Four sisters name their wishes on a hill, and the rest of the book works out what each one gets and gives up.
A long, warm, episodic family novel in which each March sister's wish is the plot, and in which one of them does not survive. It is about one hundred eighty-six thousand words by our count, with some period moralizing and a tearful stretch around Beth. Four and a half out of five (my opinion).
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A full-spoiler Little Women summary built as one ledger per March sister, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy: what each wants, gets and gives up across both parts, plus name counts and the poem about four little chests. Project Gutenberg text, counted by us.
Little Women; Or, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy is a novel by Louisa May Alcott about four sisters growing up in a New England family while their father is away with the army. We worked from the free Project Gutenberg ebook, number 37106, with illustrations by Frank T. Merrill and the Little, Brown and Company title page. This one volume holds both halves of the story, printed as Part First (chapters one to twenty-three) and Part Second (chapters twenty-four to forty-seven), forty-seven chapters in all. Chapter numbers on this site follow that edition, and other editions may number or divide the chapters differently.
Below you’ll find a summary built as four ledgers, one per sister, tracking what Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy each want, get and give up, starting from the castles in the air they describe in chapter thirteen. There are also name counts, a Christmas and letters count, and the poem about four little chests, all counted from the text. The page has full spoilers, since it is a classic and every marriage and death is covered.
A long, warm, episodic family novel in which each March sister's wish is the plot, and in which one of them does not survive. It is about one hundred eighty-six thousand words by our count, with some period moralizing and a tearful stretch around Beth. Four and a half out of five (my opinion). Read it if: you only know the famous scenes and want the whole story, both parts; you like family stories where small money worries and small kindnesses carry the plot; you want a classic with four distinct young women to follow; you are studying it and want a map of who wants, gets and gives up what. Skip it if: you want fast plotting: the book moves by episodes, chapter by chapter; you dislike gentle moral lessons spoken straight to the reader; you want to avoid a young character's illness and death.
A full-spoiler Little Women summary built as one ledger per March sister, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy: what each wants, gets and gives up across both parts, plus name counts and the poem about four little chests. Project Gutenberg text, counted by us. Summary: Little Women →
Four sisters, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy March, grow up in a New England household while their father is away with the army. The book follows what each wants and what she gets or gives up, through friendship with the boy next door, Laurie, illness, marriages and a death. The summary on this page has full spoilers.
Project Gutenberg ebook number 37106, Little Women; Or, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy, is free to read, and is the text this page was built from. It includes the illustrations by Frank T. Merrill.
In the Project Gutenberg text there are forty-seven chapters: twenty-three in Part First and twenty-four in Part Second, which begins at chapter twenty-four, Gossip. Other editions may divide or number the chapters differently.
