I loved the books and especially loved Jo because she was so fiercely independent. I also admired Louisa May Alcott as she was an abolitionist, feminist and involved in the women's suffrage movement.
For several months in 2020 I had been looking for illustrations in some of the free e-books that are in the public domain on the Project Gutenberg website. To my surprise I found the Little Women free E-Book (cover shown above) on the Project Gutenberg website from 1880 that had more than 200 illustrations by Frank T. Merrill and a picture of the Home of the Little Women by Edmund H. Garrett.
Even though they were all black and white I was still thrilled.
The books my grandmother had given me had 4 color illustrations for Little Women and 5 color illustrations for Little Men, which is certainly not a lot of illustrations. Plus, they currently aren't in the public domain.
As I started looking through the pages, looking at the beautiful black and white illustrations, and reading some of the chapters again I felt inspired and thought they'd make for some adorable mixed media, collage, decoupage or paper-craft creations.
Just like Louisa May Alcott "I want to do something splendid...." however, unlike Louisa my creations would involve crafts not writing books.
I thought you might get inspired by the books and illustrations too, so I decided to post the illustrations back then for you all to enjoy.
In thinking about my post from 2020 I thought it would be a lot easier for all of you if I created a free e-book with all the illustrations in it that you could save and download to your own computer, which would make it easier for all of you to use the illustrations in your mixed media or collage crafting projects.
So, shown below is my free E-Book.
