Although author Louisa May Alcott (1832-88) is best known for her book, Little Women, describing her family life in Concord, Massachusetts, she had several Boston homes. The daughter of famed Transcendentalist Bronson Alcott, she lived here with her family in rented rooms from 1852-55. As an adult, she often stayed with other reformist women in the “sky parlor” of the Bellevue Hotel on Beacon Street, owned by Dr. Dio Lewis, principal of Boston’s Normal Institute for Physical Education, and near her publisher, Roberts Brothers. In the last decade of her life, Alcott purchased a home for her family at 10 Louisburg Square, but was too ill to enjoy it for herself. She died at the age of 55, probably of poison from the mercury used to treat the typhoid fever she contracted as a Civil War nurse.
