U.S. #2788
29¢ Little Women
Children’s Classics
Issue Date: October 23, 1993
City: Louisville, KY
Quantity: 37,550,000
Printed By: American Bank Note Co.
Printing Method: Lithographed and engraved
Perforations: 11
Color: Multicolored
Largely autobiographical, Little Women tells the story of four sisters growing up in New England in the 1800’s. Instantly popular with the public, this classic gave American juvenile fiction an enduring family story.
The daughter of noted philosopher and educational reformer Bronson Alcott, Louisa May Alcott was surrounded by the likes of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Henry David Thoreau - all individuals who helped shape her ideas of social reform. When her father’s idealistic ventures repeatedly failed, she began working to support her family.
A nurse for the Union Army during the Civil War, she described her experiences in her first successful book, Hospital Sketches. In 1867 she became the editor of Merry’s Museum, a magazine for young girls. At the urging of her publisher to create a book for girls, she wrote Little Women. Published in 1868-69, the book was an immediate success. Little Men (1871) and Jo’s Boys (1886) continued the story of the March family.