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“Talent isn’t genius and no amount of energy
can make it so.”
At the age of 16, after her father’s Utopian community,
Fruitlands, proved a failure, Louisa May Alcott took on the
responsibility of earning money to support her family. She
worked as a teacher, a tutor, a seamstress, a servant. None
of it brought in enough. In 1862, she went to Washington,
D.C., to serve as a nurse during the Civil War, and her
letters home became the basis for her first popular book,
Hospital Sketches, in 1863.
Her publisher suggested she write a book for young
girls. The result was the semi-autobiographical Little
Women. Published in 1868, it was an instant hit, selling
2,000 copies in the first month. She followed it up
with a sequel the next year; it sold 13,000 copies in its
first month.
As a nurse during the Civil War, she’d contracted
typhoid fever in the hospital. Though she recovered, the
cure gave her mercury poisoning, which caused her ill
health for the rest of her life. Nonetheless, she succeeded
in supporting her family quite richly through the publication
of over 30 novels and collections of stories. |
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Louisa May Alcott
(1832–1897) |
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