biography
pronunciation:
[awlkot]
| sex:
| female
|
| lived:
| (1832–88)
|
| biography:
| Writer, born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, USA. She was taught by her father, Amos Bronson Alcott, until 1848, and studied informally with family friends such as Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Theodore Parker. Residing in Boston and Concord, MD, she worked as a domestic servant, a teacher, and at other jobs to help support her family (1850–62), and during the Civil War she went to Washington, DC to serve as a nurse. Unknown to most people, she had been publishing poems, short stories, thrillers, and juvenile tales since 1851, under the pen name Flora Fairfield. In 1862 she also adopted the pen name A M Barnard, and some of her melodramas were produced on Boston stages. But it was her account of her Civil War experiences, Hospital Sketches (1863), that confirmed her desire to be a serious writer. She began to publish stories under her real name in Atlantic Monthly and Lady's Companion, and took a brief trip to Europe in 1865 before becoming editor of a girls' magazine, Merry's Museum (1868). The great success of Little Women (1869–70) gave her financial independence and also created a demand for more books. For the rest of her life she turned out a steady stream of novels and short stories, mostly for young people, and drawn directly from her own family life. Other books include Little Men (1871), Eight Cousins (1875), and Jo's Boys (1886). She also tried her hand at adult novels, such as Work (1873) and A Modern Mephistopheles (1877), but did not have the literary talent to attract serious readers. Like many women of her day and class, she supported women's suffrage and temperance, but she never found much happiness in her personal life. She grew impatient with the demands made on her as a successful writer, became the caretaker of her always impractical father, and was increasingly beset by physical ailments that led to a succession of remedies and healers. Sickly and lonely, she died at age 55 on the day of her father's funeral. |
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