Louisa May Alcott was a legendary American author in the nineteenth century. Alcott's parents were well known transcendentalists in New England and she grew up with other famous authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau. With classic works such as Little Women, Eight Cousins, and An Old-Fashioned Girl, Alcott remains one of the most widely read authors in American literature. The Mysterious Key and What it Opened, published in 1867, is a novel that begins with the mysterious death of Sir Richard Trevlyn.