Jo’s Boys, and How They Turned Out was published by Roberts Brothers in 1886, Alcott’s final novel and the conclusion of the March family saga. Alcott was reluctant to write it — she was ill, exhausted, and resentful of the public demand that had made her a literary machine rather than the artist she aspired to be. (She famously wrote in her journal: “I can do a chapter a day, and so in a month will have the book done, if health holds out.”) Despite these conditions, the novel contains some of her sharpest social commentary.
The Plumfield boys are now young men: Nat pursues music in Germany; Dan goes West and ends up in prison; Emil goes to sea; Demi works in publishing; and Tommy muddles through. Their fates are neither uniformly triumphant nor uniformly tragic — Alcott distributes success and failure with realistic unevenness, and her most interesting choice is Dan’s trajectory: the wild boy who never quite fits in, who commits a crime of passion, serves time, and achieves a kind of redemption that is not domestication but self-acceptance.
The novel also gives more attention to female characters than Little Men did: Jo’s nieces and the women surrounding Plumfield pursue careers in medicine, journalism, and reform work, and Alcott uses their stories to advocate for women’s suffrage and professional equality with a directness that the earlier novels’ gentler social commentary did not permit.
Collecting Jo’s Boys
First edition (Roberts Brothers, Boston, 1886): Cloth binding.
Market values:
- First edition: $300–$1,000
- Good condition: $150–$500
- Later editions (1880s–1890s): $50–$150