She was born on November 29, 1832, which just happened to be her father’s thirty-third birthday. Coincidences like this happen all the time, to be sure, but in this case we are confident that she formed a strong identification with her father and felt responsible for him. Not only did she care for him throughout his later years, but when he died in March 1888, she followed just two days later.

By the time of her death, Louisa May was the most famous of all female American writers. She had written many poems, pamphlets, and books, some of which she thought superior to Little Women, but there was—and is—not the slightest doubt of what the reading public favored. Little Women was, and remains, the best depiction of a Northern family holding down the home front during the Civil War.