Louisa May Alcott

American writer noted for "Little Women," 1868. A nurse during the Civil War 1861-1865, she became one of America's most famous and beloved writer of children's stories. Tired of "providing moral pap for the young," Alcott wrote "A Modern Mephistopheles" in 1877. Once secret, her novel is surprisingly erotic. This perception is reinforced by Alcott's own letters, published as "The Selected Letters of Louisa May Alcott." A self-described "literary spinster," she wrote, "I was born with a boy's nature and have always fought my fight . . . with a boy's spirit." Literature took the place of love, marriage and children. She called her first book in 1854 her "firstborn." The dutiful daughter of a idealistic, influential but mostly impoverished Transcendentalist philosopher, Bronson Alcott, she turned out to be a hardheaded Yankee literary entrepreneur. She wrote to her sister Anna in 1854, "I am grubbing away as usual. I have $11, all of my own earnings - $5 for a story and $4 for a pile of sewing I did for the ladies." Her beloved sister Elizabeth, the model for Beth in "Little Women" died on on March 14, 1858 at 3 AM according to Louisa's journal. Louisa was an assertive and self-contained woman, an early and ardent feminist who set out to win fortune and fame and was utterly unsurprised when she did so. Alcott suffered from vertigo and other maladies for many years. About two years before her death she entered a homeopathic nursing home in Boston, complaining of insomnia and lack of appetite. Despite a permanent writer's cramp in her thumb, she was able to complete the final book in the March family saga, "Jo's Boys," 1886 and to write the last book of all, "A Garland for Girls," 1888. She went to see her dying father in Boston on 3/01/1888 and caught a chill. A day or so later she suffered a violent headache, and sinking rapidly, died 3/06/1888, at 3:30 AM, the day of her father's funeral. Link to Wikipedia biography