A Modern Cindrella

Alcott along with Elizabeth Stoddard Rebecca Harding Davis Anne Moncure Crane and others were part of a group of female authors during the Gilded Age to address womens issues in a modern and candid manner. Their works were as one newspaper columnist of the period commented among the decided signs of the times (“Review 2 – No Title” from The Radical May 1868) Alcott wrote until her death which was attributed to the after-effects of mercury poisoning contracted during her American Civil War service. She had received calomel treatments for the effects of typhoid. She died in Boston on March 6 1888 at age 55 two days after visiting her father on his deathbed. Her last words were Is it not meningitis? The story of her life and career was initially told in Ednah D. Cheneys Louisa May Alcott: Her Life Letters and Journals (Boston 1889) and then in Madeleine B. Sterns seminal biography Louisa May Alcott (University of Oklahoma Press 1950)