Little Women
Little Women is a coming-of-age novel written by American novelist Louisa May Alcott. The story follows the lives of the four March sisters—Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy—and details their passage from childhood to womanhood. Loosely based on the lives of the author and her three sisters, it is classified as an autobiographical or semi-autobiographical novel.
Little Women was an immediate commercial and critical success, with readers eager for more about the characters. Alcott quickly completed a second volume. It was also met with success. The two volumes were issued in 1880 as a single novel titled Little Women. Alcott subsequently wrote two sequels to her popular work, both also featuring the March sisters: Little Men (1871) and Jo's Boys (1886).
Little Women has been one of the most widely read novels. One reason Little Women was so popular was that it appealed to different classes of women along with those of different national backgrounds, at a time of high immigration to the United States. Through the March sisters, women could relate and dream where they may not have before. "Both the passion Little Women has engendered in diverse readers and its ability to survive its era and transcend its genre point to a text of unusual permeability."
Little Women has been translated into numerous languages, and frequently adapted for stage and screen. In 2003 Little Women was ranked number 18 in The Big Read, a survey of the British public by the BBC to determine the "Nation's Best-loved Novel" (not children's novel); it is fourth-highest among novels published in the U.S. on that list. Based on a 2007 online poll, the U.S. National Education Association listed it as one of its "Teachers' Top 100 Books for Children". In 2012 it was ranked number 47 among all-time children's novels in a survey published by School Library Journal, a monthly with primarily US audience.
Excerpted from Little Women on Wikipedia.
Little Women
| Author | Louisa May Alcott |
| Country | United States |
| Genre | Bildungsroman, Domestic fiction, Romances, Autobiographical novel |
| Copyright | Public domain worldwide. |
| Book cover | - |
| Ebooks | Project Gutenberg |
| Scans | Google-digitized |
| Audio | Librivox | Internet Archive 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 |
| Read online | Little Women I, II --Reader: Group, Dramatic Readings-- |