Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888) was an American author best known for her novel
Little Women. Born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, she was educated by her father, the transcendentalist Bronson Alcott, as well as by family friends Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. She was a Union Army nurse in the Civil War and published sensationalist novels under the nom de plume A. M. Barnard before finding lasting success as a children’s author with
Little Women and its three sequels.
An international celebrity during his lifetime, Charles Dickens (1812–1870) is widely regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His classic works include
A Christmas Carol,
Oliver Twist,
David Copperfield,
Great Expectations, and
A Tale of Two Cities, one of the bestselling novels of all time. When Dickens was twelve years old, his father was sent to debtors’ prison, and the boy was forced to work in a boot-blacking factory to support his family. The experience greatly shaped both his fiction and his tireless advocacy for children’s rights and social reform.
Mark Twain, who was born Samuel L. Clemens in Missouri in 1835, wrote some of the most enduring works of literature in the English language, including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc was his last completed book—and, by his own estimate, his best. Its acquisition by Harper & Brothers allowed Twain to stave off bankruptcy. He died in 1910.