REMEMBERING "LITTLE WOMEN"

March is recognized as "National Historical Women" month, so I decided to recognize and remember one of my very favorite historical women, Louisa May Alcott. I can remember very well as a young girl reading "Little Women", "Jo's Boy's", and "Eight Cousins", all written by this famous author. I loved Jo and her sisters and I even remember not so long ago seeing the "Little Women" movie. You just can't seem to get enough of them. I have done a little research and in her honor, have decided to do a "mini" series of posts for the next few days of interesting tidbits of her life. I hope you enjoy.


Ralph Waldo Emerson, a very good friend of Louisa's father had a great influence over her. She visited his vast library frequently.Other great historical figures that played a large part in Louisa's life were fellow friends of her father, Margaret Fuller and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Also Henry David Thoreau, whom she went walking through the family orchard with often.

Louisa was the second daughter born to Abigail "Abba" May , a women's suffrage and abolitionist advocate. Louisa's father, Amos Bronson Alcott was a well known trancendentalist philosopher and education and social reformer.Louisa had three sisters, Anna, Elizabeth, and May.

The Orchard House in which her family lived in Concord was surrounded by acres of apple trees and served as the setting for her future novel "Little Women".

The sequels to this famous novel are: "Good Wives", 1869; "Little Men", 1871; and "Jo's Boy's", 1886.

At around the age of fifteen, Louisa began contributing to the family income by holding such positions as teacher, seamstress, and servant which was said to have inspired her later novel "Work: A Story of Experience", written in 1873. While she kept a journal from a very early age, she was always encouraged to write poems, sketches and plays, acted out by her and her sister's.