Louisa May Alcott
Louisa May Alcott is most famous for her novel Little Women which talks about four sisters with their dad at war and having to get through tough times with each other. She was born on November 29, 1832 in Germantown, Philadelphia and she died on March 6, 1888 in Boston, Massachusetts. She is also famous for writing Little Men, Jo's Boys, Eight Cousins. She had three siblings, the oldest was Anna Bronson Alcott, then Elizabeth Sewall Alcott, finally Abigail May Alcott. In her later years she suffered from chronic health problems including vertigo and she died of mercury poisoning. She served in the Civil War as a nurse. Unknown to most people, Louisa May Alcott had been publishing poems, short stories, thrillers, and awesome tales since 1851, under the pen name Flora Fairfield. In 1862, she also adopted the pen name A.M. Barnard, and some of her dramas were produced on Boston stages. But it was her account of her Civil War experiences, Hospital Sketches (1863), that confirmed Alcott's desire to be a serious writer. She began to publish stories under her real name in Atlantic Monthly and Lady's Companion, and took a brief trip to Europe in 1865 before becoming editor of a girls' magazine, Merry's Museum. The great success of Little Women (1869–70) gave Alcott financial independence and created a demand for more books. Over the final years of her life, she turned out a steady stream of novels and short stories, mostly for young people and drawn directly from her family life. Alcott also tried her hand at adult novels, such as Work (1873) and A Modern Mephistopheles(1877), but these tales were not as popular as her other writing. Louisa May Alcott wrote many books in her lifetime but nothing is as famous as Little Women.