A children's classic can be described as a book so inviting that a young reader wants to escape into the world it creates. By that definition, Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, an account of four sisters living in Concord, Massachusetts, during the 1860s, is immortal. The author drew on her own impoverished childhood as a daughter of Bronson Alcott, a feckless member of the Concord enlightenment. Generations of girls have yearned to join the March household, and they remember the story's high points better than crises of their own lives.
What other 19th century novel that aims to teach girls conventional...
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