Louisa May Alcott Residence ca. 1933

Though she is most associated with the city of Boston, abolitionist and feminist Louisa May Alcott stayed here at her uncle's house at 130-132 MacDougal Street for two years after the publication of her most famous work, Little Women. She was raised by transcendentalist parents Amos Bronson Alcott and Abigail May and grew up around intellectuals of the day such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau. When she was young her family served as station masters on the Underground Railroad. She also read and was greatly influenced by the "Declaration of Sentiments", published by the Seneca Falls Convention on women's rights. As an adult, she wrote for the Atlantic Monthly and served as a nurse during the Civil War. It was her letters home-revised and published in the Boston anti-slavery paper Commonwealth and collected as 'Hospital Sketches'-that first brought her critical recognition for her observations and humor. She became even more successful with the publication of Little Women in 1868.