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Louisa May Alcott, portrait by George Healy; in the Louisa May Alcott Memorial Association … (credit: Courtesy of Louisa May Alcott Memorial Association)

(born Nov. 29, 1832, Germantown, Pa., U.S. — died March 6, 1888, Boston, Mass.) U.S. author. Daughter of the reformer Bronson Alcott, she grew up in Transcendentalist circles in Boston and Concord, Mass. She began writing to help support her mother and sisters. An ardent abolitionist, she volunteered as a nurse during the American Civil War, where she contracted the typhoid that damaged her health the rest of her life; her letters, published as Hospital Sketches (1863), first brought her fame. With the huge success of the autobiographical Little Women (1868 – 69), she finally escaped debt. An Old-Fashioned Girl (1870), Little Men (1871), and Jo's Boys (1886) also drew on her experiences as an educator.

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