Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters

by Anne Boyd Rioux

Overview

On its 150th anniversary, discover the story of the beloved classic that has captured the imaginations of generations.

Soon after publication on September 30, 1868, Little Women became an enormous bestseller and one of America’s favorite novels. Its popularity quickly spread throughout the world, and the book has become an international classic. When Anne Boyd Rioux read the novel in her twenties, she had a powerful reaction to the story. Through teaching the book, she has seen the same effect on many others.

In Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy, Rioux recounts how Louisa May Alcott came to write Little Women, drawing inspiration for it from her own life. Rioux also examines why this tale of family and community ties, set while the Civil War tore America apart, has resonated through later wars, the Depression, and times of changing opportunities for women.

Alcott’s novel has moved generations of women, many of them writers: Simone de Beauvoir, J. K. Rowling, bell hooks, Cynthia Ozick, Jane Smiley, Margo Jefferson, and Ursula K. Le Guin were inspired by Little Women, particularly its portrait of the iconoclastic young writer, Jo. Many have felt, as Anna Quindlen has declared, “Little Women changed my life.”

Today, Rioux sees the novel’s beating heart in Alcott’s portrayal of family resilience and her honest look at the struggles of girls growing into women. In gauging its current status, Rioux shows why Little Women remains a book with such power that people carry its characters and spirit throughout their lives.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393254730
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	08/21/2018
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	1,230,295
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Anne Boyd Rioux, professor at the University of New Orleans, author of Constance Fenimore Woolson: Portrait of a Lady Novelist, and editor of Miss Grief and Other Stories, has received two National Endowment for the Humanities Awards, one for public scholarship. She lives in New Orleans.

Kimberly Farr is an accomplished stage, film, and television actor who has appeared on and off-Broadway, as well as in regional theater productions. An award-winning audiobook narrator, she has recorded over 100 titles.

Table of Contents

Prologue: "Our Book" xi

Part I The Making of a Classic

1 "Pegging away": The Road to Little Women 3

2 "We really lived most of it": Making Up Little Women 19

3 "Fresh, sparkling, … full of soul": The Phenomenon of Little Women 46

Part II The Life of a Classic

4 "See her … living … the immortal Jo!": Little Women on Stage and Screen 81

5 "The mother of us all": Little Women's Cultural and Literary Influence 115

6 "A divided house of a book": Reading Little Women 135

Part III A Classic for Today

7 "A private book for girls": Can Boys Read Little Women? 161

8 "Being someone": Growing Up Female with Little Women 180

9 "Wanting to be Rory, but better": Little Women and Girls' Stories Today 204

Acknowledgments 223

Notes 227

Index 257

Editorial Reviews

…Anne Boyd Rioux's lively and informative [book] makes it clear why having these fictive young women implanted in my consciousness has been a good thing, helpful for every girl facing the challenges of growing up to be a woman…Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy does what—ideally—books about books can do: I've taken Little Women down from the shelf and put it on top of the books I plan to read. I'm curious to check in on the March sisters, and—inspired by Anne Boyd Rioux—find out how they seem to me now.

The New York Times Book Review - Francine Prose

04/09/2018
To coincide with the 150th anniversary of the publication of Little Women, Rioux (Constance Fenimore Woolson: Portrait of a Lady Novelist) offers a solid and well-illustrated history of the novel’s publication, reception, and adaptations. Rioux lays out biographical background on author Louisa May Alcott and traces her unlikely move from gothic potboiler author to girls’ literature phenom as a result of the book’s wild popularity. Rioux also examines the novel’s many stage and screen adaptations, argues it is as appropriate for boys as girls (a section that could be condensed), and discusses contemporary YA fiction directly influenced by this seminal work. In one section, Rioux explores the many women writers, from Susan Sontag to J.K. Rowling, inspired by the example of Jo March, one of the only early literary models of female authorship. She also successfully highlights important points in Little Women’s history, such as the publisher’s altered 1880 edition (still commonly read) that cleans up Alcott’s lively slang. Throughout, Rioux offers enough detail to entertain and inform without overwhelming the reader. While she notes the novel’s readership has fallen off in recent years, one hopes her well-crafted work will help revive interest in a work she rightfully argues should be placed beside Tom Sawyer as an enduring American classic. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

What a marvelous investigation of Louisa May Alcott’s slyly subversive Little Women! Anne Boyd Rioux has given us a thorough and insightful examination of the enduring appeal of Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy, and why generations of readers have claimed the March sisters as their own.

Katharine Weber

Highly companionable and illuminating.

Mark Rozzo - Vanity Fair

This delightful look at a great American classic…tells the book’s history, explores its abiding appeal, and considers its influence on generations of readers and writers since. It goes without saying that lovers of that book will adore this book. But even those who haven’t read Little Women will enjoy learning about the literary history behind it.

Christian Science Monitor

Reading Anne Boyd Rioux’s engaging Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters, has made me pick up Alcott’s novel yet again with renewed insight and inspiration. Every fan of Little Women will delight in reading this book. And all the women—and men—who haven’t read the novel will race to it after reading Rioux.

Ann Hood

Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters masterfully peels away the layers of complexity in Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel. Reflecting astute research and scholarship, Rioux’s book is immensely entertaining and informative, and can be easily enjoyed by teachers, scholars, and the multitude of Little Women lovers around the world.

Daniel Shealy

Lively and informative…Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy does what—ideally—books about books can do: I’ve taken Little Women down from my shelf and put it on top of the books I plan to read.

Francine Prose - New York Times Book Review

Astute examination of the long life of Little Women.

Sophie Gilbert - The Atlantic

A love letter written not by a smitten youngster naïve to her beloved's drawbacks but by a mature adult who can recognize complexity and nuance.

Ilana Masad - NPR

★ 12/01/2018
Rioux (English, University of New Orleans; Constance Fenimore Woolson) commemorates the 150th anniversary of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women with this volume examining the novel's enduring influence. Providing a brief biography of Alcott (1832–88), who faced many hardships yet also saw fame and fortune owing to the work's immediate popularity, Rioux reports ten million copies of the book sold globally since 1868. Moreover, the story has inspired three motion pictures, a play, radio broadcasts, numerous television miniseries, a musical, and an opera, with a new miniseries and film release coming this year. Yet despite its success, critics (especially in the 20th century) have often dismissed the work and schools have ceased teaching what Rioux considers "a core text in the development of feminist literary criticism." Nevertheless, Little Women continues to influence writers and popular media such as television's Gilmore Girls, supporting Rioux's argument for the book to be taught more regularly as it continues to challenge readers. VERDICT Highly recommended for all readers interested in Alcott and her masterpiece's legacy.–Erica Swenson Danowitz, Delaware County Community College Library, Media, PA

School Library Journal

2018-05-23
A history of Little Women coinciding with the 150th anniversary of its original publication.When it was published in 1868, Louisa May Alcott's novel became an immediate bestseller. Encouraged by her publishers to write a "novel for girls," Alcott set her coming-of-age-story of four sisters during the Civil War and loosely based their struggles and aspirations on her own experiences with her three sisters. For countless generations of young readers, it has remained a beloved favorite as well as an influential touchstone to scores of aspiring writers. Yet this quietly groundbreaking novel has had more than its share of lukewarm responses from literary scholars, and it appears less frequently on high school reading lists compared to classics by noted male authors. Rioux (English/Univ. of New Orleans; Constance Fenimore Woolson: Portrait of a Lady Novelist, 2006, etc.) writes, "in spite of Little Women's elevation to canonical status, scholars still do not sufficiently acknowledge how key Little Women has been to the development of women's literary traditions in the United States and abroad. It has been a foundational text not only in the history of women's literature but also in individual writers' very conception of themselves as writers and artists." The author devotes the first few chapters to Alcott's family history and early writing career, touching on the similarities—as well as the striking differences—between Alcott's family and the characters in Little Women. Alcott endured considerably more challenging hardships than those depicted in the novel, which continued to fascinate in its many forms. Rioux provides an overview of the various film, stage, and TV incarnations, from the 1933 classic with Katharine Hepburn as Jo to the 1994 version by Australian director Gillian Armstrong (Rioux's favorite). From the 1970s onward, the novel continued to draw closer ties to the evolving women's movement, and its themes of ambition and empowerment have influenced such contemporary TV series as The Gilmore Girls and HBO's Girls.An enlightening, well-documented argument for why this novel is essential—will inspire readers to become acquainted or reacquainted with this influential classic.

Kirkus Reviews

Rioux considers the cultural impact and enduring popularity of Louisa May Alcott’s American Civil War-set novel Little Women, a runaway success since it was first published 150 years ago.

Daily Mail (UK)

With impeccable research and genuine affection, [Rioux] charts the history of the beloved…novel.

Connie Ogle - Newsday

Engrossing.

|Los Angeles Times

An adroit consideration of Alcott and her milieu.… Thoughtful.

Meghan Cox Gurdon - Wall Street Journal

Highly entertaining…[Rioux] paints a compelling portrait of Alcott, giving us fascinating insights into the creation of Little Women.

Charlotte Gordon - Washington Post

Straddling the line between entertainment and nuanced complexity, this fascinating look at Alcott’s novel is not to be missed.

A Mighty Girl

Engrossing.

Los Angeles Times

★ 08/01/2018
Rioux (English, Univ. of New Orleans; Constance Fenimore Woolson) commemorates the 150th anniversary of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women with this volume examining the novel's enduring influence. Providing a brief biography of Alcott (1832–88), who faced many hardships yet also saw fame and fortune owing to the work's immediate popularity, Rioux reports ten million copies of the book sold globally since 1868. Moreover, the story has inspired three motion pictures, a play, radio broadcasts, numerous television miniseries, a musical, and an opera, with a new miniseries and film release coming this year. Yet despite its success, critics (especially in the 20th century) have often dismissed the work and schools have ceased teaching what Rioux considers "a core text in the development of feminist literary criticism." Nevertheless, Little Women continues to influence writers and popular media such as television's Gilmore Girls, supporting Rioux's argument for the book to be taught more regularly as it continues to challenge readers. VERDICT Highly recommended for all readers interested in Alcott and her masterpiece's legacy.—Erica Swenson Danowitz, Delaware Cty. Community Coll. Lib., Media, PA

Library Journal

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