About This Book

     ... Although not as well known as Little Women, this is one of Alcott's most charming and appealing books. Polly's humor and good will in the face of her troubles endears her every reader, and later scenes include a powerful plea for the "emancipation of women" that resonates with present-day feminism....

About Louisa May Alcott

Daughter of the transcendentalist intellectual, Bronson Alcott, and a close friend of the philosopher-writers of Concord and Boston, she was nonetheless a child of necessity most of her life. She first worked as a seamstress, a teacher, and then as a Civil War nurse, and in 1863, her letters were published in book form as Hospital Sketches. This was her first real writing success. Five years later she wrote a book for girls based on her childhood experiences, Little Women, and this work enabled her, at last, to pay off her family's debts, and her subsequent children's books eventually freed her from financial fears.