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About the Salon
Brought to you
and the New York
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About "An Intimate Anthology" The Louisa May Alcott who has been mesmerizing legions of new readers during the past couple decades is definitely not the same Louisa May Alcott whose "life of beneficence and self-abnegation" was so admired by her contemporaries. Unquestionably, Alcott's days overflowed with generosity (hers) and self-denial (hers again), and noble-minded late Victorians were duly appreciative. But what they missed out on was the gutsy, acerbic, down-to-earth, driven woman and writer who has only recently surfaced with the publication of her diaries and letters, and -- most important -- with the excavation of her long buried "blood & thunder tales." Madeleine Stern and Leona Rostenberg were the pioneering scholars who led the charge, with fresh brigades of Alcottians amassing in the rear. Critics and theorists have been quick to pounce, but "Invincible Louisa" is not only smarter than most of her evaluators, she is a far superior writer. In this unprecedented collection of Alcott's most revealing public and private writings -- her stories, diaries, letters and verse -- a portrait of a fascinating woman emerges, but it is not -- be forewarned -- of "Aunt Jo." A shrewd Concordian once observed that Concord was large enough for Thoreau, but it could not suffice for the cosmopolitan Miss Alcott, who "had no proclivity for paddling up and down Concord River in search of ideas." Similarly, one can say that Alcott is far larger than Little Women, great as that book is. In these pages, one will find Concord's most famous daughter dipping her pen into a dazzling array of inkstands. Many of the pieces in this collection show Alcott mincing crucial experiences in her own life for inspiration, as in her hilariously droll "Transcendental Wild Oats" in which Alcott skewers the dewy-eyed idealists who, led by her own father, established a short-lived and ill-fated commune. Her short fiction ranges from the steamy pleasures of "Pauline's Passion and Punishment" to "Debby's Debut," a light-hearted comedy of manners. There is a lot of multifaceted literary virtuosity on display here, and it is accompanied by an intriguing selection of manuscripts, letters, photographs and other treasures drawn from the special collections of the New York Public Library. Not only do these rarely seen artifacts vividly evoke this successful woman of letters, but they also afford intimate glimpses into the life of the very private woman who, unlike everyone else, was hardly impressed by her own great celebrity and for whom beloved family and dear friends were what truly mattered in life. The portrait of the writer and her world that emerges in this volume is humorous, touching, surprising, varicolored and gripping, and it may startle those who have long thought of Alcott as a sort of comforting, if rather fusty, overstuffed Victorian sofa. She in fact brandished a highly versatile pen that delivered both caresses and well-placed puncture wounds; and she was no granitic moralist (bearing the Jo Marches of the silver screen in mind, one might say that the real Jo was probably closer in spirit to Katharine Hepburn than she was to June Allyson). Alcott once joked with an interviewer that her dear old town of Concord "has never known a startling hue since the redcoats were there." But then, as she knew full well, Concord had not yet really read Louisa May Alcott. You have the option of purchasing your own copies of The New York Public Library Collector's editions of the classic books being discussed, courtesy of Borders Books and Music. Just click on:
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