Little Women Show Blog

Transcendental Wild Oats from Louisa

This was posted on About.com Today in the Women's History section.

Two little-known stories that I've recently added to the site summarize some of Louisa May Alcott's thoughts about Transcendentalist ideas and leaders based on her close association and observation.

Louisa May Alcott wrote bitingly of the experience of her own family at a 19th century Utopian community, exaggerated and fictionalized in "Transcendental Wild Oats." In this story, the men are more interested in "being, not doing," and mostly sit around and talk about their ideals. In contrast, the wife ends up the caretaker of physical needs like food and shelter. "Mrs. Lamb led her flock to a temporary fold, leaving the founders of the 'Consociate Family' to build castles in the air till the fire went out and the symposium ended in smoke."

But it would be a mistake to read into this story a complete disdain for Transcendentalism, its ideas, or its proponents. In "Reminiscences of Ralph Waldo Emerson by Louisa May Alcott," Louisa May Alcott wrote, shortly after the death of Ralph Waldo Emerson, about her friend and neighbor. Her admiration and respect for him shine clearly through as she attempts to portray a side of him that the public rarely saw, but which she, as a child growing up in the neighborhood and as daughter of one of Emerson's closest associates, was privy to.

The woman who discovered the "blood and guts" dies

Women who uncovered Alcott Novel's dies at age 96

Leona Rostenberg was a rare-book scholar and dealer who discovered in 1942 a series of racy novels written by Louisa May Alcott under a pseudonym. This is Excerpted from a NYT article .

They made their discovery about Louisa May Alcott after being tipped off by a scholar that she might have written works under a pseudonym to pay the rent, but that the pseudonym was mystery.

After seeing a reference to an "A.M. Barnard" in a correspondence between Alcott and a publisher, they knew they had found what - or whom - they had been looking for.

The discovery caused a re-evaluation of Alcott's career. Eventually, one of the lost Alcott works, "A Long Fatal Love Chase," was published.

"It completely changed the way people perceived Louisa May Alcott," Ms. Lustgarten said. "What they knew about was 'Little Women,' and here were 'blood and thunder' tales - meetings in opium dens and things like that. The polar opposite of 'Little Women' in the sense of being more risqué and passionate."