Editing Louisa May Alcott (section)

=== Women's rights ===
After her mother's death, Louisa committed to following her example by actively advocating for [[women's suffrage]].{{Sfn|Reisen|2009|p=265}} In 1877, Alcott helped found the [[Women's Educational and Industrial Union]] in Boston.{{sfn|Sander|1998|p=66}}  She read and admired the [[Declaration of Sentiments]] published by the [[Seneca Falls Convention]] on [[women's rights]], and became the first woman to register to vote in [[Concord, Massachusetts]] in a school board election on March 9, 1879.<ref>{{harvnb|Brooks|2011}}; {{harvnb|Delamar|1990|p=125}}; {{harvnb|Matteson|2016|p=35}}</ref> She encouraged other Concord women to vote and was disappointed when few did.{{sfn|Stern|1978|pp=433–434}} Alcott became a member of the National Congress of the Women of the United States while attending the Woman's Congress in 1875{{sfn|Delamar|1990|p=113}} and later recounted it in "My Girls".{{sfn|Stern|1978|p=433}} She gave speeches advocating women's rights and eventually convinced her publisher Thomas Niles to publish suffragist writings.{{sfn|Delamar|1990|p=126}} She advocated for dress and diet reform{{sfn|Stern|1978|p=435}} as well as for women to receive college education,{{sfn|Porter in Shealy|2005|p=69}} sometimes signing her letters with "Yours for reform of all kinds".<ref>{{Harvnb|Doyle|2001|p=9}}; {{Harvnb|Sneller|2013|p=42}}</ref> Alcott also signed the "Appeal to Republican Women in Massachusetts", a petition that attempted to secure the vote for women.{{Sfn|Elbert|1987|p=193}}

Along with [[Elizabeth Drew Stoddard|Elizabeth Stoddard]], [[Rebecca Harding Davis]], [[Anne Moncure Crane]], and others, Alcott was part of a group of female authors during the [[Gilded Age]] who addressed women's 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'".{{sfn|''The Radical''|1868}} Alcott also joined [[Sorosis]], where members discussed health and dress reform for women,{{Sfn|Saxton|1995|p=334}} and she helped found Concord's first temperance society.<ref>{{Harvnb|Reisen|2009|p=280}}; {{Harvnb|Delamar|1990|p=126}}</ref> Between 1874 and 1887 many of her works, published in the ''[[Woman's Journal]]'', discussed women's suffrage.{{sfn|Thomas|2016|p=42}} Her essay "Happy Women" in ''[[The New York Ledger]]'' argued that women did not need to marry.<ref>{{Harvnb|Matteson|2016|p=35}}; {{Harvnb|Elbert|1987|p=191}}</ref> She explained her [[spinsterhood]] in an interview with [[Louise Chandler Moulton]], saying, "I am more than half-persuaded that I am a man's soul put by some freak of nature into a woman's body.... because I have fallen in love with so many pretty girls and never once the least bit with any man."<ref>{{harvnb|Moulton|1884|p=49}}; {{harvnb|Martin|2016}}</ref> After her death, Alcott was memorialized during a suffragist meeting in [[Cincinnati|Cincinnati, Ohio]].{{sfn|Stern|1978|p=435}}