In December of 1858, Louisa May writes, “Father started on his tour West full of hope. May makes note of her father’s struggle to earn a living in the journals she kept.

ĭue to her father’s inability to provide for their family, Alcott was, in fact, the primary breadwinner of her family. Despite this, Bronson often struggled to financially provide for his family, leaving the responsibility to Louisa May to take up on her own. Her father, who went by his middle name Bronson, was a transcendentalist author and educator. She was the second of her parents’ four daughters and spent most of her upbringing in Concord, Massachusetts. Louisa May Alcott was born on November 29th, 1832, to Amos Bronson Alcott and Abigail May Alcott. As a result, Alcott was able to achieve her primary goal of supporting her family while still protecting her growing reputation. While Alcott struggled to create a name for herself, she turned to writing anonymous thriller tales throughout the 1860s.

This report analyzes Alcott’s rise to stardom in the 1860s through the lens of her journals and correspondence. Alcott, her time spent writing anonymous thrillers, and her motivations behind these works, serve as a window into the struggles of female authors during the nineteenth-century. However, throughout her career Alcott also published anonymous thriller tales. Most people know Louisa May Alcott as the famed author of Little Women.

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