Little Women is a novel by American author Louisa May Alcott, which was originally published in two volumes. Alcott wrote the books rapidly over several months at the request of her publisher.
The novel follows the lives of four sisters—Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy March—detailing their passage from childhood to womanhood, and is loosely based on the author and her three sisters. It is an
outstanding achievement of nineteenth-century American literature, and the first children’’s novel written in the United States to have become an enduring classic. The book has been adapted for
film twice as silent films, and four times with sound, in 1933, 1949, 1978 and 1994. Four television series were made, including two in Britain in the 1950s and two anime series in Japan in the
1980s. A musical version opened on Broadway in 2005. An American opera version in 1998 has been performed internationally and filmed for broadcast on US television in 2001.
路易莎•M•奧爾科特(1832-1888),美國作家。1832年11月29日出生在賓夕法尼亞州的傑曼鎮。路易莎10歲時便已熱心於業余戲劇演出,15歲時寫出第一部情節劇,21歲開始發表詩歌及小品。1868年,一位出版商建議她寫一部關於「女孩子的書」,她便根據孩提的記憶寫成《小婦人》。
出乎作者意料的是《小婦人》打動了無數美國讀者,尤其是女性讀者的心弦。之后,路易莎又續寫了《小男人》和《喬的男孩子們》,1873年又以小說形式出版了自傳著作《經驗的故事》。
路易莎成名后,繼續撰寫小說和故事,並投身於婦女選舉運動和禁酒運動。美國內戰期間她在華盛頓做過軍隊救護人員,后來,她還擔任過一家兒童刊物(Robert Merry’’s Museum)的編輯。