Alcott's editors Joel Myerson and Daniel Shealy see The Inheritance as the forerunner of an early short story, "The Masked Marriage," published in December 1852. The main character in the story, Alice de Adelon, shares both surname and nationality (Italian) with Edith, and the plot involves a thwarted romance and a secret inheritance. These editors also note certain similarities between The Inheritance and Alcott's classic, Little Women (1868-1869), written about the March family. Both novels, the editors claim, depict relationships among women, and both stress the importance of unselfish virtues.

In fact, in its sentimental aspects The Inheritance foreshadows what is generally thought of as the Little Women Series, the enormously popular "children's books" which Alcott published after Little Women (see separate entry) until shortly before she died in 1888. Of particular note are the novels Little Men (1871) and Jo's Boys (1882) which, together with Little Women, comprise the...