WOMEN IN HISTORY - LOUISA MAY ALCOTT

Seamstress, servant, teacher, Civil War nurse, and finally, author and novelist.
Picture
Image Donated by Corbis - Bettmann

DATE OF BIRTH

November 29, 1832

PLACE OF BIRTH

Germantown (now a part of Philadelphia), Pennsylvania.  Her family moved in 1834 to Boston, Massachusetts. and in 1840 Concord, Massachusetts. 

DATE OF DEATH

March 6, 1888 - the date of her own father's funeral, to which she was unaware

PLACE OF DEATH

Boston, Massachusetts 

FAMILY BACKGROUND

Louisa was one of four daughters.  Although her father's association with the Transcendentalists allowed Louisa to grow up in an intellectual and non-conventional environment, her own views challenged the transcendental philosophies.  Her education served to foster her love and dedication to writing, acting, education and women's rights.

EDUCATION

Most of Louisa May Alcott's early education was received by her father, Bronson Alcott.  For a short time she attended a small school in Still River Village and a small school held in her family's barn.  She was instructed throughout her childhood by her father's  fellow Transcendentalists:  writers and family friends, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Margaret Fuller.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Louisa May Alcott is widely known as the writer of Little Women, a self reflective children's book published in 1868.  The success of this book led to other books based on Alcott's life such as Little Men and Jo's Boys.  Louisa's success as a writer allowed her to support her sisters and parents. Prompted by her wish to promote womens' roles and her hatred for slavery, as a young adult during the Civil War, she volunteered to be a nurse in an army hospital in Washington, D.C..  During this time, Alcott contracted typhoid fever.  This experience provided the theme for her work, Hospital Sketches.

Although she is most popular for her children's literature, Alcott explored the themes of self expression and women's rights through her adult fiction works Behind a Mask; or, A Woman's Power, and Work: A Story of Experience, and A Modern Mephistopheles.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

  • Alcott, Louisa May.  Alternative Alcott.  Edited and with an introduction by Elaine Showalter.  New Brunswick:  Rutgers University Press, 1987.
  • Alcott, Louisa May.  Behind a Mask: the Unknown Thrillers of Louisa May Alcott. Edited and with an introduction by Madeleine Stern.  New York: Morrow, 1975.
  • Alcott, Louisa May.  Moods.  Edited and with an introduction by Sarah Elbert.  New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1991.
  • Bedell, Madelon.  The Alcotts: a Family Biography.  New York: Crown Publishers, 1980.
  • Myerson, Joel and Daniel Shealy.  The Selected Letters of Louisa May Alcott.  Boston: Little Brown, 1987.
  • Stern, Madeleine Bettina.  Louisa May Alcott.  Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1950.

QUOTE

"You have a good many little gifts and virtues, but there is no need of parading them, for conceit spoils the finest genius. There is not much danger that real talent or goodness will be overlooked long, and the great charm of all power is modesty." ~ Louisa May Alcott