Little Women
This article is about the novel. For other uses, see Little Women (disambiguation).
Little Women
Two-volume Roberts Brothers printing, from the early 1870s
Author(s) Louisa May Alcott
Country United States
Language English
Genre(s) Coming of Age
Publisher Roberts Brothers
Publication date 1868 (1st volume) 1869 (2nd volume)
Media type Print
Followed by Little Men
Little Women is a novel by American author Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888). The book was written and set in the Alcott family home, Orchard House, in Concord, Massachusetts. It was published in two volumes in 1868 and 1869. The novel follows the lives of four sisters – Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy March – and is loosely based on the author's childhood experiences with her three sisters. The first volume, Little Women, was an immediate commercial and critical success, prompting the composition of the book's second volume, entitled Good Wives, which was also successful. Both books were first published as a single volume entitled Little Women in 1880. Alcott followed Little Women with two sequels, also featuring the March sisters: Little Men (1871) and Jo's Boys (1886). Little Women was a fiction novel for girls that veered from the normal writings for children, especially girls, at the time. Little Women has three major themes:” domesticity, work, and true love. All of them are interdependent and each is necessary to the achievement of a heroine’s individual identity.”[1] Little Women itself “has been read as a romance or as a quest, or both. It has been read as a family drama that validates virtue over wealth.”[2] Little Women has been read “as a means of escaping that life by women who knew its gender constraints only too well.”[3] Alcott “combines many conventions of the sentimental novel with crucial ingredients of Romantic children’s fiction, creating a new form of which Little
Little Women
Two-volume Roberts Brothers printing, from the early 1870s
Author(s) Louisa May Alcott
Country United States
Language English
Genre(s) Coming of Age
Publisher Roberts Brothers
Publication date 1868 (1st volume) 1869 (2nd volume)
Media type Print
Followed by Little Men
Little Women is a novel by American author Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888). The book was written and set in the Alcott family home, Orchard House, in Concord, Massachusetts. It was published in two volumes in 1868 and 1869. The novel follows the lives of four sisters – Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy March – and is loosely based on the author's childhood experiences with her three sisters. The first volume, Little Women, was an immediate commercial and critical success, prompting the composition of the book's second volume, entitled Good Wives, which was also successful. Both books were first published as a single volume entitled Little Women in 1880. Alcott followed Little Women with two sequels, also featuring the March sisters: Little Men (1871) and Jo's Boys (1886). Little Women was a fiction novel for girls that veered from the normal writings for children, especially girls, at the time. Little Women has three major themes:” domesticity, work, and true love. All of them are interdependent and each is necessary to the achievement of a heroine’s individual identity.”[1] Little Women itself “has been read as a romance or as a quest, or both. It has been read as a family drama that validates virtue over wealth.”[2] Little Women has been read “as a means of escaping that life by women who knew its gender constraints only too well.”[3] Alcott “combines many conventions of the sentimental novel with crucial ingredients of Romantic children’s fiction, creating a new form of which Little