Born in 1832, Louisa May Alcott is best known as the author of the Little Women trilogy, which today is published as a single volume. Alcott was raised by Transcendentalist parents; when Louisa was eight, the family moved to Concord, Massachusetts, where her father joined the Transcendental Club, joining the company of men like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. As a result, Louisa's life was often marked by a desire to achieve perfection, a central pursuit of Transcendentalism.
Because her family lived in poverty, Alcott took a number of jobs to help support her family, such as teacher, seamstress, and eventually writer. By 1860, she had a reputation as an abolitionist and a...
