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 grows up among many of the well-known intellectuals of the day, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau.
Nevertheless, her family suffers severe financial difficulties and Alcott works to help support the family from an early age.
She begins to receive critical success for her writing in the 1860s.
Early in her career, she sometimes uses the pen name A. M. Barnard.
Little Women, published in 1868, is set in the Alcott family home, Orchard House, in Concord, Massachusetts and is loosely based on Alcott's childhood experiences with her three sisters.
The novel is very well received and is still a popular children's novel today.