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Coming-Of-Age Louisa May Alcott: Little Women Is A

Little Women is a coming-of-age novel written by Louisa May Alcott and originally published in two volumes in 1868-1869. It follows the lives of the four March sisters - Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy - as they grow from childhood to womanhood. The novel was an immediate commercial and critical success. Alcott wrote two sequels, Little Men (1871) and Jo's Boys (1886), which also featured the March sisters. The novel addresses the themes of domesticity, work, and true love as necessary for a woman's individual identity.

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205 views1 page

Coming-Of-Age Louisa May Alcott: Little Women Is A

Little Women is a coming-of-age novel written by Louisa May Alcott and originally published in two volumes in 1868-1869. It follows the lives of the four March sisters - Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy - as they grow from childhood to womanhood. The novel was an immediate commercial and critical success. Alcott wrote two sequels, Little Men (1871) and Jo's Boys (1886), which also featured the March sisters. The novel addresses the themes of domesticity, work, and true love as necessary for a woman's individual identity.

Uploaded by

Mars Villaluna
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Little Women 

is a coming-of-age novel written by American novelist Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888)


which was originally published in two volumes in 1868 and 1869. Alcott wrote the book over several
months at the request of her publisher.[1][2] The story follows the lives of the four March sisters—Meg,
Jo, Beth, and Amy—and details their passage from childhood to womanhood. It is loosely based on
the lives of the author and her three sisters.[3][4]:202 Scholars classify it as an autobiographical or semi-
autobiographical novel.[5][6]:12
Little Women was an immediate commercial and critical success, with readers demanding to know
more about the characters. Alcott quickly completed a second volume (titled Good Wives in the
United Kingdom, although this name originated from the publisher and not from Alcott), and it was
also successful. The two volumes were issued in 1880 as a single novel titled Little Women.
Alcott wrote two sequels to her popular work, both of which also featured the March sisters: Little
Men (1871) and Jo's Boys (1886). The novel addresses three major themes: "domesticity, work, and
true love, all of them interdependent and each necessary to the achievement of its heroine's
individual identity."[7]:200 According to Sarah Elbert, Alcott created a new form of literature, one that
took elements from Romantic children's fiction and combined it with others from sentimental novels,
resulting in a totally new format. Elbert argues that within Little Women can be found the first vision
of the "All-American girl" and that her various aspects are embodied in the differing March sisters.[7]:199
In 1868, Thomas Niles, the publisher of Louisa May Alcott's works, recommended that she write a
book about girls that would have widespread appeal.[4]:2 At first, she resisted, preferring to publish a
collection of short stories. Niles pressed her to write the girls' book first, and he was aided by her
father Amos Bronson Alcott, who also urged her to do so.[4]:207 Louisa confided to a friend, “I could not
write a girls' story knowing little about any but my own sisters and always preferring boys”, as quoted
in Anne Boyd Rioux's Meg Jo Beth Amy, a condensed biographical account of Alcott's life and
writing.
In May 1868, Alcott wrote in her journal: "Niles, partner of Roberts, asked me to write a girl's book. I
said I'd try."[8]:36 Alcott set her novel in an imaginary Orchard House modeled on her own residence of
the same name, where she wrote the novel.[4]:xiii She later recalled that she did not think she could
write a successful book for girls and did not enjoy writing it.[9]:335– "I plod away," she wrote in her diary,
"although I don't enjoy this sort of things."[8]:37
By June, Alcott had sent the first dozen chapters to Niles, and both agreed that they were dull. But
Niles's niece, Lillie Almy, read them and said she enjoyed them.[9]:335–336 The completed manuscript
was shown to several girls who agreed it was "splendid.” Alcott wrote, "they are the best critics, so I
should definitely be satisfied."[8]:37 She wrote Little Women "in record time for money,"[7]:196x2 but the
book's immediate success surprised both her and her publisher.[10]

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