Alcott, Louisa May

Alcott, Louisa May (1832-1888), American writer, whose books for children are characterized by their intimate depiction of family life and loyalties. The daughter of the educator and philosopher Bronson Alcott, she was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania. She was raised in Boston and was tutored by the American writers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. While serving as a nurse during the American Civil War, Alcott wrote letters to her family that were later published as Hospital Sketches (1863). In order to support her own often poverty-stricken family, Alcott also wrote a number of thrillers, which were published pseudonymously in various magazines. Her literary output consisted of some 300 titles in different genres, but her most famous works— Little Women (1868-1869), an autobiographical novel of her childhood, and its sequels, Little Men (1871) and Jo's Boys (1886)—are considered classics. When she tired of writing literature for children she wrote A Modern Mephistopheles (1877), the story of a young woman's efforts to escape seduction by a diabolic character with whom her husband has made a Faustian pact. This, together with A Whisper in the Dark (1889), a novel with a similar theme, was published posthumously.