![]() Bronson, a self-educated Romantic, left his Connecticut home as a teenager to become a Yankee peddler, a type of traveling salesman. Louisa May Alcott, circa 1870s Getty Images Louisa's father was a transcendentalistīorn in Pennsylvania in 1832, Louisa was one of four sisters, the daughters of Amos Bronson Alcott and Abigail “Abba” Alcott. But Louisa’s real-life family, upon whom the book was partly based, was infinitely more complicated - and even more interesting. Louisa had captured the world’s imagination with her tale of the brave, beloved March family, and Little Women - a book about the Civil War–era lives of Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy March, four sisters who struggle with life, love and friendship - has never been out of print. The “infants” were Louisa’s fans, and ever since the publication of Little Women, they had bombarded her with letters asking for a sequel and demanding to know how much of the book was autobiographical - a question readers still pose today. “Don’t send me any more letters from so cracked girls,” she begged her mother in a letter from Switzerland in 1870. ![]() ![]() Her latest book, Little Women, was a runaway bestseller - and the constant barrage of fan mail, the visits and the demands on her time had wrecked her already delicate health. ![]() But even in the Swiss Alps, the author couldn’t escape the thing that had exhausted her in the first place: her fans. Louisa May Alcott had come to Europe to rest. ![]()
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