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The real reason Jane Austen never married.Her own life echoes at other points in the story: the play the girls perform at home, Jo’s various adventures as an author, and poor Beth’s illnesses.
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Alcott later reflected, “we really lived most of it”. The Alcott girls called their mother “Marmee”, as the March sisters do in the book (probably pronouncing it ‘Mawmee’ in the New England accent). Louisa herself was Jo, while her oldest sister, Anna, became Meg and her younger sisters Lizzie and May became Beth and Amy, respectively. Based on Alcott’s own family, it was the most lifelike novel for children that many readers had yet encountered. One reason for the novel’s enduring popularity is its realism. Indeed, the novel has been translated into over 50 languages and has been a staple girls’ coming-of-age book for more than 150 years. Other changes were minor, including English spelling such as “colour” for “color.” And while the two parts were published in America in one volume from 1880 on, they continue to be published as two volumes in the UK and other countries around the world.
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While the first book was always called Little Women, the second was called Little Women Married, Little Wives, Nice Wives, and, most enduringly, Good Wives. The enduring popularity of Alcott’s storyīecause Alcott was not on English soil to register her copyright when Little Women was first published there, she held no copyright in England, allowing other publishers to print their own versions under a variety of titles. Little Women or, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy, Part Second was published in April 1869 in the USA, and a month later, as Little Women Wedded, in England. But she was as eager herself to see how her characters turned out, and this time she welcomed Niles’s request for a second volume. They especially wanted to know who the girls would marry – “as if that was the only end and aim of a woman’s life,” Alcott complained in her journal. Letters came pouring in from young female readers, in particular, who wanted to know what happened to the March sisters. Nonetheless, the book sold rapidly in America and England, appealing to audiences of all ages and both genders. American novelist Louisa May Alcott, author of ‘Little Women’.