Louisa May Alcott was born on November 29, 1832 in Germantown, Pennsylvania. Her father was a transcendentalist and teacher, who was acquainted with Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Margaret Fuller among others.
Louisa had three sisters, and her experiences with them, formed the basis for the plot of Little Women. Her father was a perfectionist and an extremely strict parent, which often led to conflict. In 1840, the family moved to Concord, Massachusetts, but continued to live in poverty, forcing Louisa to work to support the family as a seamstress, maid and finally writer.
As she grew older, Louisa became an anti-slavery advocate and a member of the Underground Railroad. During the Civil War, she served as a nurse in Washington, D. C. Writing under the pseudonym A. M. Barnard, her novels began to make money. Finally, she wrote Little Women and its two sequels which cemented her fame, all of them, based upon her own life.
Alcott remained single her entire life, openly stating her love for women, and being an advocate for women's issues. During her life, she suffered from vertigo, typhoid fever, mercury poisoning and possibly lupus. She died from a stroke on March 6, 1888, at the age of 55, in Boston, two days after her father. She is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, on "Author's Ridge," with Emerson, Thoreau and Hawthorne.
