I just finished a biography of her last month, and it upended the sweet image I had from 'Little Women'. She volunteered as a nurse during the Civil War and contracted typhoid fever, which left her with lifelong health problems from the mercury-based treatment. That ordeal directly fueled her first successful book, 'Hospital Sketches', a far cry from the domestic stories she's famous for.
She also wrote sensational, anonymous thrillers under the name A. M. Barnard, full of drugs, violence, and scandal. She called them "blood and thunder" tales and did it mostly for the money, which her family desperately needed. It's such a stark contrast to the moralistic tales she published under her real name that it almost feels like two different people.
Her personal life was complicated, too—she never married, supported her family financially, and was a staunch abolitionist and early feminist. She found the success of 'Little Women' a bit of a cage, resenting that it typecast her as a children's author when she had more serious ambitions. That friction between her public image and private self is what fascinates me most.