In 1836, Bronson became a member of a group of liberal intellectuals, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and John Muir, who met to discuss their ideas about the general state of American culture and society.

The school was as controversial as his previous schools, although he managed to continue operating it for seven years. In Boston, Bronson established the Temple School in the fall of 1834, named for the Masonic Temple on Tremont Street in Boston in which classes were held, with about 30 students from wealthy families. Louisa no doubt was thinking of her father when she said many years later, 'My definition (of a philosopher) is of a man up in a balloon, with his family and friends holding the ropes which confine him to earth and trying to haul him down.' An idealist, Bronson was capable of ignoring the fact that his family was at times literally surviving on bread and water. When the benefactor died, the school closed and the Alcotts moved to Philadelphia briefly, where Bronson ran an unsuccessful day school before returning to Boston in 1834 when Louisa was two years old. The school he taught at in Germantown was the third school he had started, this time with aid from a wealthy benefactor who paid the tuition of many of the students. Bronson was a teaching pioneer whose new methods of educating children often didn’t sit well with the communities in which he taught he de-emphasized rote learning, used a more conversational, didactic style with his students, and avoided traditional punishment. She was the second of four daughters: Anna Bronson Alcott was the oldest, born MaElizabeth Sewell Alcott was born Jand Abigail May Alcott was born July 26, 1840.Īlcott’s parents were New Englanders who were part of the mid-19th century social reform movement, supporting the abolition of slavery-even acting as station-masters on the Underground Railroad-and active in the temperance and women’s rights movements. Louisa May Alcott was born November 29, 1832, to Amos Bronson Alcott, called Bronson, and Abigail May Alcott in Germantown, Pennsylvania.

Alcott is also remembered for her book Hospital Sketches, which she penned in 1863 based on letters she had written home while serving as a nurse in Washington, D.C., during the Civil War. Little Women remains a beloved classic of children’s literature today. Instead, it offered a fully realized young heroine in the spirited character of tomboy Jo March. Written in 1868, it departed from the existing practice of idealized and/or stereotypical children in books meant for young readers. Little Women, her most famous book, was a novel for girls.

Louisa May Alcott summary: Louisa May Alcott was an American writer who authored over 30 books and short-story collections and wrote poetry as well.

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