Louisa May Alcott

Louisa May Alcott's extensive oeuvre has intrigued and absorbed fans and literary scholars alike, perhaps none more so than Madeleine B. Stern, whose influential articles on Alcott's life and work span half a century. Stern attributes her long-time preoccupation "to a succession of literary discoveries and events as well as to periodic resurgences of popular interest in the Concord Scheherazade." Now Stern brings together her essays for the first time in an engaging collection that illuminates Alcott's development as an individual and as a writer, revealing a surprisingly complex personality who penned sensational page-turners with one hand and domestic sagas with the other. Stern's writings on the many-faceted Alcott draw on such overlooked sources as personal letters, local histories, genealogies, and playbills kept by the stage-struck author. The broad range of pieces traces the growing professionalism that led to Alcott's experiments with multiple genres and themes, uncovers her feminist and abolitionist convictions, and examines the discoveries that unmasked her double literary life. This compilation by a distinguished Alcott scholar provides an innovative and in-depth portrait of a beloved American writer touched by genius. As Stern writes in her introduction: "The story of Louisa May Alcott is by no means over. A natural source of stories, she is also, and will continue to be a natural source of exploration and discovery."