Louisa May Alcott

Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888) was an American novelist, raised in Massachusetts in the circle of the Transcendentalists; Emerson and Thoreau were family friends, and her father, the educator Bronson Alcott, was a brilliant man who rarely earned a living. Louisa supported the family by teaching, sewing and writing, including sensational thrillers under a pseudonym, and served as a nurse in the Civil War until typhoid ended her service. Little Women, written quickly at a publisher's suggestion in 1868, made her famous and secure; Little Men and Jo's Boys continued the story. She never married, was an active supporter of women's suffrage, and died two days after her father.