Little Women

Little Women is a coming-of-age novel by Louisa May Alcott originally published in two volumes in 1868 and 1869.

The story follows the lives of the four March sisters—Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy—and details their passage from childhood to womanhood. It is loosely based on the lives of the author and her three sisters.

The novel takes place in Civil War America, and tells the story of four sisters, from childhood to youth, who, together with their mother, Mrs. March, will confront the difficulties that life shows them.

Their father is away serving as a chaplain with the Union army, so the household is run by the four sisters and their mother on very little money. Each takes a different route out of girlhood: Meg toward marriage, Jo toward writing and an independence unusual for the time, Beth toward the illness that shapes the second half of the book, and Amy toward Europe and art.

The book has been translated into many languages and adapted repeatedly for the stage and, above all, the screen.