Little Women #1
Little Women
Generations of readers young and old, male and female, have fallen in love with the March sisters of Louisa May Alcott’s most popular and enduring novel, Little Women. Here are talented tomboy and author-to-be Jo, tragically frail Beth, beautiful Meg, and romantic, spoiled Amy, united in their devotion to each other and their struggles to survive in New England during the Civil War.
It is no secret that Alcott based Little Women on her own early life. While her father, the freethinking reformer and abolitionist Bronson Alcott, hobnobbed with such eminent male authors as Emerson, Thoreau, and Hawthorne, Louisa supported herself and her sisters with "woman’s work,” including sewing, doing laundry, and acting as a domestic servant. But she soon discovered she could make more money writing. Little Women brought her lasting fame and fortune, and far from being the "girl’s book” her publisher requested, it explores such timeless themes as love and death, war and peace, the conflict between personal ambition and family responsibilities, and the clash of cultures between Europe and America.
449 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published September 30,1868
This edition
- Format
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449 pages, Mass Market Paperback
- Published
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April 6, 2004 by Signet Classics
- ISBN
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- ASIN
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0451529308
- Language
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English
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Marmee March
The March girls mother. Marmee is the moral role model for her girls. She counsels them through all of their problems and works hard but happily while her husband is at war....
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Margaret Meg March
Eldest of the March sisters in Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott."Margaret, the eldest of the four, was sixteen, and very pretty, being plump and fair, with large eyes, plenty of soft brown hair, a sweet mouth, and white hands, of which she was rather va...
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Amy March
Youngest of the March sisters in Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott."Amy, though the youngest, was a most important person, in her own opinion at least. A regular snow maiden, with blue eyes, and yellow hair curling on her shoulders, pale and slender, and...
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Theodore Laurie Laurence
Next-door neighbor and close friend of the March sisters in Little Women.In Chapter 3 of Little Women, Jo describes him as having "curly black hair, brown skin, big black eyes, handsome nose, fine teeth, small hands and feet, taller than I am, very polite...
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James Laurence
A character in Little Women. Next-door neighbour of the March sisters and grandfather of Laurie Lawrence.more...
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Professor Bhaer
A character in Little Women. A German immigrant and language teacher who becomes a suitor to Jo March.more...
About the author
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.
