Audiobook · read by volunteers
Little Men
Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888)
Read by E. Moulton, Lucy Burgoyne (1950-2014), katyleah, Betsie Bush, Mary Anderson, Sandra · 21 chapters · 9 h 44
About the book
At Plumfield, a rambling school in the countryside, Professor Bhaer and his wife Jo look after a lively household of boys and a few girls. There is the kind and sensible, the mischievous and the troublesome, the shy and the boastful, and each one needs patience in a different way. Louisa May Alcott pictures their games, their quarrels, their small triumphs and their misadventures, with warmth and plenty of humour. This is a school without harsh discipline, built on affection, trust and learning by doing. Readers who loved the March sisters in Little Women will be glad to meet Jo again in a new role. Gentle, funny and affecting, Little Men is a classic of nineteenth-century children's literature, and a delightful long listen for a family.
Introduction
Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) was an American writer whose novel Little Women, published in 1868, made her famous. Little Men followed in 1871 and continues the story of Jo March, now grown up and married, who has opened a school with her husband. The book is often regarded as the second part of a trilogy that concludes with Jo's Boys.
Alcott drew on her own experience of unconventional ideas about education. Her father, Bronson Alcott, was a teacher and reformer, and the philosophy of Plumfield, where children are encouraged to learn through responsibility and affection rather than fear, owes something to those influences. The result is a school story that is warmer and more domestic than many of its time.
The book is episodic, built from many small incidents rather than a single plot, and it is full of the details of daily life in a Victorian household. This recording has twenty-one chapters and runs for nearly ten hours, read by LibriVox volunteers. It will please admirers of Little Women, and it is a charming introduction to Alcott for those who have yet to meet her. The tone is affectionate throughout, and there is a gentle moral purpose, but Alcott never forgets that children are lively, funny and sometimes wrong. It is a book to enjoy in small instalments, perhaps one chapter at a time, as the household at Plumfield grows more familiar. Jo herself, now a teacher and a mother to a crowd of children, will be easy to recognise for anyone who knew her in the earlier book.
Public domain
Louisa May Alcott died in 1888: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text