Little Women Resources

This page offers a complete e-text of the novel along with a biography of Louisa May Alcott and other resources.

A comprehensive collection of information about Louisa May Alcott on the Web.

This detailed biography, written by Joan Goodwin for the Unitarian Universalist Historical Society, also includes a short bibliography.

A great place to begin your research on Little Women. Check out the bibliography, too!

This relatively recent film version includes an all-star cast whose names you'll probably know, from Winona Ryder as Jo to Kirsten Dunst as Amy and Claire Danes as Beth, not to mention Christian Bale as Laurie.

This film is less notable for June Allyson's portrayal of Jo March than for Elizabeth Taylor's portrayal of Amy – in a terrible blonde wig! Nevertheless, it's a pretty good movie, and it preserves several important passages from the novel word-for word as dialogue, so it's a useful study tool.

Directed by George Cuckor and starting Katharine Hepburn, this 1933 version of Alcott's novel is also a film classic.

Project Gutenberg offers the full text of the novel, either for reading online or downloading to your desktop.

If you'd like to read the novel in a more book-like version, Google Books offers a scanned version of the 1880 edition.

Hear the complete novel read aloud, chapter by chapter.

In this brief editorial piece, Lynn Neary reflects on how modern girls react to Jo as a character. You can read or listen to the story at the website.

Purchase and download the Audiobook from Random House Audio

In this photograph, Louisa May Alcott is seen at work at her desk.

The first edition of Louisa May Alcott's novel was illustrated by her sister, May, a developing artist. Heavily criticized, her drawings were eliminated from future editions of the novel, but they may show a more accurate version of Louisa's vision of her fictional family.