Little Women or Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy. [with] Little Women or Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy Part Second. [with] Little Men: Life at Plumfield with Jo’s Boys.

ALCOTT, Louisa May.

$26,000.00

Item Number: 149518

Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1868-1871.

First editions of Louisa May Alcott’s “outstanding achievement of 19th-century American literature” together with its sequels. Octavo, three volumes, original publisher’s emerald green gilt decorated cloth, each volume illustrated with tissue-guarded frontispiece and three plates; those in the first part of Little Women were created by the author’s sister, May. First issue of Little Women with all points including Little Women priced at $1.25 in terminal advertisements, one of 2,000 copies printed with 250 sets of sheets shipped to England for issue by Sampson, Low; Part Second is first edition, early-state, with notice about Part First on page [iv] and with “Handy Volume Series” followed by “II.” At least five different textual states exist for the first edition, of which BAL describes four (MacDonnell). BAL 158, 159. Grolier, American 100 74. Little Men is first edition, first issue with four advertisements preceding the text stating Pink and White Tyranny “Nearly Ready.” Each volume is in very good condition with some rubbing to extremities. Housed in a custom half morocco slipcase, each volume with gilt-lettered custom folding chemise. An exceptional set.

One of the most popular juvenile books ever published, “Little Women is an outstanding achievement of 19th-century American literature, and the first children’s novel written in that country to have become an enduring classic.” “It is one of the first fictional texts for children to convey the difficulties and anxieties of girlhood, and… suggests that becoming a ‘little woman’ is a learned and often fraught process, not an instinctual or natural condition of female development” (Foster & Simon, 87). Published separately in consecutive years, the first part of Little Women “did not sell at first. Part Second was therefore also issued in a small edition, but it went like wildfire, and pulled Part First along with it” (Grolier 74). The original issues of each part are therefore very rare.