Visiting Fruitlands, where the Alcott family lived for a time.
Today Book Riot posted this beauty to Instagram. If you know me, you know I love Louisa May Alcott. I find that not many people know much about her outside of the fact that she wrote Little Women. She was a fiercely independent, industrious badass who grew up constantly moving (about 30 times) and living under her intense father's idealist notions, (some of which are lovely, some a bit much) such as: working for pay is unethical; paying back loans is unnecessary; vegetarianism for life PLUS no root vegetables (as they grow in the opposite direction of heaven), no milk or butter (apparently thought to be aphrodisiacs), and no coffee, as they were staunch abolitionists and used nothing that was touched by slave labor. (They wore uniforms of linen; cotton was out, as was silk, which was “worm slaughter.”). They ate primarily apples and bread, and the effects of malnutrition stayed with Louisa her whole life. The family, thanks largely to that first notion mentioned, was incredibly poor. With the goal of lifting her family from poverty, Louisa trained herself to write on-demand and for any market, and taught herself to be ambidextrous so that she rarely had to rest. Her children's books are what brought in the most money, but they also bored her. She wrote thrillers under the pseudonym A.M. Barnard. She hated her fame, and didn’t like Concord much, either. She made fun of all of her fans who, like me, make the (repeat) pilgrimage to Concord to squee. (But us fans are independent broads too, and we feel no shame.) This is the briefest of summaries—she was also a nurse in the civil war, was part of the underground railroad, and more. Check out this phenomenal biography for more. // Visit The Orchard House in Concord. // Visit Fruitlands.