"Little Women" by Louisa May Alcott is a coming-of-age novel published in 1868-1869. The story follows the four March sisters—Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy—as they navigate their passage from childhood to womanhood in Civil War-era Massachusetts. Loosely based on Alcott's own family, the novel explores themes of domesticity, work, and true love while depicting the sisters' struggles with genteel poverty, their father's absence as a Union Army chaplain, and their journey toward individual identity in nineteenth-century America.