Little Women

Little Women is a coming-of-age novel by the American author Louisa May Alcott, originally published in two volumes in 1868 and 1869. It follows 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 Alcott and her three sisters and is classified as autobiographical or semi-autobiographical.

The book was an immediate commercial and critical success, and readers wanted more of the characters. Alcott quickly completed a second volume, published in the United Kingdom as Good Wives or Little Women Married, although that name came from the publisher rather than the author. The two volumes were issued as a single novel titled Little Women in 1880. The second volume follows the sisters into adult life, and because it was issued separately it is still printed in some places as a book of its own.

The March household is set during the Civil War, with the father absent and the family managing on reduced means, which makes the sisters' domestic work and their ambitions matter economically as well as emotionally.