Alcott, Louisa May

Louisa May Alcott

Born November 29, 1832
Germantown, Pennsylvania

Died March 6, 1888
Roxbury, Massachusetts

Writer and editor

"Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead."

Louisa May Alcott is most famous as the author of Little Women (1868) and the seven novels that followed in the "Little Women" series. The novels are realistic and entertaining accounts of the March family, and show children developing as independent and thoughtful individuals, facing and learning from conflicts, and sharing a warm and loving family life. Alcott enjoyed widespread popularity in her lifetime as a children's author. Meanwhile, she was secretly successful as a magazine writer of sensational fiction about crime, revenge, and romance. Alcott was not revealed as the writer of those stories until more than fifty years after her death.

Keeping a Journal

Louisa May Alcott was born on November 29, 1832, in Germantown, Pennsylvania. She was the second of four daughters of Amos Bronson Alcott, a noted philosopher and educator, and Abigail May, a descendant of one of Boston's more prominent families. The family moved to Boston, Massachusetts, in 1834 when Alcott's father founded a schoolbased on some of his principles of education.

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