Alcott, Louisa May - SSC 20
A Double Life
Alcott Louisa May
A DOUBLE LIFE
The Selected Letters of
Louisa May Alcott
With an Introduction by
Madeleine B. Stern
Joel Myerson and Daniel Shealy, Editors;
Madeleine B. Stern, Associate Editor
NEWLY DISCOVERED THRI LLERS
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
MADELEINE B. STERN
Madeleine B. Stern, Editor
Joel Myerson and Daniel Shealy, Associate
Editors
LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY • BOSTON • TORONTO
TEXT
COMPILATION COPYRIGHT © 1988 BY MADELEINE B. STERN, JOEL MYERSON, AND DANIEL
SHEALY
INTRODUCTION COPYRIGHT © 1988 BY
MADELEINE B.
STERN
ALL
RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS BOOK MAY BE REPRODUCED IN ANY FORM OR BY ANY
ELECTRONIC OR MECHANICAL MEANS, INCLUDING INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL
SYSTEMS, WITHOUT PERMISSION IN WRITING FROM THE PUBLISHER, EXCEPT BY A
REVIEWER, WHO MAY QUOTE BRIEF PASSAGES IN A REVIEW.
FIRST EDITION
All
illustrations are reprinted by permission of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts, except for the illustration appearing on p. 191, which is reproduced
courtesy of the Brown University Library, Providence, Rhode Island.
Library
of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Alcott,
Louisa May, 1832-1888.
A double life.
1.
Detective and mystery stories, American. 1. Stern, Madeleine B.
1912- II. Myerson, Joel.
III.
Shelly, Daniel. IV. Title.
PS1016.S73
1988 813'.
4
87-37827
ISBN
0-316-03101-1
10 987654321
DESIGNED BY JEANNE ABBOUD
Published simultaneously in Canada
by Little, Brown & Company (Canada) Limited
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
A Note on the Texts
A Pair of Eyes; or Modern Magic
PART I
PART II
The Fate of the Forrests
PART I
PART II
PART III
A Double Tragedy. An Acors Story
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
Ariel. A Legend
of the Lighthouse
PART I
PART II
PART III
Taming a Tartar
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
ALL
THREE editors are grateful to the staffs of the American Antiquarian Society,
Brown University Library, the New York Public Library, and the University of
South Carolina Library for making available the original printings of the texts
in A Double Life, and to the Houghton Library, Harvard University, and
the University of Virginia Library for permission to publish material from
their collections. VVe also wish to thank Armida Gilbert for her help in
preparing the texts used in our edition. Joel Myerson acknowledges the support
of Carol McGinnis Kay, Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of South Carolina. Daniel Shealy is grateful to G. W. Koon,
Chairman of the Department of English, and Robert A. Waller, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, of Clemson University. Madeleine B. Stern acknowledges the
unceasing support of her partner, Dr. Leona Rostenberg, \m ho originally
discovered many of Alcott’s pseudonymous works.
BY
MADELEINE B. STERN
NEVER
AGAIN will you have quite the same image of this particular ‘little woman.’”1
[1.] In a Publishers Weekly re\ie\\ oi
Behind a Mask: The Uiikiiowii Thrillers of Louisa May Alcott, ed. Madeleine B.
Stern (New York: William Morrow, 1975). Other quoted review's are from Los Angeles limes and Neu' York Times.
This
remark, made in 1975 when the first volume of Louisa Alcott’s sensational
thrillers was published, was prophetic. The picture of the exemplary spinster
of Concord, Massachusetts, who had created the perennial classic Little Women
was shattered for all time. With publication of her anonymous and pseudonymous
page turners, an amazed public learned that America’s best-loved author of juvenile fiction had
led a double literary life and that the creator of the greatest domestic novel
of the New England family had also been the familiar of a
world of darkness. Readers devoured her stories of madness and mind control,
passionate and manipulating heroines, hashish and opium addiction.
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