A researcher has discovered about a dozen stories and poems believed to have been written by Louisa May Alcott under a previously unidentified pseudonym. She was known to have gone by several pseudonyms during her career, and E.H. Gould is the potential new moniker discovered by Max Chapnick, a postdoctoral teaching associate in English at Northeastern University.
Little Women is one of my all-time favorite books and I was excited to see these new discoveries. The researcher mentions that he thinks there are even more stories out there like this that people will find in the future. Do you think Alcott could have more undiscovered works out there? https://news.northeastern.edu/2023/11/08/louisa-may-alcott-new-pseudonym/
What a wonderful find, thank you!
I firmly believe there could be more hidden gems waiting to be unearthed. Even in 2023, it’s not uncommon for professional authors to employ one or two pen names, and I can’t think of a single exception to this rule. Considering the historical context when Alcott, along with Bronte and Shelley, were writing, it was practically a requirement for women to adopt unisex or male names to write with.
IIRC, it’s widely accepted that Alcott was probably a trans man.
People fucking HATE the idea of trans people existing before 1997.
Really? It seems you might not be rightly encountering the wealth of information available or engaging with the best circles. The names Christine Jorgensen, Marsha P Johnson, and Lou Sullivan readily come to mind as three individuals who lived and made significant contributions well before the year 1997.
I’m saying there is a very strong pushback against the idea of culturally or historically significant figures who, based on their own writings and those of their contemporaries, may have had a gender identity which we today would recognize as similar to transgender although the language at the time may not have matched up precisely. The names you mentioned were individuals famous specifically for their gender identity and/or advocacy (not to mention that Marsha P Johnson did not self-identify as transgender). By all means, look at Alcott’s personal writings and come to your own conclusions but there can be no denying that the suggestion rankles people online.
Oh yes, I can certainly see that!
I had never even heard of the Alcott theory before today and I can already identify seven different arguments about it. Certainly a hot topic!
Certainly within the realm of possibility, but by no means “widely accepted.” She was non-conforming by her society’s gender standards, but in ways that don’t really map neatly to our own society’s definitions of gender. She may have been what we think of as trans, bisexual, or just a non-conformist straight woman–there isn’t really enough evidence to point at any of those conclusions definitively.
Wow! This is new information for me. Regardless of whether Alcott was indeed transgender or not, I had no previous knowledge of this theory. Thank you for sharing!