Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888) grew up in Concord, Massachusetts, the daughter of the Transcendentalist educator Bronson Alcott, among neighbours such as Emerson and Thoreau. The family was often poor, and she worked as a seamstress, governess and writer of sensational stories. In 1862–1863 she served as a Union army nurse in Washington, contracting typhoid pneumonia; she described the experience in Hospital Sketches. Little Women made her famous and financially secure.
Little Women follows the four March sisters growing up in a New England town during and after the American Civil War, while their father serves as an army chaplain. Meg, the eldest, is pretty and longs for fine things; Jo, a tomboyish aspiring writer with a quick temper, is the heart of the book; Beth is shy, gentle and musical; and Amy, the youngest, is artistic and vain.
