Alcott wrote Little Women “ in record time for money .” Since Alcott never married and wrote that she was “ often lonely and in ill health ,” some people questioned how she was able to write so beautifully and reflectively about " American home life .”

“ Alcott particularly battled the conventional marriage plot in writing Little Women ” Alcott did not have Jo accept Laurie ’ s hand in marriage ; rather, when she finally had Jo get married, she picked an unconventional man for Jo ’ s husband.

While “ Alcott never questioned the value of domesticity ” she challenged the social constructs that made spinsters obscure and fringe members of society solely because they were not married.

Abby May Alcott in her later years

Alcott had been influenced by educational philosophy of the Swiss pedagogue Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi and even renamed his school " The Cheshire Pestalozzi School ". His style attracted the attention of Samuel Joseph May, who introduced Alcott to his sister Abby May.

Abby May wrote in her journal on January 17, 1843, " A day of some excitement, as Mr. Alcott refused to pay his town tax ... After waiting some time to be committed jail, he was told it was paid by a friend.

After the death of his wife Abby May on November 25, 1877, Alcott never returned to Orchard House, too heartbroken to live there.

* Amos Bronson Alcott marries Abby May.

Louisa May Alcott was born on her father's birthday, November 29, 1832, at a half hour past midnight.

With financial support from Emerson, Alcott left Concord on May 8, 1842, to a visit to England, leaving his brother Junius with his family.

Louisa May Alcott, who was ten years old at the time, later wrote of the experience in Transcendental Wild Oats ( 1873 ): " The band of brothers began by spading garden and field ; but a few days of it lessened their ardor amazingly.

Henry David Thoreau died on May 6, 1862, likely from an illness he caught from Alcott two years earlier.

It has continued functioning with a Summer Conversational Series in its original building at Orchard House, now run by the Louisa May Alcott Memorial Association.

* Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women, lived and worked for seven weeks during 1851 as a domestic helper in Dedham

Louisa May Alcott ( November 29, 1832 – March 6, 1888 ) was an American novelist best known as author of the novel Little Women and its sequels Little Men and Jo's Boys.

Raised by her transcendentalist parents, Abigail May Alcott and Amos Bronson Alcott in New England, she grew up among many of the well-known intellectuals of the day such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau.

She was the daughter of transcendentalist and educator Amos Bronson Alcott and social worker Abigail May Alcott and the second of four daughters: Anna Bronson Alcott was the eldest ; Elizabeth Sewall Alcott and Abigail May Alcott were the two youngest.

It was there that their first child, a daughter they named Anna Bronson Alcott, was born on March 16, 1831, after 36 hours of labor.

In January 1844, Alcott moved his family to Still River, a village within Harvard but, on March 1, 1845, the family returned to Concord to live in a home they named " The Hillside " ( later renamed " The Wayside " by Nathaniel Hawthorne ).

Alcott spoke, as opportunity arose, before the " lyceums " then common in various parts of the United States, or addressed groups of hearers as they invited him.

On January 19, 1879, Alcott and Franklin Benjamin Sanborn wrote a prospectus for a new school which they distributed to potentially interested people throughout the country.

Alcott wrote, " they are the best critics, so I should definitely be satisfied.

Little Women ’ s popular audience was responsive to ideas of social change as they were shown “ within the familiar construct of domesticity .” Even though Alcott was supposed to just write a story for girls, her main heroine, Jo March, became a favorite of many different women, including educated women writers through the 20th century.

In American editions they were read by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Bronson Alcott, and G. R. S. Mead, secretary to Mme Blavatsky, the founder of Theosophy.

Alcott also wrote a series patterned after the work of German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe which were eventually published in the Transcendentalists ' journal, The Dial.

Born in Connecticut in 1799, Alcott had only minimal formal schooling before attempting a career as a traveling salesman.

At age 17, Alcott passed the exam for a teaching certificate but had trouble finding work as a teacher.

While working on a second book, Alcott and Peabody had a falling out and Conversations with Children on the Gospels was prepared with help from Peabody's sister Sophia, published at the end of December 1836.

Alcott was rejected by most public opinion and, by the summer of 1837, he had only 11 students left and no assistant after Margaret Fuller moved to Providence, Rhode Island.

The controversy had caused many parents to remove their children and, as the school closed, Alcott became increasingly financially desperate.

The school's founder, James Pierpont Greaves, had only recently died but Alcott was invited to stay there for a week.

As Alcott had published earlier, " Our wine is water, — flesh, bread ; — drugs, fruits.

Alcott had high expectations but was often away when the community most needed him as he attempted to recruit more members.

Lane believed Alcott had misled him into thinking enough people would join the enterprise and developed a strong dislike for the nuclear family.

In the years following the book's publication, responses to the tale were published by W. M. Swepstone ( Christmas Shadows, 1850 ), Horatio Alger ( Job Warner's Christmas, 1863 ), Louisa May Alcott ( A Christmas Dream, and How It Came True, 1882 ), and others who followed Scrooge's life as a reformed man – or some who thought Dickens had gotten it wrong and needed to be corrected.

Because of her family ’ s prominence in Boston society, Perry had access from an early age to such literary greats as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Louisa May Alcott, and James Russell Lowell.

She had outlasted most of her contemporaries such as King, Patty Sheehan and Amy Alcott, remaining competitive on the LPGA Tour.

In the novel Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, Mrs. March reads from Fredrika Bremer to her four daughters.

Born at the Hosmer Cottage, Abigail May was the youngest of the four Alcott sisters.

Three times Alcott would win four tournaments in a year: 1979, 1980, and 1984.

Amos Bronson, the oldest of eight children, later changed the spelling to " Alcott " and dropped his first name.

It has been read as a family drama that validates virtue over wealth .” Little Women has been read “ as a means of escaping that life by women who knew its gender constraints only too well .” Alcott “ combines many conventions of the sentimental novel with crucial ingredients of Romantic children ’ s fiction, creating a new form of which Little Women is a unique model .” Elbert argued that within Little Women can be found the first vision of the “ American Girl ” and that her multiple aspects are embodied in the differing March sisters.

Ruth MacDonald argued that “ Louisa May Alcott stands as one of the great American practitioners of the girls ’ novel and the family story .” In the 1860s, gendered separation of children ’ s fiction was a newer division in literature.