Little Women

Little Women follows the four March sisters, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy, as they grow up in New England while their father is away serving in the Civil War. Their mother, called Marmee, guides them through poverty, small quarrels and large hopes. Jo, a spirited and ambitious writer, stands at the centre of the story, and much of it draws on the author's own family. The book blends humour, domestic detail and moral seriousness, and it asks what a woman's life might hold in the nineteenth century. It remains one of the best loved novels about family and growing up.