American novelist Louisa May Alcott is best known for her classic coming-of-age novel Little Women, and its sequels Little Men and Jo s Boys. The daughter of noted transcendentalist and educator Amos Bronson Alcott and Abigail May Alcott, Alcott was an active abolitionist and feminist, and the first woman registered to vote in Concord, Massachusetts. Schooled mainly by her father, Alcott and her three sisters also received lessons from such notables as Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Margaret Fuller. Alcott penned her first book, Flower Fables, for Emerson s daughter, Ellen. Before gaining critical success for her children s fiction, Alcott wrote several passionate adult novels using the pen name A. M. Barnard, including A Long Fatal Love Chase and Punishment. Alcott s literary career spanned more than 40 years, and she wrote more than 30 books before her death in 1888.