The Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer of Louisa May Alcott illuminates the world of Little Women and its author. Since its publication in 1868–69, Little Women, perhaps America’s most beloved children’s classic, has been handed down from mother to daughter for generations. It has been translated into more than fifty languages and inspired six films, four television shows, a Broadway musical, an opera, and a web series. This lavish, four-color edition features over 220 curated illustrations, including stills from the films, stunning art by Norman Rockwell, and iconic illustrations by children’s-book illustrators Alice Barber Stevens, Frank T. Merrill, and Jessie Wilcox Smith. Renowned Alcott scholar John Matteson brings his expertise to the book, to the March family it creates, and to the Alcott family who inspired it all. Through numerous photographs taken in the Alcott family home expressly for this edition—elder daughter Anna’s wedding dress, the Alcott sisters’ theater costumes, sister May’s art, and Abba Alcott’s recipe book—readers discover the extraordinary links between the real and the fictional family. Matteson’s annotations evoke the once-used objects and culture of a distant but still-relevant time, from the horse-drawn carriages to the art Alcott carefully placed in her story to references to persons little known today. His brilliant introductory essays examine Little Women’s pivotal place in children’s literature and tell the story of Alcott herself—a tale every bit as captivating as her fiction.

The much-loved tale that has been read by generations of children is now annotated and includes more than 100 stunning illustrations.

Little Women is a novel by American author Louisa May Alcott 1832 to 1888 which was originally published in two volumes in 1868 and 1869. Alcott wrote the book over several months at the request of her publisher.The story follows the lives of the four March sisters Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy and details their passage from childhood to womanhood. It is loosely based on the lives of the author and her three sisters.202 Scholars classify it as an autobiographical or semi-autobiographical novel.

With her older sister planning a wedding and her younger sister preparing to launch a career on the stage, Lulu can't help but feel like the failure of the Atwater family. Lulu loves her sisters dearly and wants nothing but the best for them, but she finds herself stuck in a rut. When her mother sends her to look for some old family recipes in the attic, she stumbles across a collection of letters written by her great-great-grandmother Josephine March. Jo writes in detail about every aspect of her life: her older sister Meg's new home and family; her younger sister Amy's many admirers; the family's shared grief over losing Beth; and her own feelings towards a handsome young German. As Lulu delves deeper into the lives of the March sisters, she finds solace and guidance, but can her great-great-grandmother help Lulu find a place in a world so different from the one Jo knew?--From publisher description.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography Louisa May Alcott is known universally. Yet during Louisa's youth, the famous Alcott was her father, Bronson—an eminent teacher and a friend of Emerson and Thoreau. He desired perfection, for the world and from his family. Louisa challenged him with her mercurial moods and yearnings for money and fame. The other prize she deeply coveted—her father's understanding—seemed hardest to win. This story of Bronson and Louisa's tense yet loving relationship adds dimensions to Louisa's life, her work, and the relationships of fathers and daughters.

Virginia Woolf’s groundbreaking novel, in a lushly illustrated hardcover edition with illuminating commentary from a brilliant young Oxford scholar and critic. “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.” So begins Virginia Woolf’s much-beloved fourth novel. First published in 1925, Mrs. Dalloway has long been viewed not only as Woolf’s masterpiece, but as a pivotal work of literary modernism and one of the most significant and influential novels of the twentieth century. In this visually powerful annotated edition, acclaimed Oxford don and literary critic Merve Emre gives us an authoritative version of this landmark novel, supporting it with generous commentary that reveals Woolf’s aesthetic and political ambitions—in Mrs. Dalloway and beyond—as never before. Mrs. Dalloway famously takes place over the course of a single day in late June, its plot centering on the upper-class Londoner Clarissa Dalloway, who is preparing to throw a party that evening for the nation’s elite. But the novel is complicated by Woolf’s satire of the English social system, and by her groundbreaking representation of consciousness. The events of the novel flow through the minds and thoughts of Clarissa and her former lover Peter Walsh and others in their circle, but also through shopkeepers and servants, among others. Together Woolf’s characters—each a jumble of memories and perceptions—create a broad portrait of a city and society transformed by the Great War in ways subtle but profound ways. No figure has been more directly shaped by the conflict than the disturbed veteran Septimus Smith, who is plagued by hallucinations of a friend who died in battle, and who becomes the unexpected second hinge of the novel, alongside Clarissa, even though—in one of Woolf’s many radical decisions—the two never meet. Emre’s extensive introduction and annotations follow the evolution of Clarissa Dalloway—based on an apparently conventional but actually quite complex acquaintance of Woolf’s—and Septimus Smith from earlier short stories and drafts of Mrs. Dalloway to their emergence into the distinctive forms devoted readers of the novel know so well. For Clarissa, Septimus, and her other creations, Woolf relied on the skill of “character reading,” her technique for bridging the gap between life and fiction, reality and representation. As Emre writes, Woolf’s “approach to representing character involved burrowing deep into the processes of consciousness, and, so submerged, illuminating the infinite variety of sensation and perception concealed therein. From these depths, she extracted an unlimited capacity for life.” It is in Woolf’s characters, fundamentally unknowable but fundamentally alive, that the enduring achievement of her art is most apparent. For decades, Woolf’s rapturous style and vision of individual consciousness have challenged and inspired readers, novelists, and scholars alike. The Annotated Mrs. Dalloway, featuring 150 illustrations, draws on decades of Woolf scholarship as well as countless primary sources, including Woolf’s private diaries and notes on writing. The result is not only a transporting edition of Mrs. Dalloway, but an essential volume for Woolf devotees and an incomparable gift to all lovers of literature.

Four acclaimed female authors—including Pulitzer Prize winner Jane Smiley and In the Dream House author Carmen Carmen Maria Machado—reflect on their lifelong engagement with Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel of girlhood and growing up. Kate Bolick, Jenny Zhang, Carmen Maria Machado, and Jane Smiley explore their strong lifelong personal engagement with Alcott’s novel Little Women—what it has meant to them and why it still matters. Each takes her subject as one of the four March sisters, reflecting on their stories and what they can teach us about life. Meg March by Kate Bolick: The New York Times–bestselling author of Spinster finds parallels in oldest sister Meg’s brush with glamour at the Moffats’ ball and her own complicated relationship with clothes. Jo March by Jenny Zhang: The short story writer of Sour Heart confesses to liking Jo least among the sisters when she first read the novel as a girl, uncomfortable in finding so much of herself in a character she feared was too unfeminine. Beth March by Carmen Maria Machado: The In the Dream House author writes about the real-life tragedy of Lizzie Alcott, the inspiration for third sister Beth, and the horror story that can result from not being the author of your own life's narrative. Amy March by Jane Smiley: The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of A Thousand Acres rehabilitates the reputation of youngest sister Amy, whom she sees as a modern feminist role model for those of us who are, well, not like the fiery Jo. These four voices come together to form a deep, funny, far-ranging meditation on the power of great literature to shape our lives.