| Louisa May Alcott is most famous for writing Little Women, (1868) a novel which has shaped the way many women since the Victorian era have defined womanhood, family, and girlhood. It has been translated into twelve languages and is now the subject of dissertations about concepts of child-rearing and education, and Louisa May Alcott as ‘New Woman.’ Louisa grew up in poverty, the daughter of Amos Bronson Alcott, teacher and philosopher of Transcendentalism, and in the company of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau in Concord, Massachusetts. Her mother, Abigail May Alcott was the first social worker in Boston. Louisa served as a nurse in the Civil War and became the family breadwinner with her writing. Little was known until the 1970’s about the diversity of her writing including hundreds of lurid, gothic tales and sensational literature filled with feminist heroines and blood-and-thunder narratives. She was an outspoken opponent of slavery and supporter of the women’s suffrage movement. |
