30 Sep 2021
Books, On This Day, Reading
30 September 2021 Cheryl

30 September 1868: First volume of Little Women is published

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Before Little Women, Louisa May Alcott wrote gothic thrillers with names like Pauline’s Passion and Punishment and A Long Fatal Love Chase to support her family. She called them ‘blood and thunder tales’ and published using the androgynous pseudonym A.M. Barnard. [1]

In 1867, Thomas Niles, Louisa May Alcott’s publisher requested that she write a book “for girls”. She didn’t much like the idea, preferring to release a collection of short stories instead. However, she needed the money so agreed, and on 30 September 1868, the first volume of Little Women was published which included illustrations by May Alcott, Louisa’s sister.

Little Women is the heart-warming story of four sisters, Jo, Meg, Amy and Beth, and of the courage, humour and ingenuity they display to survive poverty and the absence of their father during the American Civil War. It was loosely based on the lives of the author and her three sisters.

It was an immediate commercial and critical success. The first printing of 2,000 copies sold out quickly, and the company had trouble keeping up with the demand for reprintings. Readers were eager for more stories of the March family so Alcott set to work and quickly completed a second volume in just two months. This was also a success, and the two volumes were issued as a single novel titled Little Women in 1880.

Alcott subsequently wrote two sequels, both also featuring the March sisters: Little Men (1871) and Jo’s Boys (1886).

Writer Anna Quindlen once claimed “Little Women changed my life”, and she was not alone in having such a strong reaction to this extraordinary classic. J.K. Rowling, Simone de Beauvoir, Ursula le Guin and Ethel Turner were just some of the literary fans of the novel.

The book has been translated into numerous languages, and frequently adapted for stage and screen.