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Little Women

A coming-of-age novel about the four March sisters.

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Little Women

via Wikipedia: Little Women (1933 film) · see source

The novel is loosely autobiographical, based on Alcott and her three sisters.[1] American novelist Louisa May Alcott authored the coming-of-age story Little Women, which was initially released as two separate volumes in 1868 and 1869.[2]

Making and release

In 1868, publisher Thomas Niles urged Alcott to write a girls' novel, but she initially resisted, preferring a short story collection.[3] Niles persisted, supported by her father Amos Bronson Alcott, and she agreed to try.[4][5] She wrote in her diary that she did not enjoy writing it and "plod away".[5] Niles's niece Lillie Almy and several other girls read the manuscript and called it "splendid".[6]

Alcott wrote the book "in record time for money," and its immediate success surprised her and her publisher.[7] A second volume, titled Good Wives in the United Kingdom, was quickly completed.[8] According to critic Sarah Elbert, Alcott created a new genre combining romantic children's fiction with sentimental novels.[9] Alcott created a fictional setting called Orchard House for her story, which was based on the actual home where she lived and wrote.[5]

In June of that year, twelve initial chapters were dispatched to Niles; both Alcott and Niles considered them uninteresting.[6] The book was part of the realism movement, a literary style prevalent during the middle and later decades of the 1800s.[10]

What the cited sources add

Elbert also states that Alcott used "little women" to draw on a Dickensian meaning, representing the overlap of childhood and young womanhood.[9][11] After Beth dies, Professor Bhaer woos Jo at her home, and she accepts his proposal at age 25.[9][11] During the novel's second half, Jo is shown writing the initial part of Little Women; Elbert remarks that "her narration signals a successfully completed adolescence."[9][11]

References

  1. Wikipedia, "Little Women" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Alberghene, "Autobiography and the Boundaries of Interpretation on Reading Little Women and the Living is Easy", Psychology Press, 1999, p. 355; Cheever, "Louisa May Alcott: A Personal Biography", Simon and Schuster, 2011; Cullen Sizer, "The Political Work of Northern Women Writers and the Civil War, 1850–1872", University of North Carolina Press, 2000, p. 45; Reisen, "Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women", Macmillan, 2010 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  2. Wikipedia, "Little Women" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Longest, "Little Women of Orchard House: A Full-length Play", Dramatic Publishing, 1998, p. 115; "Sparknotes: literature", Spark Educational Publishing, 2004, p. 465 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  3. Wikipedia, "Little Women" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Cheever, "Louisa May Alcott: A Personal Biography", Simon and Schuster, 2011 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  4. Wikipedia, "Little Women" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Cheever, "Louisa May Alcott: A Personal Biography", Simon and Schuster, 2011; Rioux, "Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters", Norton, 2018 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  5. Wikipedia, "Little Women" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Madison, Charles A., "Irving to Irving: Author-Publisher Relations 1800–1974", R. R. Bowker Company, 1974; Cheever, "Louisa May Alcott: A Personal Biography", Simon and Schuster, 2011; Matteson, John, "Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father", W. W. Norton & Company, 2007; Madison, Charles A., "Irving to Irving: Author-Publisher Relations 1800–1974", R. R. Bowker Company, 1974 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  6. Wikipedia, "Little Women" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Matteson, John, "Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father", W. W. Norton & Company, 2007 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  7. Wikipedia, "Little Women" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Madison, Charles A., "Irving to Irving: Author-Publisher Relations 1800–1974", R. R. Bowker Company, 1974; Elbert, Sarah, "A Hunger for Home: Louisa May Alcott's Place in American Culture", Rutgers University Press, 1987; Smith, "Notable American Women 1607–1950: A Biographical Dictionary, Volume 1", Harvard University Press, 1975, p. 29 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  8. Wikipedia, "Little Women" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Alcott, "Little Women: Little women married", G. Routledge & Sons, 1873 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  9. Wikipedia, "Little Women" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Elbert, Sarah, "A Hunger for Home: Louisa May Alcott's Place in American Culture", Rutgers University Press, 1987 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  10. Wikipedia, "Little Women" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Eiselein, "The Newness of Little Women", Women Studies, 2019, p. 363–365 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  11. Open Library record, ISBN 0813511992 ("A hunger for home"). CC0 (metadata); book content not read. openlibrary.org

Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Little Women (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.

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Sources

Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.

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