ABSTRACT
Born to Amos Bronson and Abigail May Alcott on November 29, 1832, in Germantown, Pennsylvania, she moved with her family at an early age to Concord, Massachusetts. Despite Bronson Alcott’s failure in two of his endeavors in the 1840s, the Temple School in Boston and his utopian Fruitlands experiment, he remained interested in education and philosophy, and Louisa May Alcott’s appreciated his unconventional teaching methods. Beyond the tutoring from her parents in Concord, while Louisa tutored Ralph Waldo Emerson’s daughter, Ellen, she studied the classics in philosophy and literature through the unlimited access she had to Emerson’s library. Because of her father’s limited success as breadwinner, the financial responsibility to support the family fell increasingly on Louisa, her sisters, and her mother. At an early age Louisa helped support the family with money she earned from jobs that included reading to the elderly, doing laundry for others, sewing, and acting as a companion.
