The Oxford Companion to American Literature | Alcott, Louisa May
Alcott, Louisa May( 1832–88), a daughter of Bronson Alcott, was born in Pennsylvania, spent most of her early years in Boston and Concord, and was educated by her father, receiving instruction and guidance also from such friends as Thoreau, Emerson, and Theodore Parker. She worked at various tasks to help support her family, and at the age of 16 wrote a book, Flower Fables (1854). Her ambition for a time was to be an actress, and she wrote several unproduced melodramas, as well as poems and short stories, some of which were published in the Atlantic Monthly. She was a nurse in a Union hospital during the Civil War until her health failed: her letters of this period were published as Hospital Sketches (1863). She issued her first novel, Moods, in 1865, and toured Europe as a lady's companion the same year. Between 1863 and 1869 she published anonymous and pseudonymous Gothic romances and thrilling tales, like...
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