Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Cover of "Little Women"by Merrill.

      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.”

      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.” Little Women has been read “as a means of escaping that life by women who knew its gender constraints only too well.” Alcott “combines many conventions of the sentimental novel with crucial ingredients of Romantic children’s fiction, creating a new form of which Little Women is a unique model.” Elbert argued that within Little Women can be found the first vision of the “American Girl” and that her multiple aspects are embodied in the differing March sisters.

• Little Women at Project Gutenberg
• Lesson plans for Little Women at Web English Teacher
• "Top 100 Children’s Novels #25". School Library Journal Blog. Retrieved 2012-05-20.
• 1945 radio adaptation of novel at Theatre Guild on the Air at Internet Archive
• Illustrations of Little Women by Frank T. (Thayer) Merrill 
• Louisa May Alcott's Orchard House
• Little Women on Broadway

      "Little Women" is a 1994 is also a drama film directed by Gillian Armstrong. The screenplay by Robin Swicord is based on the Louisa May Alcott novel of the same name. It is the fifth feature film adaptation of the Alcott classic, following silent versions released in 1917 and 1918, a 1933 George Cukor-directed release, a 1949 adaptation by Mervyn LeRoy, and a 1978 adaptation by Gordon Hessler. It was released exclusively on December 21, 1994, and was released wide on December 25, 1994, by Columbia Pictures. It is one of my family's favorite movies to watch at Christmas time.  Read more . . .