The Little Women- Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy - have grown up and are ready to go out and fulfil their childhood dreams. Pursuing ideals of work and love, each takes a slightly different path and each finds hope, happiness in their own way.
'Life and love are very precious when both are in full bloom'
With four lively, attractive women in one house and a dashing young bachelor in the neighbouring one, romance can only be a matter of time. As Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy become young women, they take separate paths in life, following their dreams, finding love, becoming wives and travelling the world. But the tie that binds the sisters brings them together when tragedy strikes, for only with each other can they find the comfort they need.
Also in Virago Classic Children's Books: Little Women, Little Men, Jo's Boys
Louisa May Alcott, daughter of Amos Bronson Alcott, one of Emerson's circle of friends, was born in Philadelphia in 1832. Educated mainly by H. D. Thoreau and her father, Miss Alcott served as a hospital nurse during the Civil War. Her first book, Flower Fables, appeared in 1854, and her next work, Hospital Sketches (1863), consisted of her letters home from the Union Hospital during the war. She first gained a wide reputation with Little Women (1868-69), and her best subsequent work was done in the same field. Her chief publications after Little Women are the following: An Old-Fashioned Girl (1870), Little Men (1871), Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag (1871-79), Work (1873), Silver Pitchers (1876), Rose in Bloom (1876), Jo's Boys (1886), and A Garland for Girls (1887). Good Wives is the second part of Little Women. Miss Alcott died in 1888.