Louisa May Alcott's overwhelming success dated from Little Women, a semi-autobiographical account of her childhood years with her sisters in Concord, Massachusetts. Good Wives followed the March sisters into adulthood and their respective marriages. Little Men detailed the characters and ways of her nephews who lived with her at Orchard House in Concord. Jo's Boys completed the "March Family Saga."
Most of her later volumes followed in the line of Little Women, remaining popular with her large and loyal public. Although the Jo character in Little Women was based on Louisa May Alcott, she, unlike Jo, never married.
In her later life, Alcott became an advocate of women's suffrage and was the first woman to register to vote in Concord, Massachusetts. Alcott, along with Elizabeth Stoddard, Rebecca Harding Davis, Anne Moncure Crane, and others, were part of a group of female authors during the U.S. Gilded Age to address women?s issues in a modern and candid manner.
Despite worsening health, Alcott wrote through the rest of her life, finally succumbing to the after-effects of mercury poisoning contracted during her American Civil War service. She died in Boston at age 55, two days after visiting her father on his deathbed.
