Early in her life the author of Jo's Boys wrote: "I have had lots of troubles; so I wrote jolly tales." Jo's Boys was Louisa May Alcott's last full-length book and it was written during a time of many troubles. Scarcely had the story been started when it was interrupted by her father's serious illness. It was not completed until six years later.

Like the other stories of the March family, Little Women and Little Men, the material was taken from the author's own family life. Its characters are those of Little Men grown up—how they found work, how they travelled, how they fell in love, how from time to time they fell into disaster. In this happy book the old beloved Meg, Jo, Amy, Laurie and Professor Bhaer make their last appearance. The book ends with these words: "And now, having endeavored to suit everyone by many weddings, few deaths, and as much prosperity as the eternal fitness of things will permit, let the music stop, the lights die out, and the curtain fall forever on the March family."

So ends one of the most dearly beloved sagas of family life in all American literature.

Gloriously illustrated in color and black and white exclusively for The Illustrated Junior Library.

From the dust jacket of the Illustrated Junior Library edition