Ah, life's little ironies- and this one just made my evening.

(In the 1940s, early in their business partnership, they made a discovery that changed the view of Alcott, whose 1868 novel, “Little Women,” has been a staple for generations of adolescent girls: they proved that Alcott also wrote a far more scandalous brand of fiction, anonymously and under pseudonyms. These were stories, as Ms. Stern put it in a 1995 interview, of “thuggism, feminism, hashish, transvestitism,” and the discovery helped kick off a long career of literary detective work and book buying and selling for the two.

(Full story here.)


A Long Fatal Love Chase and Pauline's Passion and Punishment. So the creator of the world's preachiest novel wrote gothic romances as a sideline. Too delicious to be true, eh? Why, oh why didn't I know about all this when I was 12? Or even 14?

Maybe now would be a good time to visit Concord, where Louisa May grew up seeing as it's only 3 train stops away from here. And models of efficiency that roomie & I are, we've already reserved A Long Fatal... at the library already. Should arrive soon. Promises to be fun.