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Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women

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Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women, but did you know she also:

• worked as a seamstress, a laundress, a teacher, a governess, and a domestic servant?
• was raised a vegetarian and lived on a commune?
• secretly wrote pulp fiction teeming with transvestites, murderers, spies, and frauds – and these works remained undiscovered until a half-century after her death?
• was an excellent actress – and may have worked as one under a different name?
• wrote and published groundbreaking stories about interracial marriage, slave revolt, and race relations?
• said she didn’t enjoy writing what she called “moral pap for the young” and that she did it for the money?
• supported equal rights for women, organized women to vote 40 years before the nineteenth amendment was passed, and was the first woman to cast her ballot in a Concord election?
• inspired the careers of Gertrude Stein, Gloria Steinem, Simone de Beauvoir, Cynthia Ozick, Ursula LeGuin, Sandra Day O’Connor, Ruth Ginsberg, Hillary Clinton, and J. K. Rowling?