Comic Tragedies (Written by 'Jo' and 'Meg' and Acted by The 'Little Women') is a classic collection of comical short stories by Louisa May Alcott. "It was at this period of her life that she was violently attacked by a mania for the stage, and writing and enacting dramas. Her older sister, Anna, had the same taste, and assisted her in carrying out all her plans." Mrs. Cheney's Life of Louisa M. Alcott.Louisa May Alcott (November 29, 1832 – March 6, 1888) was an American novelist and poet best known as the author of the novel Little Women (1868) and its sequels Little Men (1871) and Jo's Boys (1886).[1] Raised in New England by her transcendentalist parents, Abigail May and Amos Bronson Alcott, she grew up among many of the well-known intellectuals of the day, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.Alcott's family suffered from financial difficulties, and while she worked to help support the family from an early age, she also sought an outlet in writing. She began to receive critical success for her writing in the 1860s. Early in her career, she sometimes used the pen name A. M. Barnard, under which she wrote novels for young adults that focused on spies, revenge, and crossdressers.