Little Women, Louisa May Alcott’s masterpiece of Children’s literature, is the story of the March sisters, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy. Living in a small Massachusetts town, the girls and Mrs. March must make do while Mr. March is away serving as an Army Chaplain during the Civil War. At the story’s center lies Jo who, as she approaches adulthood, must reconcile her duties to her family with her desire to become a successful writer.

The many appendices in this Broadview edition include materials on the early women’s movement, the novel’s composition, and Alcott’s literary influences.

Louisa May Alcott's profile page

Anne Hiebert Alton's profile page

Anne Hiebert Alton is Assistant Professor of English at Central Michigan University. She has published on children’s literature and on Victorian literature.

“Anne Hiebert Alton's edition for Broadview is unique in supplementing the text with Alcott's sources for and correspondence about the novel, with those of Alcott’s works that she attributes to Jo and her sisters, selections from the text that she alludes to most frequently, such as Pilgrim's Progress, and excerpts that demonstrate Alcott's feminism. A number of these selections are not readily accessible elsewhere, and some will prove unfamiliar even to Alcott scholars. Alton and Broadview are to be commended for bringing them together in a single volume.”

Elizabeth Keyser

“Broadview Press’s Little Women provides a definitive text along with the most comprehensive historical overview yet offered. Alton not only gives us a text based on the first edition, she also presents the genesis and development of Alcott’s most famous novel using the author’s own public and private writings. For the first time in one edition, we now have the complete story of the March family! It is a wonderful scholarly achievement that has long been overdue.”

Daniel Shealy

Classic read

by vwruleschick