Since its publication in 1868-1869, Little Women, possibly the most endearing youth classic in American literature, has been passed down from mother to daughter for generations. It has been translated into more than fifty languages ​​and inspired six films, four television productions, a Broadway musical, an opera, and a web series. This luxurious, full-color edition features more than 220 hand-picked illustrations including images from the films, stunning Norman Rockwell prints and iconic drawings by youth story illustrators such as Alice Barber Stevens, Frank T. Merrill and Jessie Wilcox Smith.

The famous scholar of the life and work of the author of Little Women John Matteson brings in this book his knowledge about the novel, the March family born in its pages and the Alcott family that inspired both. Through the many photographs taken at the Alcott home expressly for this edition ‒of Anna's wedding dress, the older sister; of the costumes for the theatrical representations of the family; from the drawings of May, the younger sister; from Ms. Alcott's Cookbook, etc.‒ Readers will discover the amazing links between fact and fiction.

Matteson's notes allow us to visualize everyday objects and culture from a distant era but whose imprint is still perceptible, placing Alcott's work in the context of the art, music and literature that shaped her person and work. Line after line, the editor's valuable comments bring us into contact with the books Alcott read, the people he knew, the dishes he ate ... just about everything except the air he breathed. His brilliant introductory essay also studies the central place that Little Women occupies in children's literature and tells us what Alcott's own life was like: a story as fascinating as the writer's narratives.

"It is a seminal work of American literature, and, for young readers, perhaps the most prominent of all."

- JANE SMILEY, author of You'll inherit the Earth, awarded a Pulitzer Prize

"I'm not going to beat around the bush: Little Women changed my life. I think I was ten the first time I read it. [...] At that time Little Women seemed to me, if I had been able to put it in such terms, the first truly naturalistic work of fiction I had ever read. "

- ANNA QUINDLEN, author of the best-selling Still Life with Breadcrumbs

«This book was one of the first literary studies of how women combine the different obligations of their daily life, from raising their children to personal fulfillment outside the home. Little Women was written more than a century ago, but its message remains current. "

- HILLARY CLINTON

"That is the exceptional thing about Little Women [...] that it has not lost a single iota of freshness."

- NEW YORK TIMES

«There is a book in which I thought I saw my future reflected: Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott ... I wanted at all costs to be Jo, the intellectual. He shared with her the rejection of housework and the love of books. Jo wrote, and to imitate her I started my first short stories. "

- SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR,

Memoirs of a formal young woman