Louisa May Alcott’s Forgotten Thrillers Are Revolutionary Examples of Early Feminism 🔗 📚 ✍️ 👩🏻 ✊🏽

Let’s set aside her so-called “moral pap for children” and celebrate her sensationalist shockers.

Far less attention is paid to her sensationalist ‘blood and thunder tales’—pulpy thrillers she wrote early in her career, often using the pseudonym A.M. Barnard.  This was the work Alcott was passionate about before the financial needs of her family forced her into writing what she called ‘moral pap for the young.’ ‘I think my natural ambition is for the lurid style,’ she said in an interview. ‘I indulge in gorgeous fancies and wish that I dared inscribe them upon my pages and set them before the public.’

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