Louisa May Alcott is the subject of today’s Google Doodle.
The image celebrates her iconic novel Little Women and its sequels, taking you to an article that celebrates her birthday, which took place today in 1832. Here are nine things to remember the novelist by:
- The Pennsylvania native was the daughter of a transcendentalist, helping to shape Alcott’s search for perfection in her life and art.
- Her education included teachers who are among the greatest literary figures of the era, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller.
- She didn’t have a lot of money growing up so she paid the bills with a number of jobs, including working as a teacher, seamstress and later on writer.
- Her career kicked off around 1860, when she started writing for literary and cultural commentary magazine the Atlantic Monthly.
- Alcott’s career took off in 1968 when she released Little Women, which gave women a voice as it showed the world from the perspective of three sisters, including their early life and later years.
- Good Wives was the sequel to Little Women, being released a year later. Little Men came in 1971 and Jo’s Boys completed the series in 1886.
- She suffered from a number of health problems, including vertigo in her later years.
- Alcott served as a Civil War nurse, contracting typhoid fever in the process.
- She died at age 55 of mercury poisoning.
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