Her first book was Flower Fables (1854), tales originally written for Ellen, the daughter of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Due to the family's poverty, she began Work at an early age as an occasional teacher, seamstress, governess, domestic help, and writer. In 1847 the family housed a fugitive slave for one week, and in 1848 Alcott read and admired the 'Declaration of Sentiments' published by the Seneca Falls Convention on women's rights. She later described these early years in a newspaper sketch entitled 'Silver Pitchers' (1876) which relates the experiences of her family during their experiment in 'plain living and high thinking' at Fruitlands.Īs she grew older, she developed as both an abolitionist and a feminist. Alcott's early education had included lessons from the naturalist Henry David Thoreau but had chiefly been in the hands of her father. They moved to the Utopian Fruitlands community for a brief interval in 1843-1844, and then after its collapse to rented rooms and subsequently, a house in Concord purchased with her mother's inheritance and help from Emerson. In 1840, after several setbacks with the school, her family moved to a cottage on two acres along the Concord River in Concord, Massachusetts. The family moved to Boston in 1844, where her father established an experimental school and joined the Transcendentalist Club with Emerson, Thoreau, and other authors of that ilk.ĭuring her girlhood and early womanhood, Alcott shared in her family's poverty and Transcendentalist ideals.

She is best known for the novel Little Women, which she wrote in 1868.Īlcott was the daughter of noted Transcendentalist Amos Bronson Alcott and Abigail May III, and though of New England parentage and residence, she was born in Germantown, now part of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Louisa May Alcott was an American novelist who was born on Novemand died on March 6, 1888.

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