“Little Women,” one of America’s most famous novels, was published this week in 1868. This classic work by Louisa May Alcott tells the story of four sisters during the Civil War, but it is still read, and well loved, by people today.

Louisa May Alcott was born in 1832 in Pennsylvania, but she spent most of her life in Concord, Massachusetts. Louisa’s father, Amos Bronson Alcott, was an educator who was friendly with some of the most famous American writers and thinkers of the time, including Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Have you ever heard of them? These men were part of a movement called Transcendentalism that encouraged people to think for themselves and seek knowledge from within. Does this philosophy sound like a good one to you?

Amos Bronson Alcott founded a school that was quite unusual for its time — he refused to beat his students, and taught them by making education fun instead of just making his students repeat facts. Do you think his ideas were ahead of their time? But the school failed after six years, and he was unable to provide for his family, which included four daughters and a wife, all living in a home they called “Orchard House,” shown at bottom right.

Luckily, one of those daughters turned out to be Louisa May Alcott. She worked as a teacher, a housekeeper, and a seamstress, among other jobs. The other girls also worked, and their mother was one of the first women in Massachusetts to hold a job in social work. But Louisa May had the most financial success…as a writer. Her first story was published in 1852, and she published many other melodramatic, or overly emotional, novels and magazine stories from then on. This writing helped her family stay out of poverty.

In 1862, she worked as a nurse for Union troops in the Civil War until she got sick with typhoid fever. Her writing started to change, and her book “Hospital Sketches” — based on her time as a nurse — won her a reputation as a serious writer. Looking for a bestseller, a publisher asked Alcott to write a book for young girls. She was reluctant at first, but she came through with a novel that was an instant national sensation.

“Little Women” is the story of a family with four sisters, shown in the illustration at left. Their names are Jo, Beth, and Amy March. In the book, the family is also quite poor. Do you think she based this book on her own childhood? Have you ever read “Little Women”? Did you like it? It has been remade in many forms: movies, plays, musicals, cartoons, and even an opera. Have you seen any of these other works?

Alcott had a very simple style of writing. She was fond of saying, “Never use a long word when a short word will do as well.” Is this good writing advice? She wrote other children’s books later, including “Little Men,” “Eight Cousins,” and “Jo’s Boys,” and they sold well at the time. But none of her other books has been as enduringly popular as “Little Women,” one of the true classics of American children’s literature. What are some of your other favorite children’s classics? Why do you like these books? What do they have in common?

Now take the quiz

Why do you think this book was so successful in its time? Why has it remained so popular throughout the years?

One can visit the website of Orchard House here to learn more about Louisa May Alcott.