Little Women is a coming-of-age novel written by American novelist Louisa May Alcott, originally published in two volumes, in 1868 and 1869. The story follows the lives of the four March sisters—Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy—and details their passage from childhood to womanhood. Loosely based on the lives of the author and her three sisters, it is classified as an autobiographical or semi-autobiographical novel. The novel has been said to address three major themes: domesticity, work, and true love, all of them interdependent and each necessary to the achievement of its heroine's individual identity. Alcott created a new form of literature, one that took elements from romantic children's fiction and combined it with others from sentimental novels, resulting in a totally new genre. Within Little Women can be found the first vision of the "All-American girl" and that her various aspects are embodied in the differing March sisters.