Louisa May Alcott (November 29, 1832-March 6, 1888) was an American writer best known for Little Women (1868), a novel based loosely on her own childhood. Alcott was raised in New England in the day of such intellectuals as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau. A celebrated writer of novels for children, she is buried on "Authors' Ridge" along side her intellectual contemporaries. Alcott was constantly involved in helping others improve their lives; she was an abolitionist, she fought for women's right to vote, and volunteered as a nurse during the American Civil War.