Little Women - ComeLibros Club

English language

Published Oct. 30, 2007

ISBN:: 978-0-14-310501-5

No rating (1 review)

Little Women is a coming-of-age novel written by American novelist Louisa May Alcott, originally published in two volumes in 1868 and 1869 at the request of her publisher. 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,: 202 it is classified as an autobiographical or semi-autobiographical novel.: 12 Little Women was an immediate commercial and critical success, with readers eager for more about the characters. Alcott quickly completed a second volume (titled Good Wives in the United Kingdom, though the name originated with the publisher and not Alcott). 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) …

Little Women is a coming-of-age novel written by American novelist Louisa May Alcott, originally published in two volumes in 1868 and 1869 at the request of her publisher. 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,: 202 it is classified as an autobiographical or semi-autobiographical novel.: 12 Little Women was an immediate commercial and critical success, with readers eager for more about the characters. Alcott quickly completed a second volume (titled Good Wives in the United Kingdom, though the name originated with the publisher and not Alcott). 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). The novel has been said to address three major themes: "domesticity, work, and true love, all of them interdependent and each necessary to the achievement of its heroine's individual identity.": 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 genre. 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.: 199 The book has been translated into numerous languages, and frequently adapted for stage and screen.

21 editions

radio-appears reviewed Little Women (Little Women, #1) by Louisa May Alcott

Didn't hit for me

No rating

So. I didn't like this book very much, but this is a bit of an annoying review to write. The reasons why I don't like this book are not really something I can fault the author, as they're pretty much to be expected for a book written in this time period.

Shortly put, like many older examples of children's lit, I find Little Women to be overly didactic and twee, with the added difficulty of disagreeing with some of the moral lessons it tries to teach.

I can see the value it must have had in its time, as well as to some readers, in portraying girls with interesting inner lives and conflicts, who did not always entirely fit the gender norms. It was, in that sense, an interesting bit of insight in the time period. But as an adult modern reader I couldn't really connect with it.