توفيت لويزا ألكوت سنة 1888 و هي في السادسة و الخمسين من عمرها بعد أن خلفت أكثرمن عشرين كتاباً . من أشهر مؤلفاتها بعد كتاب نساء صغيرات _ كتاب رجال صغار _ و لكنالكتاب لم يصل إلى نجاح الكتاب الأول - نساء صغيرات - لسبب بديهي و هو أن المؤلفةفي كتابها الأول كانت تصف حياتها الحقيقية الخاصة و حياة شقيقاتها الثلاث على حينكانت تصدر في كتابها الثاني -رجال صغار- عن معينها الخصب من التصور و الخيال.
Louisa May Alcott (November 29, 1832 – March 6, 1888) was an American novelist. She is best known for the novel Little Women and its sequels Little Men and Jo's Boys. Little Women was 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.
ولدت لويزا عام 1832 وكانت ترتيبها الثاني بين الاخوات الاربعة
Alcott was the daughter of noted transcendentalist and educatorAmos Bronson Alcott and Abigail May Alcott. She shared a birthday with her father on November 29, 1832. In a letter to his brother-in-law, Samuel Joseph May, a noted abolitionist, her father wrote: "It is with great pleasure that I announce to you the birth of my second daughter... born about half-past 12 this morning, on my [33rd] birthday." Though of New England heritage, she was born in Germantown, which is currently part of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was the second of four daughters: Anna Bronson Alcott was the eldest; Elizabeth Sewall Alcott and Abigail May Alcott were the two youngest.
The family moved to Boston in 1834, After the family moved to Massachusetts, Alcott's father established an experimental school and joined the Transcendental Club with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.
انتقلت العائلة إلى بوسطن بعد أن أسس الوالد مدرسة تجريبية
In 1840, after several setbacks with the school, the Alcott family moved to a cottage on 2 acres (8,100 m2) of land, situated along the Sudbury River in Concord, Massachusetts.
في عام 1840 وبعد فشل المدرسة التجريبية انتقلت العائلة إلى كوخ قريب من نهر في ولاية ماساشوتست
The Alcott family moved to the UtopianFruitlands community for a brief interval in 1843-1844 and then, after its collapse, to rented rooms and finally to a house in Concord purchased with her mother's inheritance and financial help from Emerson. They moved into the home they named "Hillside" on April 1, 1845.
انتقلوا مرة اخرى الى فروتلاند ما بين 1843 -1844 ولكن بعد انهيارها انتقلوا الى غرف مستأجره وآخيرا الى منزل تم سراؤه من اموال ورثتها الوالدة وبمساعدة الكاتب امرسون والذي كان صديق لرب الاسرة.
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.
معظم ما تعلمته جاء من والده ومن بعض أصدقاؤه الكتاب
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.
As an adult, Alcott was an abolitionist and a feminist.
In 1847, the family housed a fugitive slave for one week.
في عام 1847 ( عندما كان عمرها 15 سنة) آوت العائلة عبدا هاربا لمدة اسبوع
In 1848, Alcott read and admired the "Declaration of Sentiments" published by the Seneca Falls Convention on women's rights.
Poverty made it necessary for Alcott to go to work at an early age as an occasional teacher, seamstress, governess, domestic helper, and writer.

Her first book was Flower Fables (1849), a selection of tales originally written for Ellen Emerson, daughter of Ralph Waldo Emerson. In 1860, Alcott began writing for the Atlantic Monthly.
When the American Civil War broke out, she served as a nurse in the Union Hospital at Georgetown, D.C., for six weeks in 1862-1863.
عندما اندلعت الحرب الاهلية الامريكية عملت ممرضه في مستشفى في جورجتاون ما بين عامي 1862- 1863
Her letters home – revised and published in the Commonwealth and collected as Hospital Sketches (1863, republished with additions in 1869) – brought her first critical recognition for her observations and humor. Her novel Moods (1864), based on her own experience, was also promising.
Alcott's literary success arrived with the publication by the Roberts Brothers of the first part of Little Women: or Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy, (1868) a semi-autobiographical account of her childhood with her sisters in Concord, Massachusetts.
Part two, or Part Second, also known as Good Wives, (1869) followed the March sisters into adulthood and their respective marriages.
Little Men (1871) detailed Jo's life at the Plumfield School that she founded with her husband Professor Bhaer at the conclusion of Part Two of Little Women. Jo's Boys (1886) completed the "March Family Saga".
In Little Women, Alcott based her heroine "Jo" on herself. But whereas Jo marries at the end of the story, Alcott remained single throughout her life. She explained her "spinsterhood" in an interview with Louise Chandler Moulton, "because I have fallen in love with so many pretty girls and never once the least bit with any man."
بنت الكاتبة شخصية بطلة الرواية على شخصياتها الحقيقية ولكن لطلة الرواية تتزوج بينما هي لم تتزوج وقد فسرت في احدى المقابلات سبب عدم زواجها بقولها انها كانت تقع في حب البنات وليس ولو لمرة واحدة في حب رجل.
However, Alcott's romance while in Europe with Ladislas Wisniewski, "Laddie", was detailed in her journals but then deleted by Alcott herself before her death. Alcott identified Laddie as the model for Laurie in Little Women, and there is strong evidence this was the significant emotional relationship of her life.[3][4]
When her younger sister May died Alcott took in May's daughter, Louisa May Nieriker ("Lulu"), who was two years old. The baby had been named after her aunt, but was nicknamed Lulu, whereas Louisa May's nicknames were "Weed" and "Louy".
عندما ماتت اختها الصغير ابيجال ماي تبنت لويزا الوكت ابنتها اختها (الصغيره لويزا) ابنتة ماي نيركر، عندما كانت في سن الثانية
In her later life, Alcott became an advocate for women's suffrage and was the first woman to register to vote in Concord, Massachusetts, in a school board election.
Alcott, who continued to write until her death, suffered chronic health problems in her later years.
عانت من مشاكل صحية مزمنة في نهاية حياتها
She and her earliest biographers attributed her illness and death to mercury poisoning: during her American Civil War service, Alcott contracted typhoid fever and was treated with a compound containing mercury.
خلال عملها ممرضة اثناء الحرب الاهلية التقطت الكوت مرض التيفوئيد وعولجت بشرات يحتوي على الزئبق وربما يكون هو سبب وفاتها في وقت لاحق بالتسمم
Recent analysis of Alcott's illness suggests that mercury poisoning was not the culprit. Alcott's chronic health problems may be associated with an autoimmune disease, not acute mercury exposure.
لكن التحليل الحديث لمرضها يربطه متاعها الصحية المزمنة بمرض مناعي وليس بالتسمم من الزئبق
Moreover, a late portrait of Alcott shows on her cheeks rashes characteristic of lupus. Alcott died of a stroke in Boston, on March 6, 1888, at age 55, two days after her father's death. Her last words were "Is it not meningitis?" والكلمة تعني
- Meningitis is inflammation of the protective membranes covering the brain and spinal cordالتهاب يصيب الغشاء الواقي للدماغ والحبل الشويكي وقد يحدث بسبب مرض فيرسي او بكتيري
· At age 15, troubled by the poverty that plagued her family, she vowed: "I will do something by and by. Don’t care what, teach, sew, act, write, anything to help the family; and I’ll be rich and famous and happy before I die, see if I won’t!"
· وهي في سن الخامسة عشره قالت انها ستعمل شيئا ولن يهمها ما تقوم به سواء كان التردي ساو الخياطة او التمثيل او الكتابة أي شيء لمساعدة العائلة وسوف اكون غنية ومشهورة قبل ان اموت