Readings Classics: Little Women

Description

Now a major motion picture starring Timothee Chalamet, Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson and Meryl Streep.

Come laugh and cry with the March family.

Meg – the sweet-tempered one. Jo – the smart one. Beth – the shy one. Amy – the sassy one.

Together they’re the March sisters. Their father is away at war and times are difficult, but the bond between the sisters is strong. The family may not have much money, but that doesn’t stop them from creating their own fun and forming a secret society. Through sisterly squabbles, happy times and sad, their four lives follow very different paths, and they discover that growing up is sometimes very hard to do… In the second part of the novel (sometimes known as Good Wives) the girls grow up and fall in love.

Little Women has remained enduringly popular since its publication in 1868, becoming the inspiration for a whole genre of family stories. The novel is highly autobiographical, and in Jo’s character Alcott portrays a strong-minded and independent woman, determined to control her own destiny.

Author Biography

Louisa May Alcott was born in an intellectual family in Germantown, Pennsylvania, USA in 1832. Her parents had friends like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry David Thoreau. Alcott had the privilege of their company which helped shape up her writing career. In 1862, during the height of the American Civil War, Louisa went to Georgetown to work as a nurse, but she contracted typhoid. Out of her experiences she wrote Hospital Sketches (1864) which won wide acclaim, followed by an adult novel, Moods. She wrote many books of which Little Women and its sequels are still very popular. Her other books include Little Men and Jo’s Boys. She never married and in addition to writing, she spent her time in the feminist and abolitionist movements of the day.

She was reluctant to write a children’s book but then realized that in herself and her three sisters she had the perfect models. The result was Little Women (1868) which became the earliest American children’s novel to become a classic. She died of a stroke in 1888.