LITTLE WOMEN or, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy is a novel by American author Louisa May Alcott. Written and published in two parts in 1868 and 1869, the novel follows the lives of four sisters - Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy March - and is loosely based on the author's childhood experiences with her three sisters. The book was an immediate commercial and critical success. Alcott followed Little Women with two sequels reprising the March sisters, Little Men (1871) and Jo's Boys (1886).