Louisa May Alcott

Louisa (Lou) May Alcott (; November 29, 1832 – March 6, 1888) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet best known for writing the novel Little Women (1868) and its sequels Good Wives (1869), Little Men (1871), and Jo's Boys (1886). Raised in New England by their transcendentalist parents, Abigail May and Amos Bronson Alcott, they grew up among many well-known intellectuals of the day, including Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau. Encouraged by their family, Alcott began writing from an early age.
Alcott's family experienced financial hardship, and while Alcott took on various jobs to help support the family from an early age, they also sought to earn money by writing. In the 1860s they began to achieve critical success for their writing with the publication of Hospital Sketches, a book based on their service as a nurse in the American Civil War. Early in their career, they sometimes used pen names such as A. M. Barnard, under which they wrote lurid short stories and sensation novels for adults. Little Women was one of their first successful novels and has been adapted for film and television. It is loosely based on Alcott's childhood experiences with their three sisters, Abigail May Alcott Nieriker, Elizabeth Sewall Alcott, and Anna Alcott Pratt.
Alcott was an abolitionist and a feminist and remained unmarried throughout their life.