Who wrote the novel 'Little Women'?

"Little Women" is a novel by the American writer Louisa May Alcott, published in two volumes in 1868 and 1869.

About the novel:

• It follows the lives of the four March sisters, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy, as they grow from childhood into womanhood in New England (Concord, Massachusetts), during and after the American Civil War (1861-1865).
• Their father is away serving in the war, and their mother, "Marmee", guides them with love and strong values.

The main character, Jo March, is an independent, ambitious girl who wants to become a writer. She is largely based on Alcott herself.

The novel explores family love, poverty, work, marriage, personal ambition and the choices available to women in the 19th century.

Beth's illness and death is one of the most famous emotional scenes in American literature.

Sequels include "Little Men" (1871) and "Jo's Boys" (1886).

It has been adapted many times, including films in 1933, 1949, 1994 (with Winona Ryder) and 2019 (directed by Greta Gerwig).

About Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888):

• She was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Concord, Massachusetts.
• Her father, Amos Bronson Alcott, was an educator linked with the Transcendentalist movement, and the family knew writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.
• She served as a nurse in the Civil War and wrote "Hospital Sketches" (1863).
• She supported the abolition of slavery and women's suffrage.

Other American women writers of the 19th and early 20th centuries:

• Harriet Beecher Stowe: "Uncle Tom's Cabin" (1852), an anti-slavery novel.
• Emily Dickinson: poet, famous for short poems such as "Because I could not stop for Death".
• Edith Wharton: "The Age of Innocence" (Pulitzer Prize, 1921), the first woman to win the Pulitzer for fiction.

Why not the other options?

• ✗Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote "Uncle Tom's Cabin".
• ✗Emily Dickinson was a poet.
• ✗Edith Wharton wrote "The Age of Innocence".