Editing Little Women (section)

==Background==
In 1868, Alcott's publisher, Thomas Niles, recommended that she write a novel about girls that would have widespread appeal.<ref name=Cheever>{{cite book|last=Cheever|first=Susan |title=Louisa May Alcott: A Personal Biography |year=2011 |publisher=Simon and Schuster |isbn=978-1-4165-6992-3 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-4PYzxTQVAcC&q=little+women}}</ref>{{rp|2}} Alcott resisted, preferring to publish a collection of short stories, instead.  Niles pressed her to write the girls' book first, however, and he was aided by her father, [[Amos Bronson Alcott]], who also urged her to do so.<ref name=Cheever />{{rp|207}} Louisa confided to a friend, "I could not write a girls' story knowing little about any but my sisters and always preferring boys".<ref>{{cite book |title=Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters |first=Anne Boyd |last=Rioux |publisher=Norton |year=2018 |isbn=9780393254747}}</ref>

In May 1868, Alcott wrote in her journal: "Niles, partner of Roberts, asked me to write a girl's book. I said I'd try."<ref name=Madison>Author {{cite book |author=Madison, Charles A. |title=Irving to Irving: Author-Publisher Relations 1800–1974 |location=New York |publisher=R. R. Bowker Company |year=1974 |isbn=0-8352-0772-2 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/irvingtoirvingau00char }}</ref>{{rp|36}} Alcott set her novel in an imaginary Orchard House modeled on her residence of the same name, where she wrote the novel.<ref name=Cheever />{{rp|xiii}} She, later, recalled that she did not think she could write a successful book for girls and did not enjoy writing it.<ref name=Matteson>{{cite book |author=Matteson, John |title=Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father |location=New York |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |year=2007 |isbn=978-0-393-33359-6}}</ref>{{rp|335-}} "I plod away," she wrote in her diary, "although, I don't enjoy this sort of things."<ref name=Madison />{{rp|37}}

By June, Alcott had sent the first dozen chapters to Niles, and both agreed that they were dull. But Niles's niece, Lillie Almy, read them and said she enjoyed them.<ref name=Matteson />{{rp|335–336}} The completed manuscript was shown to several girls who agreed it was "splendid."  Alcott wrote, "they are the best critics, so, I should definitely be satisfied."<ref name=Madison />{{rp|37}} She wrote ''Little Women'' "in record time for money",<ref name=Elbert />{{rp|196x2}} but the book's immediate success surprised both her and her publisher.<ref name="James">{{cite book |last=Smith |first=David E. |editor-first=Edward T. |editor-last=James |title=Notable American Women 1607–1950: A Biographical Dictionary, Volume 1|publisher=Harvard University Press |page=29|isbn=0-674-62734-2|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rVLOhGt1BX0C&q=little+women+theme&pg=PA29 | year=1975 }}</ref>

''Little Women'' was a novel that took part in the realism literary movement of the mid to late 1800s. This movement focused on depicting everyday life in a natural way and is seen through Alcott’s portrayal of the real aspects of women’s lives through the ways the characters interact with one another, work, and play. Gregory Eiselein and Anne Phillips write, “Fresh, lively, and distinctly American, the novel offered singular depictions of young women and men playing, talking, squabbling, dreaming, creating, learning, and coming of age in ways that embodied and resisted its era and region and immediately generated passionate responses.”<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Eiselein |first=Gregory |last2=Phillips |first2=Anne K. |date=2019 |title=The Newness of Little Women |url=https://doi.org/10.1080/00497878.2019.1614867 |journal=Women Studies |volume=48 |issue=4 |pages=363–365}}</ref> Readers are able to see and experience the joys and sorrows of the March family and come to understand what it meant to be a woman in the nineteenth century.

	One real aspect that Alcott focused on was marriage. Marriage was exceedingly prevalent in the lives of women in the nineteenth century, as during that time 93% of women in America married.<ref name=":3">{{Cite journal |last=Shealy |first=Daniel |date=2019 |title="Wedding Marches": Lousia May Alcott, Marriage, and the Newness of Little Women |url=https://doi.org/10.1080/00497878.2019.1614869 |journal=Women Studies|volume=48 |issue=4 |pages=366–378}}</ref> However, what was special about the marriages the March women made was their equal partnerships within their relationships. Daniel Shealy writes, “Alcott gave serious thought to the marriages in part two and set out to instruct her readers, especially young women, on the importance of egalitarian relationships between husbands and wives.”<ref name=":3" /> The equal unions between man and wife can be seen through each relationship the March women have, especially between Mr. and Mrs. March  and Meg and John Brooke, as they both share equal footing in the household and in the decisions regarding their children.

=== Title ===

According to literary critic Sarah Elbert, Alcott used the phrase "little women" to draw on its [[Charles Dickens|Dickensian]] meaning; it represented the period in a young woman's life where childhood and elder childhood are "overlapping" with young womanhood. Each of the March sister heroines has a harrowing experience that alerts them and the reader that "childhood innocence" is of the past, and that "the inescapable woman problem" is all that remains.<ref name=Elbert/>{{page needed|date=August 2019}}