Good Wives

Louisa May Alcott

korr 2010 · Little Women Libri 2 · Cosimo, Inc.

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Little Women is, to this day, one of the most beloved novels in the English language. But few of its fans realize that it was originally published complete with its sequel, 1869's Good Wives, in one volume. This wonderful book picks up the story of sisters Jo, Meg, Beth, and Amy three years later, as they've passed through childhood and begin to face the complications of adult life.The further adventures of the March women-as well as their friend Laurie-will delight and enthrall readers who've only known their tale as ending with Little Women.LOUISA MAY ALCOTT (1832-1888), one of the most well-known American novelists of the 19th century, was born on November 29, 1832 to transcendentalist educator Amos Bronson Alcott and his wife, Abigail May Alcott. She was the second of four sisters (like Jo, her literary corollary), and grew up in a family that encouraged and sympathized with her abolitionist and feminist leanings. As a child she received instruction from noted literary figures such as Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, all family friends. In addition to the Little Women series, which included four novels, she wrote 28 other works, three under the pen name A.M Barnard. Though Alcott had chronic health problems in her later years, most likely attributed to an autoimmune disease, she continued to write until her death at 55 in 1888.

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Louisa May Alcott was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, in 1832. Two years later, she moved with her family to Boston and in 1840 to Concord, which was to remain her family home for the rest of her life. Her father, Bronson Alcott, was a transcendentalist and friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Alcott early realized that her father could not be counted on as sole support of his family, and so she sacrificed much of her own pleasure to earn money by sewing, teaching, and churning out potboilers. Her reputation was established with Hospital Sketches (1863), which was an account of her work as a volunteer nurse in Washington, D.C. Alcott's first works were written for children, including her best-known Little Women (1868--69) and Little Men: Life at Plumfield with Jo's Boys (1871). Moods (1864), a "passionate conflict," was written for adults. Alcott's writing eventually became the family's main source of income. Throughout her life, Alcott continued to produce highly popular and idealistic literature for children. An Old-Fashioned Girl (1870), Eight Cousins (1875), Rose in Bloom (1876), Under the Lilacs (1878), and Jack and Jill (1881) enjoyed wide popularity. At the same time, her adult fiction, such as the autobiographical novel Work: A Story of Experience (1873) and A Modern Mephistopheles (1877), a story based on the Faust legend, shows her deeper concern with such social issues as education, prison reform, and women's suffrage. She realistically depicts the problems of adolescents and working women, the difficulties of relationships between men and women, and the values of the single woman's life.