It is well known that women’s writing has often gone down in history under pseudonyms: the famous American writer Louisa May Alcott is no exception, who used multiple pseudonyms throughout her career; many of these are already known, but the recent discovery by an American researcher marks a new stage in studies on the author.
Max Chapnick, a researcher at Northeastern University, believes he has identified a new false name used by the writer, known for her great classic «Little Women»: while working on his doctoral thesis, busy sifting through libraries and digital archives, Chapnick he came across a story, published in a newspaper in 1860 and signed by a certain EH Gould, entitled “The Phantom”, also attributed to a lost story by the American writer.
The text, among other things, retains much of the style and themes dear to Alcott: in particular, it uses the same format as one of the author’s favorite writers, Charles Dickens, in a sort of parody of “A Christmas Carol” once to explore controversial issues at the time, linked to gender issues, sex and power.
The themes addressed in the story would then justify the use of a pseudonym, which aligns perfectly, in its purposes, with the other pseudonyms used by Alcott: that of AM Barnard, for example, used in writing gothic novels, or those of Flora Fairfield, Tribulation Periwinkle or simply LMA, among the best known. Further clues are scattered throughout the narrative arc: a main character’s surname is Alcott; the title of a non-fiction work is “The Wayside”, the name of the house in Massachusetts where the writer lived.
Continuing his research, Chapnick identified seven short stories in total, as well as five poems and one work of non-fiction, which he believes may have been written by Alcott under the pseudonym Gould, in the late 1950s and early 1950s. 60s of the 19th century.
However, Chapnick maintains a margin of doubt regarding the authorship of these texts: although various clues point in this direction, and it is therefore probable that these stories are actually by Alcott, Chapnick has specified that he will continue to investigate, since there are stories present in the lists of Alcott and cited in his letters which are still waiting to be found.