Transcriber's Notes:
Project Gutenberg has two versions of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.
Welcome to the Project Gutenberg Illustrated Edition of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, published by Little, Brown, and Company. Some versions of the book, such as this one, use the full title of the book from the title page, Little Women; Or Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy.
We used the version of the book from Little, Brown, and Company: copyright 1896, for this transcription. A scanned copy of this book is available through the internet archive, courtesy of the New York Public Library.
A copy of the first version of the novel, published in 1869, was consulted for emendations, the proper rendering of words hyphenated and split between two lines for spacing, and other issues in transcribing the novel. We are not trying to change this version of the novel back to the 1869 novel, but correct the errors that were made in re-transcribing and updating the text.
Throughout the dialogues, words were used to mimic accents of the speakers. Those words were retained as-is.
Errors in punctuations and hyphenation were not corrected unless otherwise noted below.
On page vii, in the Table of Contents, change page 7 to 1 for the beginning of Chapter One.