Little Women / Little Men

louisa may alcott

Louisa May Alcott's beloved stories of the fictional March family were inspired by both her own experiences growing up in nineteenth century Concord, Massachusetts, and her contact with noted literary figures like Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Little Women is the coming of age story of the four March sisters--Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy--who experience great joy and tragic loss while becoming the true little women of the title. The March sisters return in Little Men, in which Jo and her husband, Professor Bhaer's school at Plumfield is home to a bevy of rambunctious boys who manage what they never thought possible: growing up to be real little men.

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Genres classicsfictionhistorical fictionhistoricalchildrens

0 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1,1886

This edition

Format: 0 pages, Hardcover
Published: November 21, 1995 by Everyman's Library
ISBN: 9780679446101
ASIN: 0679446109
Language: English

About the author

louisa may alcott

Louisa May Alcott was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet best known for writing the novel Little Women (1868) and its sequels Good Wives (1869), Little Men (1871) and Jo's Boys (1886). Raised in New England by her transcendentalist parents, Abigail May Alcott and Amos Bronson Alcott, she grew up among many well-known intellectuals of the day, including Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Alcott's family suffered from financial difficulties, and while she worked to help support the family from an early age, she also sought an outlet in writing. She began to receive critical success for her writing in the 1860s. Early in her career, she sometimes used pen names such as A.M. Barnard, under which she wrote lurid short stories and sensation novels for adults that focused on passion and revenge.
Published in 1868, Little Women is set in the Alcott family home, Orchard House, in Concord, Massachusetts, and is loosely based on Alcott's childhood experiences with her three sisters, Abigail May Alcott Nieriker, Elizabeth Sewall Alcott, and Anna Bronson Alcott Pratt. The novel was well-received at the time and is still popular today among both children and adults. It has been adapted for stage plays, films, and television many times.
Alcott was an abolitionist and a feminist and remained unmarried throughout her life. She also spent her life active in reform movements such as temperance and women's suffrage. She died from a stroke in Boston on March 6, 1888, just two days after her father's death.