Louisa May Alcott's enchanting Christmas stories, presented in a beautiful hardcover edition perfect for giving as a gift.

A Merry Christmas collects the best holiday stories of Louisa May Alcott, from the yuletide festivities of Marmee and her 'little women' to the moving 'What Love Can Do'. Deeply influenced by real-life events, including characters based on Alcott's family members and drawing from her experiences participating in the suffrage and abolitionist movements, these stories have the authentic texture and detail of Christmas in nineteenth-century America.

Louisa May Alcott was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, in 1832. Her family later moved to Concord, Massachusetts, where Alcott was influenced by their neighbours Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau. At a young age, Louisa took on some of the family's financial burdens, working as a domestic, a teacher, and a writer. In 1868 and 1869, fame and fortune came with the publication of Little Women. The author of many novels and an active campaigner for temperance and women's suffrage, Alcott died in 1888.

A Merry Christmas collects the treasured holiday tales of Louisa May Alcott, from the dearly familiar Yuletide benevolence of Marmee and her 'little women' to the timeless 'What Love Can Do,' wherein the residents of a boarding house come together to make a lovely Christmas for two poor girls.


About the Author

Louisa May Alcott (1832-88) was brought up in Pennsylvania, USA. She turned to writing in order to supplement the family income and had many short stories published in magazines and newspapers. Then, in 1862, during the height of the American Civil War, Louisa went to Georgetown to work as a nurse, but she contracted typhoid. Out of her experiences she wrote Hospital Sketches (1864) which won wide acclaim, followed by an adult novel, Moods.

She was reluctant to write a children's book but then realized that in herself and her three sisters she had the perfect models. The result was Little Women (1868) which became the earliest American children's novel to become a classic.

Reviews
"For lit nerds and loved ones who are notoriously hard to shop for, you can't go wrong with these festively bound classics. . . . Their size makes them perfectly stocking-stuffable." -Entertainment Weekly, "The Must List"

"Leave it to the folks at Penguin-who gave us Gothed-out editions of horror classics for Halloween-to package these . . . slim Yuletide-themed volumes." -Newsday, "Best Books to Give as Holiday Gifts"

"Remember how Christmas was celebrated before Black Friday with these 19th-century authors, in small uniform volumes wrapped in pretty jackets." -USA Today, "Holiday Gift Books So Pretty, No Need to Wrap"

"Beautifully designed." -The Washington Post



Book Information
ISBN 9780143122463
Author Louisa May Alcott
Format Hardback
Page Count 160
Imprint Penguin Classics
Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
Weight(grams) 240g
Dimensions(mm) 188mm * 130mm * 20mm