“It isn't a mere pleasure trip to me, girls, […] It will decide my career, for if I have any genius, I shall find it out in Rome, and will do something to prove it.” Thus comments Amy, the young artist of the four March sisters in Louisa May Alcott's nineteenth- century American novel Little Women, after finding out that she will be accompanying her aunt on a trip to Europe. Written in 1869, this fictive declaration encapsulates the determination and passion that led May Alcott Nieriker (Louisa's youngest sister who was the inspiration for the character of Amy) to travel and study abroad in Europe in the 1870s, given the limitations she experienced in America. In fact, May would make three independent trips abroad in order to study watercolor painting in Rome and London, and oil painting in Paris, thanks to funding from Louisa and her own art sales. Ultimately, Alcott Nieriker was able to establish a reputation both in Europe and the United States as a highly regarded copyist of J. M. W. Turner's avant-garde paintings as well as for her original work, which included two paintings accepted into the internationally renowned Paris Salon.

Yet studying and creating art weren't sufficient for Alcott Nieriker, who simultaneously wrote five travel articles, a 300-page travelogue, and an influential travel guidebook during the 1870s. One might wonder why May bothered to do this, not only due to her dedication to studying and creating art but also given the overabundance of travel literature in the nineteenth century, of which she was well aware. As I will demonstrate in May Alcott Nieriker, Author and Advocate, travel writing wasn't a sideline for the artist or something that she merely dabbled in, as it was for many travelers of the period. Rather, this activity was intimately connected to her identities as an artist and as an American woman who wished to speak out about injustices that she and others experienced, in order to attempt to effect change.