writer.

An 1865 trip to Europe as companion to an invalid gave Alcott the necessary distance from her childhood to see it clearly. On her return, because her father had promised a publisher that she would provide "a book for girls," she wrote Little Women. In her journal for September 1867 she wrote: "[Thomas] Niles, partner of Roberts, asked me to write a girls' book. Said I'd try. F. [Horace B. Fuller] asked me to be the editor of 'Merry's Museum.' Said I'd try. Began at once on both new jobs; but didn't like either."

Published in Boston, Merry's Museum was a pedagogic children's magazine; text and illustrations alike were meant to teach. Boys were apparently the intended audience. (Alcott had always professed to prefer boys to girls; after writing Little Women she commented, "Never liked girls or knew many, except my sisters.") The magazine contained articles on topics such as ants, bees, costumes through the ages, reindeer, the source of cinnamon, Roman emperors, British philosophers, diamonds from Brazil, Inca sculpture, classification of birds, castes in India, Robin Hood, and Henry Morgan. There were also stories: Alcott wrote many of these herself, among them "Tilly's Christmas" (January 1868), "My Little Friend" (February 1868), "Our Little Newsboy" (April 1868), "Will's Wonder-Book" (serialized from April to November 1868), "Tessa's Surprises" (December 1868), and "Sunshiny Sam" (December 1868). She also wrote poetry for the magazine. She was not happy with the editorial post: in early January 1868 she wrote in her journal, "F. pays me $500 a year for my name and some editorial work on Merry's Museum," but by 18 January she was writing, "F. seems to expect me to write the whole magazine, which I did not bargain for."

The success of Little Women freed Alcott from financial need. In 1870 she resigned the editing position and went to Europe for a year in an effort to improve her health, which she had damaged by working fourteen-hour days. In later life she was a vocal supporter of the woman's rights movement. In a letter to her publisher in 1881 she wrote, "If it [Mrs. Harriet H. Robinson's Massachusetts in the Woman Suffrage Movement (1881)] only records the just and wise changes Suffrage has made in the laws for women, it will be worth printing; and it is time to keep account of these first steps, since they count most. I, for one, don't want to be ranked among idiots, felons, and minors any longer, for I am none of the three...."

Louisa May Alcott died in Boston on 6 March 1888, the day her father was buried. He had achieved the fame he sought: he was known as "the father of Little Women." Louisa, the sole support of her family, has often been called by a name he gave her: "Duty's faithful child."