She's remembered now for Little Women (1869), which she found tedious to write. In her journal she wrote, "I plod away, though I don't enjoy this sort of thing." She much preferred writing lurid, Gothic stories, about women who sold their souls to the devil, and governesses who looked sweet and innocent by day but who ruined the souls of little children by night. She published these stories under several different pen names. Her publishers offered her more money if she would agree to publish under her own name, but she could not bring herself to embarrass her father and his colleague, Ralph Waldo Emerson. She wrote to a friend, "To have had Mr. Emerson for an intellectual god all one's life is to be invested with a chain armor of propriety."
~Writer's Almanac
Meg is the conservative sister whose wish it is to grow up quickly and leave childish ways behind. Jo is the tomboy who has dreams of becoming a writer and wrestles continually with an ever-threatening temper. Golden-girl Amy is a tad spoiled and has a tendency toward affectation. And Beth is the frail sister who only cares about serving others and eventually pays the ultimate price for doing so.
This is a story of growing maturity and wisdom, and the search for the contendedness of family life in a war-stricken society. Written in 1867, it is a fictionalised account of Alcott and her sisters and has become a much loved classic tale. Set in the period in whichbit was written, some of its issues may seem outdated, but many of the circumstance realized by the March sisters are all too relevant today
