Louisa May Alcott: From Blood & Thunder to Hearth & Home [Paperback]

Madeline B. Stern (Author)

Book Description

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."

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Rare book dealer Stern has been writing about 19th-century American literature and publishing for more than half a century, focusing much of her effort on Louisa May Alcott. She is responsible for unearthing much of Alcott's anonymous writings and the numerous short stories, serials, and filler pieces Alcott wrote under a pseudonym. Stern's exhaustive research has insured Alcott's place in the history of American letters beyond recognition for her famous juvenile novels. This collection of 16 essays, all previously published, spans Stern's five decades of professional interest in Alcott and presents an overview of Alcott's development both as a writer and as a businesswoman. Stern's introduction provides background on her own lifelong fascination with the subject, but some editorial remarks to link the essays together would have made for a stronger, more readable book. For comprehensive American literature or women's studies collections.?Denise S. Sticha, Seton Hill Coll., Greensburg, PA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Stern has been an Alcott scholar for 50 years, an era during which Alcott's image has been radically altered in great part because of the research conducted by Stern and her associate (and coauthor of Old Friends: Rare Books, Two Literary Sleuths and Their Shared Passion ), Leona Rostenberg. It was Rostenberg who figured out that Alcott wrote thrillers under a pseudonym, A. B. Barnard, and it was Stern who rescued those tales from dusty archives and republished them in collections such as Louisa May Alcott Unmasked (1995). Here Stern gathers together her Alcott essays, plus contributions by Rostenberg, enlightening and inspiring pieces that chart the course of Alcott's writing career. Stern analyzes Alcott's key themes, including her love for the theater and confident feminism, and examines her double literary life, that is, her writing of "blood-and-thunders" and domestic dramas. Alcott continues to be a powerful presence because of her complexity both as a woman and as a writer, and Stern's unending admiration for her animates every page. Donna Seaman --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 274 pages
• Publisher: Northeastern (March 19, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1555533485
• ISBN-13: 978-1555533489
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,629,670 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)