Little Men: Life at Plumfield with Jo’s Boys was published by Roberts Brothers in 1871, capitalizing immediately on the extraordinary success of Little Women. The novel follows Jo March Bhaer and her husband Friedrich as they run Plumfield, a progressive school for boys (inherited from Aunt March), where the educational philosophy rejects Victorian discipline in favor of Bronson Alcott’s transcendentalist principles: learn through doing, develop the whole child, treat misbehavior with understanding rather than punishment.
The students are a diverse collection: Nat (a street musician), Dan (a wild boy from the streets), Demi and Daisy (Meg’s twins), Tommy (good-hearted but reckless), and others, each with specific challenges that Jo addresses through individualized attention rather than uniform rules. The narrative is episodic — each chapter presenting a problem (a theft, a fight, a case of cruelty to animals, a fire) and its resolution through Jo’s patient, inventive pedagogy.
The novel is less artistically successful than Little Women — it sacrifices narrative tension for didactic purpose, and its idealized portrait of progressive education sometimes reads as wish-fulfillment rather than realism. But it remains significant as a fictional embodiment of educational ideas that were radical in 1871 and that anticipate much of progressive education theory: intrinsic motivation over external reward, physical activity as integral to learning, emotional development as important as intellectual development.
Collecting Little Men
First edition (Roberts Brothers, Boston, 1871): Cloth binding.
Market values:
- First edition: $500–$2,000
- Good condition: $300–$800
- With dust jacket or wrapper (extremely rare): $2,000–$5,000
- Later editions (1870s–1880s): $50–$200