Little Women

Louisa May Alcott was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania on November 29, 1832. She and her three sisters, Anna, Elizabeth and May were educated by their father, philosopher/ teacher, Bronson Alcott and raised on the practical Christianity of their mother, Abigail May.Louisa spent her childhood in Boston and in Concord, Massachusetts, where her days were enlightened by visits to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s library, excursions into nature with Henry David Thoreau and theatricals in the barn at Hillside (now Hawthorne’s "Wayside").Like her character, Jo March in Little Women, young Louisa was a tomboy: "No boy could be my friend till I had beaten him in a race," she claimed, " and no girl if she refused to climb trees, leap fences...."For Louisa, writing was an early passion. She had a rich imagination and often her stories became melodramas that she and her sisters would act out for friends. Louisa preferred to play the "lurid" parts in these plays, "the villains, ghosts, bandits, and disdainful queens."At age 15, troubled by the poverty that plagued her family, she vowed: "I will do something by and by. Don’t care what, teach, sew, act, write, anything to help the family; and I’ll be rich and famous and happy before I die, see if I won’t!"Confronting a society that offered little opportunity to women seeking employment, Louisa determined "...I will make a battering-ram of my head and make my way through this rough and tumble world." Whether as a teacher, seamstress, governess, or household servant, for many years Louisa did any work she could find.Louisa’s career as an author began with poetry and short stories that appeared in popular magazines. In 1854, when she was 22, her first book Flower Fables was published. A milestone along her literary path was Hospital Sketches (1863) based on the letters she had written home from her post as a nurse in Washington, DC as a nurse during the Civil War.When Louisa was 35 years old, her publisher Thomas Niles in Boston asked her to write "a book for girls." Little Women was written at Orchard House from May to July 1868. The novel is based on Louisa and her sisters’ coming of age and is set in Civil War New England. Jo March was the first American juvenile heroine to act from her own individuality; a living, breathing person rather than the idealized stereotype then prevalent in children’s fiction.In all, Louisa published over 30 books and collections of stories. She died on March 6, 1888, only two days after her father, and is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord.

出版者:Bantam Classics

作者:Louisa May Alcott

页数:472

出版时间:1983-4-1

价格:GBP 4.26

装帧:Paperback

isbn号码:9780553212754

图书标签:英文原版小说女性外国文学美国文学LouisaMayAlcott美国Women

Generations of readers young and old, male and female, have fallen in love with the March sisters of Louisa May Alcott’s most popular and enduring novel, Little Women. Here are talented tomboy and author-to-be Jo, tragically frail Beth, beautiful Meg, and romantic, spoiled Amy, united in their devotion to each other and their struggles to survive in New England during the Civil War.

It is no secret that Alcott based Little Women on her own early life. While her father, the freethinking reformer and abolitionist Bronson Alcott, hobnobbed with such eminent male authors as Emerson, Thoreau, and Hawthorne, Louisa supported herself and her sisters with �woman’s work,” including sewing, doing laundry, and acting as a domestic servant. But she soon discovered she could make more money writing. Little Women brought her lasting fame and fortune, and far from being the �girl’s book” her publisher requested, it explores such timeless themes as love and death, war and peace, the conflict between personal ambition and family responsibilities, and the clash of cultures between Europe and America.

读后感

“所有时代的所有少女成长过程中所要面对的经历的，都可以在这本书中找到：初恋的甜蜜和烦恼，感情与理智的选择，理想和现实的差距，贫穷与富有的矛盾。” 如果我有一个女儿，我一定要为她读这本书——《小妇人》。唉，因为我为小朔读，他是不肯听的。有些日子他翻来覆去捧着...  

在一个冬日明媚的午后，重读了一遍《小妇人》，从阅览室出来的时候带着一身的惆怅，撕心裂肺的疼痛猝不及防地袭击我心深处。 文字是个很默契的东西，可以拥有穿越时空的力量，把那个时代发生的那些事情活化在这个时代的这个时刻。感受着乔的感受，经历着乔的经历，如此洒脱的她...  

用户评价

资本主义社会道德楷模范例书啊，看完gossip girls再看这本little women的感觉真是。。。道德对于社会中下层人群来说是束缚还是自我保护的盔甲？

很有爱的故事~~

建议读完Part I既可，Part II 成了言情片片。

a little bit boring at the beginning

资本主义社会道德楷模范例书啊，看完gossip girls再看这本little women的感觉真是。。。道德对于社会中下层人群来说是束缚还是自我保护的盔甲？