Timeless in its evocation of idealized family life and robustly enduring, Little Women is recognized as one of the best-loved classic children's stories of all time. Originally written as a "girls" story, its appeal transcends the boundaries of time and age, making it as popular with adults as it is with young readers. For this is a beguiling story of happiness and hope, of the joys of companionship, domestic harmony and infinite mother love, all seen through the life of the March family. But which of the four March sisters to love best? For every reader must have their favorite. Independent, tomboyish Jo; delicate, loving Beth; pretty, kind Meg, or precocious and beautiful Amy, the baby of the family? Little Women was an instant success when first published in 1868, and followed only a year later by the sequel, Little Wives.
Louisa May Alcott was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, in 1832, the second of four daughters of Abigail May Alcott and Bronson Alcott, the prominent Transcendentalist thinker and social reformer. Raised in Concord, Massachusetts, and educated by her father, Alcott early on came under the influence of the great men of his circle: Emerson, Hawthorne, the preacher Theodore Parker, and Thoreau. From her youth, Louisa worked at various tasks to help support her family: sewing, teaching, domestic service, and writing. Between 1863 and 1869, she published several anonymous and pseudonymous Gothic romances and lurid thrillers. But fame came with the publication of her Little Women (1868- 69), a novel based on the childhood adventures of the four Alcott sisters, which received immense popular acclaim and brought her financial security as well as the conviction to continue her career as a writer.
In the wake of Little Women's popularity, she brought out
An Old- Fashioned Girl (1870),
Little Men (1871),
Eight Cousins (1875),
Rose in Bloom (1876),
Jo's Boys (1886), and other books for children, as well as two adult novels,
Moods (1864) and
Work (1873). An active participant in the women's suffrage and temperance movements during the last decade of her life, Alcott died in Boston in 1888, on the day her father was buried.
Laurie Halse Anderson has received both the Margaret Edwards Award and the ALAN Award for her contributions to young adult literature. She has also been honored by the National Coalition Against Censorship in recognition of her fight to combat the censoring of literature. She is the author of the groundbreaking National Book Award finalist and Printz Honor Book
Speak. She is also author of the critically acclaimed YA books
Prom,
Twisted,
Catalyst,
Wintergirls,
The Impossible Knife of Memory, and
SHOUT. She has also authored a number of middle grade titles including the
Vet Volunteers series; Fever 1793; and the historical fiction Seeds of America trilogy, which includes
Forge, an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, and the National Book Award finalist and Scott O'Dell Award winner
Chains. She and her husband live in northern New York State. Follow Laurie on Twitter @halseanderson and visit her at madwomanintheforest.com.
