![]() ![]() Born on a small farm in Wolcott, Conn., he came from a less distinguished family than his wife. Bronson Alcott was a dreamer, a reformer, a philosopher and a hopelessly improvident father. Louisa May Alcott had a reason, if only subconscious, for writing her father out of the story. ![]() In many other ways, though, the book stayed true to the Alcott family story. Emerson, her mother’s fourth cousin, helped support them financially. Growing up, Louisa knew Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Nathaniel Hawthorne. And unlike the March family, they moved in the leading intellectual circles of the day. The Alcott family had less stability than the Marches, though. Alcott modeled Marmee on her mother, Abigail May Alcott, and the absent Father on her own father, Bronson Alcott. ![]() Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy were in real life Anna, Louy, Lizzy and May. And it was true, for she based the characters on her own family. ![]() Louisa May Alcott attributed the book’s success to its simplicity and truth. A century and a half after Little Women first reached the bookstore shelves, the story of four sisters and their mother still has ardent fans. ![]()
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