In "Little Women" when we first meet the family, they are very poor and Mr March is far away in the army. Meg, the eldest, is sixteen when the story begins. Jo is fifteen, "tall, thin and brown", her hair is her one beauty. Beth, at thirteen, is shy and peaceful, rarely disturbed, while Amy, the youngest, is rather vain, and, in her own opinion, "a most important person". As the story develops we enjoy reading about the way the girls enjoy their lives in spite of their poverty; they meet 'the boy next door', who becomes a great friend, and his tutor Mr Brooke.
"Good Wives" begins with a wedding, the war is over, and the March family has changed, but is still together. By the end of this book we have seen Meg coping with her own home and the birth of her children. Jo has been to New York where she meets professor Bhaer. Amy, too, marries.
"Little Men" shows how the girls' families develop, how their lives change and how, in particular, Jo and her professor have their hearts' desire and run 'Plumfield', the boys' school where we meet Nat, Dan and many other characters.
The end of the trilogy shows the March family much extended but happy and content with its destiny. The harvest is a good one.
Louisa May Alcott was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet best known for writing the novel Little Women (1868) and its sequels Good Wives (1869), Little Men (1871) and Jo's Boys (1886). Raised in New England by her transcendentalist parents, Abigail May Alcott and Amos Bronson Alcott, she grew up among many well-known intellectuals of the day, including Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Alcott's family suffered from financial difficulties, and while she worked to help support the family from an early age, she also sought an outlet in writing. She began to receive critical success for her writing in the 1860s. Early in her career, she sometimes used pen names such as A.M. Barnard, under which she wrote lurid short stories and sensation novels for adults that focused on passion and revenge. Published in 1868, Little Women is set in the Alcott family home, Orchard House, in Concord, Massachusetts, and is loosely based on Alcott's childhood experiences with her three sisters, Abigail May Alcott Nieriker, Elizabeth Sewall Alcott, and Anna Bronson Alcott Pratt. The novel was well-received at the time and is still popular today among both children and adults. It has been adapted for stage plays, films, and television many times. Alcott was an abolitionist and a feminist and remained unmarried throughout her life. She also spent her life active in reform movements such as temperance and women's suffrage. She died from a stroke in Boston on March 6, 1888, just two days after her father's death.
Does it really count as a 2013 book if I started it in 2012? We'll count it anyway. This is probably the third or fourth time I've read this classic, and I still love it every time. This is actually three books in one, Little Women and the two short sequels that followed. I'm not as big of a fan of the sequels, but they are all together in my version so I read them that way.