Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women

Louisa May Alcott was no little woman, and her life was no children's book; her story is as full of incident, surprise, and heroism as any plot she invented. The daughter of improvident educator Bronson Alcott, Louisa was homeschooled by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, served as a nurse in the Civil War, fought for women's suffrage, and lived a secret life as the author of lurid pulp fiction until Little Women lifted her and her family from rags to riches and literary celebrity.