“To have regular hours for work and play; make every day useful and enjoyable and demonstrate that you understand the value of time by using it well. Then youth will be delightful, old age will bring few regrets, and life will become a beautiful success” (Alcott). The wise words of an all-American author who lived a boundless life. From diary and diary entries to novels, short stories and poems Louisa Alcott was highly successful and published many books throughout her life. Louisa May Alcott was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, on November 29, 1832. Louisa was not like all the other girls in the world. in her day, in fact, she was nothing: her family and nineteenth-century New England required her to be so as a young woman. She stated that "no boy could be my friend until I beat him in a race and no girl if she refused to climb trees, jump fences and be a tomboy." In all she was her own person or as she had been taught to see her, stubborn, selfish and proud (Bronson Alcott). She was the second of four girls born to Amos Bronson Alcott and Abigail May. Her father was a transcendentalist, philosopher, and educational experimenter, and her mother stayed at home and raised her and her sisters in practical Christianity. Bronson Alcott was the primary educator of his four daughters Anna, Louisa, Elizabeth and Abby. But in 1832, after Louisa's birth, Bronson reunited the family and moved to Boston where he founded a Temple School. It was an experimental school where he could introduce his new and visionary methods. Bronson's belief was that every individual should be involved in their own education and enjoy the learning process. Therefore, students spent more time outside the classroom than usual. Because of his methods the school of...... middle of paper ......father since the death of his mother, and on March 4, 1888 his father, Bronson Alcott died. Louisa May Alcott died on March 6, 1888 in Boston, Massachusetts, which was also the day of her father's funeral. She had suffered the slow effects of mercury poisoning that she had contracted while serving in the Civil War from the medicine she had been given for typhoid pneumonia. Alcott was buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord. Throughout the 56 years that Louisa Alcott lived, she never led the life of an ordinary woman. She was her own person, she did what she wanted to do and she wrote so well that she is remembered very much today. Her greatest success was the publication of “Little Women” and the book never went out of print. The vast majority of his short stories, poems, novels and many others were and still are very popular. Louisa led a free life and had great successes.