Louisa May Alcott

American · b. 1832

Louisa May Alcott ran her improvident transcendentalist family's finances with pulp thrillers written under pseudonyms, nursed Union soldiers in the Civil War, and wrote Little Women in ten weeks 'for money' — basing Jo March on herself. It made her one of America's first celebrity authors; she used the fame for suffrage and abolition, and never did marry Jo off to Laurie.