pLouisa May Alcott November 29, 1832 - March 6, 1888 was an American novelist. She is best known for the novel Little Women, set in the Alcott family home, Orchard House in Concord, Massachusetts, and published in 1868. This novel is loosely based on her childhood experiences with her three sisters.ppAlcott was the daughter of noted transcendentalist and educator Amos Bronson Alcott and Abigail May Alcott. Alcott's early education included lessons from the naturalist Henry David Thoreau. She received the majority of her schooling from her father. She received some instruction also from writers and educators such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Margaret Fuller, who were all family friends. She later described these early years in a newspaper sketch entitled Transcendental Wild Oats. The sketch was reprinted in the volume Silver Pitchers 1876, which relates the family's experiment in plain living and high thinking at Fruitlands.ppAs an adult, Alcott was an abolitionist a