A Man Reads ‘Little Women’

Beth (Margaret O’Brien), Meg (Janet Leigh), Amy (Elizabeth Taylor), Jo (June Allyson) in the 1949 film

Among the classics of American literature, Alcott’s Little Women (1868) surely ranks high among Most Famous Books Girls Read and Boys Don’t.

Each summer I’ve been trying to read one thing I’ve never studied and will never teach. Last summer was Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which is fascinating in awful ways too numerous to spell out here, but I suspect has had a readership with a considerably more equal ...