Louisa May Alcott was born on November 29, 1832, in Germantown, Pennsylvania, where her father, Bronson Alcotta transcendentalist philosopher and an educatorwas the director of a school for young children. Bronson later founded the Temple School in Boston, but public opposition to his radical methods and a declining enrolment forced him to close the school incurring a large debt. In financial difficulties, the Alcotts eventually moved to Concord, Massachusetts, where Bronson tried to support his family by farming a small piece of land. However, this endeavour also failed. When Bronson became ill and suffered a nervous breakdown, Louisa May Alcott assumed various domestic jobs, took in sewing, and ran a small school to provide financial support for her mother, Abigail, and the rest of the family. An advocate of women's rights, she remained unmarried in an age when marriage and motherhood were considered the central events of a woman's life, and achieved such a degree of literary success that she was able to pay off the family's huge debts with the royalties from her writing. ...