Little Women book by Louise May Alcott
Some books age like milk. Others age like a favourite quilt: a little worn at the edges, and warmer for it. Louisa May Alcott's Little Women belongs firmly to the second kind. First published in two parts in 1868 and 1869, it has never really gone out of print. It has been filmed, staged, adapted and argued over for generations. I think the reason is simple. Alcott wrote about the ordinary business of growing up, and she did it with so much honesty that readers keep recognising themselves in it. A book written almost against its author's will Alcott did not set out to write a classic. Her publisher asked her for a book for girls, and she was not keen. She was better known at the time for sensational stories, and she doubted that domestic life would make good material. She wrote it anyway, drawing heavily on her own family in Concord, Massachusetts. The four March sisters are loosely modelled on Alcott and her three sisters, and that grounding in real life is a large p...