Jo's Boys

Ten years after Little Men, Plumfield has grown into a college, and Jo, now a famous author pestered by admirers, watches the boys she raised grow into young men: Nat studies music in Germany, Dan goes west and falls into terrible trouble, Emil goes to sea and survives a shipwreck, and Tommy, Demi and the others choose their careers and their loves, while the girls, Nan and Josie, insist on becoming a doctor and an actress.

Louisa May Alcott published the book in 1886, two years before her death, ending the March family saga that began with Little Women. Read Little Men, and see her life.

Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888) grew up in Concord, Massachusetts, daughter of the idealistic and often penniless educator Bronson Alcott; Emerson and Thoreau were family friends and teachers. To support her family she sewed, taught, worked as a servant and wrote sensational thrillers under a pen name.

During the Civil War she nursed soldiers in Washington until she fell gravely ill. When her publisher asked for a book for girls, she wrote Little Women (1868), drawn from her own family, and it made her famous and secure. She campaigned against slavery and for women's right to vote.