Louisa May Alcott, by Lindsey (10)

Louisa May Alcott was an important figure in the history of our nation's writing. You might recognize her for writing Little Women, but most people don't recognize her for what she really is.

She served as a nurse during the Civil War, tried to improve women rights, wrote countless books, and was a transcendetaslismist.

Her life started much like ours, with a young spirit finding her way into the world in November of 1832. Her family was extremely poor for the first few years, until Louisa's father, Bronson, opened a new school in Boston: The Temple School, a school with a unusual quality of kindness instead of discipline.

Louisa was a naughty girl, resulting in her being put in school very early (at the age of two). She was also a tomboy and once stated "No boy could be my friend till I had beaten him in a race," she claimed, " and no girl if she refused to climb trees, leap fences....". She once was dared to roll down a hill in a barrel, that broke before she hit the bottom the hill. She was found unconscious and taken home. While a doctor was examining her, she woke up and questioned who was hurt and how.

After a while in Boston, the Alcotts decided to move to the outskirts of Boston due to the closing of the Temple School. Bronson took on many jobs, but none bringing much money, so the family decided to move to Fruitlands with other transcendilismists. The Alcotts loved the land there, but decided to carry on more transcendilism acts by moving to yet another farm land with the idea that everyone would work together to bring in crops so that absolutely no stores would be necessary. This idea failed, partly because Bronson became ill.

The Alcotts moved back to Boston, and heavy labor came upon their shoulders to live, including early jobs for Louisa and her older sister, Anna, such as laundry maids and school teachers, but they kept through it.

After the Civil War started, Louisa decided that she would go and serve as a nurse for pay, because there was nothing else to do, and she wanted to do something to support the country and her fellow soldiers.

Louisa was accepted as a nurse in a position of the Washington D.C. Hospital. A few weeks after she had arrived there, she found the story she had submitted to a magazine for a prize of $100 had won.

After six months of working as a nurse, Louisa fell ill with typhoid fever, and was treated with calomel, a medicine that contains mercury. She was kept in bed, during which she wrote Hospital Sketches, a book illustrating the hospital that she worked at, afterwhich she recovered for the time being, but was sent home.

Miss Alcott's new book was sent in for publishing many different times at many different places, but wasn't published until she found a man by the name of Thomas Niles, who agreed to help publish this book and books to come in the future.

After Hospital Sketches and a few other books were published, Niles suggested that she write a book for young women. Louisa refused, saying that she didn't like girls, and further more didn't know any, besides her own family. Louisa kept protesting, but finally gave in and wrote Little Women, a book about the only girls she knew, her family. In this book, she used what had really happened in her young life, renaming herself Jo. Almost everything about this book is true, from the fact young Miss Alcott would eat apples under the tree while reading to "Beth" dying from the afterworks of scarlet fever. However, a few parts were revised.

Unlike Jo, Louisa never married, and there really was no Laurie.

Little Women was a huge success, and secured Louisa'a wealthiness. For the rest of her life, Louisa kept writing other books such as Rose in Bloom and The Aunt Hill, as well as continuing Little Women in Little Men, and a few other books. However these books containing Little Women after Little Women were not reality, but made up since Miss Alcott never married, or had children besides her adopted "Lizzie" (the ofspring of her sister who had died about two months after childbirth from a certain illness).

Alcott stopped her fluency of writing books by the time she aged over fifty years of age, from the mercury she had been given in the form of calomel.

Alcott died on March 6, 1888, two days after her father from the after-affects of mercury poisoning. But her legacy still lives on.