Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) is a much beloved author of American literature, in particular the Little Women trilogy, centered on the semiautobiographical March family (Little Women, Little Men, and Jo's Boys). Best known in her time for Little Women, An Old-Fashioned Girl, and Little Men, her obituary in the New York Times declared, "There was probably no writer among women better loved by the young than she." John Matteson was awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Biography for Eden's Outcasts and is also the author of The Lives of Margaret Fuller, which received the Ann M. Sperber Prize for Best Biography of a Journalist. He has been a Fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society and of the Leon Levy Center for Biography. He received the Distinguished Faculty Award of the John Jay College Alumni Association and the Dean's Award for Distinguished Achievement from the Columbia University School of Arts and Sciences. Distinguished Professor of English at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, he lives in the Bronx.