POPULAR WRITERS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
EDWARD S. ELLIS
MARTHA FINLEY • HORATIO ALGER JR.
“OLIVER OPTIC”
LOUISA M. ALCOTT • SARA JANE LIPPINCOTT
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT.
AUTHOR OF “LITTLE WOMEN.”
HE famous author of “Little Women,” “Little Men,” and “Old-Fashioned Girls,” made her beginning, as have many who have done any good or acquired fame in the world, by depending on herself. In other words, she was the architect of her own fortune, and has left behind her works that will endure to gladden the hearts of millions of boys and girls. But she has done more. She has left behind her a record of a life within itself, a benediction and inspiration to every thoughtful girl who reads it.
While Miss Alcott always considered New England her home, she was actually born in Germantown, Philadelphia, November 29, 1832. Her father, Amos Bronson Alcott, after his marriage in New England, accepted a position as principal of a Germantown Academy, which he occupied from 1831 to 1834, and afterwards taught a children’s school at his own residence, but he was unsuccessful and he returned to Boston in 1835, when Louisa was two years old.
From this time forward, Mr. Alcott was a close friend and associate of the poet and philosopher Emerson, sharing with him his transcendental doctrines, and joining in the Brook-Farm experiment of ideal communism at Roxbury, Mass. The Brook-Farm experiment brought Mr. Alcott to utter financial ruin, and after its failure he removed to Concord, where he continued to live until his death. It was at this time that Louisa, although a mere child, formed a noble and unselfish purpose to retrieve the family fortune. When only fifteen years of age, she turned her thoughts to teaching, her first school being in a barn and attended by the children of Mr. Emerson and other neighbors. Almost at the same time she began to compose fairy stories, which were contributed to papers; but these early productions brought her little if any compensation, and she continued to devote herself to teaching, receiving her own education privately from her father. “When I was twenty-one years of age,” she wrote many years later to a friend, “I took my little earnings ($20) and a few clothes, and went out to seek my fortune, though I might have sat still and been supported by rich friends. All those hard years were teaching me what I afterwards put into books, and so I made my fortune out of my seeming misfortune.”