Comic Tragedies

Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888) grew up in Concord, Massachusetts, daughter of the idealistic and often penniless educator Bronson Alcott; Emerson and Thoreau were family friends and teachers. To support her family she sewed, taught, worked as a servant and wrote sensational thrillers under a pen name.

During the Civil War she nursed soldiers in Washington until she fell gravely ill. When her publisher asked for a book for girls, she wrote Little Women (1868), drawn from her own family, and it made her famous and secure. She campaigned against slavery and for women's right to vote.