A Modern Mephistopheles was written by Louisa May Alcott and published anonymously in 1877, when she was 25 years old, perhaps so she could explore a "darker side" without tainting her reputations. It was published under her name in 1889, along with her similarly dark story, A Whisper in the Dark. Mephistopheles is a demon featured in German folklore. He originally appeared in literature as the demon in the Faust legend, and he has since appeared in other works as a stock character.

Louisa May Alcott (November 29, 1832 – March 6, 1888) was an American novelist, short story writer and poet best known as the author of the novel Little Women (1868) and its sequels Little Men (1871) and Jo's Boys (1886). 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 was an abolitionist and a feminist and remained unmarried throughout her life. All her life she was active in such reform movements as temperance and women's suffrage.
She died from a stroke, two days after her father died, in Boston on March 6, 1888.
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