>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. ^M00:00:04 [ Pause ] ^M00:00:25 >> Rob: I want to thank, first of all, Mark Dimination, the chief of the rare books and special collections division who not only helped make this event possible but just let me know that you couldn't hear in the back. [laughter] Thank you, Mark, and also Rosemary Placus from the same division who has put the events that we've done with the rare book and special collection for this literary birthday series together. So thank you, Rosemary, for this. First of all, I'll ask you to turn off your cell phones. You know how that all goes. I'll give you a second. And I'll tell you a little bit about the poetry and literature center. We're turning 75 next year. We are the home of the nation's poet laureate. Our current poet laureate is Phil Levine. We do all sorts of readings and events like this, and like our poet laureate's inaugural reading and closing reading of the season. You can get a little information about the poetry and literature center right in the back, and you can sign up. Our, our sign up sheet to find out more about events like this. We have a number of birthday celebrations next year with Gwendolyn Brooks, Ralph Allison, Langston Hughes, and Walt Whitman. So, and all on the actual day, [laughter] which I'm, I'm very proud of. Luckily, you know, these are the writer, these are the writers who have birthdays that weren't on Saturday or Sunday. [laughter] So the, the event this afternoon will go as follows. We have two featured readers, Jo Ann Beard and Maud Casey, and they'll, they'll read selections from Alcott's writing and specifically focus on her landmark novel "Little Women", and talk a little bit about the importance of Alcott's work to, to their own work and read a little bit of their own work. Both our featured writers will tell you a little bit more about Louisa May Alcott, who would have been 197 years old today, and I'm sure a lot of you, right. A hundred and ninety-seven. ^M00:02:35 [ Background Talk ] ^M00:02:42 >> Rob: Is it 179? Oh. [background talk] A hundred and seventy-nine. No. I mixed the numbers up when I wrote it down. [background talk] I did, I did add it up on my, on my little phone. [laughter] She would have been 179 years old today. No, I knew, I knew for this event, too, I thought when I was making this paragraph about a little bio of, of Louisa May Alcott, I thought, oh, man. I know people in the audience are going to know more than I know about her, and so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. And I'll just tell you a little bit about her. For those of you who don't know the story of one of America's most important authors. She was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania in 1832, and she published five books under her own name, and as A.M. Barnard, before writing "Little Women", the first of the March family saga. Her more than 30 books also include "Little Men", "Jo's Boys", "An Old-Fashioned Girl", and "Hospital Sketches" written of her time as a nurse in Georgetown's Union Hotel Hospital during the Civil War, and I think we have, we have "Hospital Sketches", we have "Little Women". What? [background talk] They, yeah, they're, they're up here along with my favorite, my favorite Louisa May Alcott title of "Modern Mephistopheles". Later, she became an advocate for women suffrage, and was the first women to register to vote in Concord, Massachusetts where she spent time with Walford Emerson and Henry David Thoreau as a child, and you'll hear more about that a little bit later with our speakers. She is, though, best known for her contribution to American letters. As the "New York Times" stated in her obituary in March 1880 quote there was probably no writer among women better loved by the young than she endquote. Let me tell you a little bit now about our two readers, who we are thrilled to have here today. Jo Ann Beard is the author of two books, "Boys of My Youth: A Collection of Autobiographical Essays" and the novel "In Zanesville", which features a character named Jo. A 1997 Whiting Award winner and 2003 Dugenheim Foundation fellow, she currently teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and lives both in Manhattan and in upstate New York. Our second reader, Maud Casey, lives a bit closer in Cleveland Park and teaches at the University of Maryland as well as Warren Wilson College. She's the author of two novels, "The Shape of Things to Come" and "Genealogy" and the story collection "Jurassic". Casey is the recipient of the 2008 [inaudible] Prize and a 2008-2009 D.C. commission on the arts and humanities fellowship. I should say, too, that we do have copies of "Little Women" as well as books on "Genealogy" and "In Zanesville" for sale. So you can, you can get your copies, buy your copies and get them signed afterwards. So our two writers will read, and then Amanda Zimmerman of the rare books and special collections division of the Library will come up to talk about this tabletop display featuring Alcott's works, and about the invaluable work the division does to ensure that the works of writers like Louisa May Alcott are preserved for future generations. So please welcome our two writers. ^M00:05:57 [ Applause ] ^M00:06:06 >> Jo Ann Beard: Thank you, Rob. Can you hear me? You can hear me? OK. ^M00:06:08 [ Pause ] ^M00:06:17 >> Jo Ann Beard: Hi there. Thanks to everybody for coming out today, and thank you, Rob, for including me in this event. I need to. As soon as I see rare books, I want to take a drink of water with a trembling hand. So. [laughter] OK. I discovered "Little Women" in a box that came from a church rummage sale nestled between comic books and Cliff Notes and whatever else. Jackpot. There she was. A girl named Jo just like I was a girl named Jo. She was a Josephine. I was named after a Josephine. Her personality overflowed, and she didn't care one bit. They told her to contain it, and she told them she couldn't. You can't know how much I needed her at the time I found her. So it's a great pleasure for me to come here today and stand before you on behalf of the feminist and humanitarian and literary like Louisa May Alcott, an integral part not just of our American Bloomsbury, but I venture to say of every girl in this room's upbringing. And by girl, I mean women, and by women I also mean the men who are here. [laughter] We'll, we'll include you, too. I'm going to read a passage from the third chapter of "Little Women" in which Jo and her older sister, Meg, are invited to a party given by their wealthier neighbor. They have to figure out how to make themselves presentable without the proper clothes or, in Jo's case, the proper manners. Chapter Three is called "The Lawrence Boy". "'Jo, Jo, where are you?' cried Meg at the foot of the garret stairs. 'Here,' answered a husky voice from above, and running up, Meg found her sister eating apples and crying over "The Heir of Redclyffe", wrapped up in a comforter on an old three-legged sofa by the sunny window. This was Jo's favorite refuge, and here she loved to retire with half a dozen russets and a nice book to enjoy the quiet and the society of a pet rat who lived nearby and didn't mind her a particle. 'Such fun. Only see. A regular note of invitation from Mrs. Gardiner for tomorrow night,' cried Meg. 'Marmee is willing. We should go. Now what shall we wear?' 'What's the use of asking that when you know we should wear our poplins because we haven't got anything else,' answered Jo with her mouth full. 'If I only had a silk,' sighed Meg. 'Mother says I may when I'm 18 perhaps, but two years is an everlasting time to wait. I'm sure our pops look like silk, and they're nice enough for us. Yours is as good as new, but I forgot the burn and the tear in mine. Whatever shall I do? The burn shows horribly, and I can't take any out.' 'You must sit still all you can, and keep your back out of sight. The front is alright. I shall have a new ribbon for my hair, and Marmee will lend me her little curl pin, and my new slippers are lovely, and my gloves will do, though they aren't as nice as I'd like.' 'Mine are spoiled with lemonade, and I can't get any new ones so I shall, shall have to go without,' said Jo, who never troubled herself much about dress. 'You must have gloves, or I won't go,' cried Meg decidedly. 'Then I'll stay still. I don't care much for company dancing. It's no fun to go sailing around. I like to fly about and cut capers.' 'You can't ask father for new gloves. She said when you spoiled the others that she shouldn't get you anymore this winter. Can't you fix them anyway?' asked Meg. 'I can hold them crunched up in my hands so no one will know how stained they are. That's all I can do.' 'No. I'll tell you how we can manage. Each wear one good one and carry a bad one, don't you see.' 'Your hands are bigger than mine, and you'll stretch my glove dreadfully.' 'Then I'll go without. I don't care what people say,' cried Jo, taking up her book. 'You may have it, you may, only don't stain it, and do behave nicely. Don't put your hands behind you or stare or say Christopher Columbus, will you?' [laughter] 'Don't worry about me. I'll be prim as a dish and not give into any scraps if I can help it. Now, go and answer your note, and let me finish this splendid story.' On New Year's Eve, the two younger girls played dressing maids, and the two elder were absorbed in the all-important business of getting ready for the party. Meg wanted a few curls about her face, and Jo undertook to pinch the papered locks with a pair of hot tongs. 'Ought they to smoke like that,' asked Beth from her perch on the bed. 'It's the dampness drying,' replied Jo. 'What a queer smell. It's like burnt feathers,' observed Amy. 'There now. I'll take off the papers, and you'll see a cloud of little ringlets,' said Jo. She did take off the papers, but no cloud of ringlets appeared for the hair came with the papers, and the horrified hairdresser laid a roll of little scorched bundles on the bureau before her victim. 'Oh, oh, oh, what have you done? I'm spoiled. I can't go. My hair, oh, my hair,' wailed Meg. 'Just my luck. You shouldn't have asked me to do it. I always spoil everything. I'm no end sorry, but the tongs were too hot, and so I've made a mess,' groaned poor Jo regarding the black pancakes with tears of regret. 'It isn't spoiled. Just frizzle it, and tie your ribbon so the ends come on your forehead a bit, and it will look like the latest fashion. I've seen lots of girls do it,' said Amy. 'Serves me right for trying to be fine. I wish I'd let my hair alone,' cried Meg. 'So do I. It was so smooth and pretty, but it will soon grow out again,' said Beth, coming to kiss and comfort the shorn sheep. After varies lesser mishaps, Meg was finished at last, and by the united exertions of the family, Jo's hair was got up, and her dress on. They looked very well in their simple suits, Meg in silvery drab with a blue velvet snood, lace frills, and the pearl pin, Jo in maroon with a stiff gentlemanly linen collar and a white chrysanthemum or two for her only ornament. Each put on one nice light glove and carried one soiled one, and all pronounced the effect quite easy and nice. Meg's high-heeled slippers were dreadfully tight and hurt her, though she would not own it, and Jo's 19 hairpins all seemed stuck straight into her head, [laughter] which was not exactly comfortable, but dear me, let us be elegant or die. ^M00:13:16 [ Laughter ] [ Applause ] ^M00:13:24 >> Jo Ann Beard: So that last was authorial comment. "Dear me, let us be elegant or die." From time to time through the book, I discovered when I read it again, Louisa May, like Jo March, blurts out her own opinion on what's happening to the girls. That quality of breaking the percenitum to speak directly to the reader created, at least in me, a feeling of intimacy between the author and her characters and the author and her readers. We're all in it together, wrecking the hair and clutching the spoiled glove and feeling stirred by the dreamy boy next door named in a twist that rivals a girl named Jo Laurie. I, a shy middle child, Midwestern girl, thrilled to the idea that Jo was a blurter, a barger, a person with a fried skirt who didn't care, a girl who longed to cut capers, whatever those were, and who wrote her own newspaper and expected people to read it, actually she demanded that people read it. She delivered it to them in their post office box. Louisa May Alcott created not just one of the most memorable and realistic characters for 19th and 20th and maybe 21st century girls to model themselves after, but she did something I think is even more immense. She depicted character being shaped. Not characters as in Jo, Meg, Beth, and Amy, but character as in morality, as in the striving to be a decent and whole human being, to live within a society but also within a moral code. Her pilgrims make their progress through life and through the pages of this long book by understanding certain things. That they have flaws, that all human beings have flaws, that recognizing those defects or weaknesses of personality or character is paramount to overcoming them. Their mother and father take parenting seriously. They actively work to shape their girls, reminding them over and over that making mistakes is human and also useful. That forgiveness is an achievement. One that is absolutely necessary when living in close quarters, both physically and psychologically because this was an era, for the most part, when girls got up in the morning, and they spent all day in the same small space. Where little hurts could not be allowed to fester for the good of everyone involved. So this family, for nearly 500 pages, works to get along. To highlight and cherish each other's differences, maybe their flaws, to alternately revel in them, and reign them in. So I'm going to read another brief example of this. This is in the opening of the book on, on, in the first chapter. "'Jo does use such slang words,' observed Amy with a reproving look at the long figure stretched on the rug. Jo immediately sat up, put her hands in her apron pockets, and began to whistle. 'Don't, Jo. It's so boyish.' 'That's why I do it.' 'I detest rude, unladylike girls.' 'I hate affected, niminy-piminy chits.' [laughter] 'Birds in their little nests agree', saying Beth, the peacemaker, with such a funny face that both sharp voices soften to a laugh, and the pecking ended for that time. 'Really, girls. You're both to be blamed,' said Meg, beginning to lecture in her elder sister fashion. 'You are old enough to leave off boyish tricks and behave better, Josephine. It didn't matter so much when you were a little girl, but now you are so tall and turn up your hair, you should remember that you're a young lady.' 'I ain't, and if turning up my hair makes me one, I'll wear it in two tails 'til I'm 20,' cried Jo, pulling off her net and shaking down her chestnut mane. 'I hate to think I've got to grow up and be Miss March and wear long gowns and look as prim as a China aster. It's bad enough to be a girl anyway when I like boys' games and work and manners. I can't get over my disappointment in not being a boy, and it's worse than ever now for I'm dying to go and fight with papa, and I can only stay at home and knit like a pokey old woman.' And Jo shook the blue army sock 'til the needles rattled like castanets and her ball bounded across the room. 'Poor Jo. It's too bad, but it can't be helped. So you must try to be contented with making your name boyish and playing brother to us girls,' said Beth, smoothing the rough head at her knee with a hand that all the dishwashing and dusting in the world could not make ungentle in its touch. 'As for you, Amy,' continued Meg, 'you are all together too particular and prim. Your airs are funny now, but you'll grow up an affected little goose if you don't take care. I like your nice manners and refined ways of speaking when you don't try to be elegant, but your absurd words are as bad as Jo's slang.' 'If Jo is a tomboy, and Amy is a goose, what am I, please?' asked Beth, ready to share the lecture. 'You're a dear, and nothing else,' answered Meg warmly." Isn't that beautiful? [laughter] And I know, yes, Louisa's brand of nervousness might be out of fashion right now, but more's the pity for that. The March girls, chapter by chapter, hold themselves to such a high standard of behavior it feels almost subversive now. The fact that they don't always achieve their goals, well, therein lies the reason that we couldn't put the book down then and now. And the power of suggestion is great, especially when a book has lodged itself into one's consciousness at a ripe and impressionable age. I somehow discovered in this process and the process of being asked to re-read this masterpiece and to come here and talk about it that I, in some small way, recreated the scene that I read to you first in my own book, "In Zanesville." I didn't know it at the time I wrote it or even later. I didn't recognize it until I picked this book up 40 years after I read it the first time. So in this scene, my narrator, named Jo, has been invited to a party given by a wealthier neighbor, and she figure, has to figure out how to get ready and feel comfortable in this society that she really, you know, can't bring herself to join. So this is a brief scene from "In Zanesville." "I spend the next afternoon mentally preparing for the party by hiding out behind the green velvet chair in the corner of the living room. When I was younger and shorter, I made a readingness for myself by stuffing a couch pillow back here and an old afghan and then crawling in with my book, staying all day if they let me, creeping out only to get provisions. Now I have to fold myself in sideways with the register jabbing into me and my feet sticking out. Tammy, the dog, waits until I've got it all arranged, and then still before gingerly climbing in and over to settle behind my knees. I still like it back here. The familiar scuffs and scribbles above the baseboard, the bright unfaded back of the green chair, the headless carpet tack you have to watch out for. This is where the pivotal events of my childhood unfolded. While I ate banana and root beer popsicles two by two, tucking the sticks neatly under the skirt of the chair. It's where Sunny Bank lad met lady, Ken met his friend, Flicka, Atlanta burned, Manderly burned, Lassie came home, Jim ran away, Alice got small, Wilbur got big, David Copperfield was born, Beth died, and on an endless, gloomy winter afternoon, Jody shot his yearling. The pretty little deer named Flagg, staggering and bloodied, doomed from his romp through the tender shoots of corn and the mother's bad aim, pursued by the desperate crazed boy who had to put him out of his suffering, all the fault of mothers and corn. My own mother had had to come in and pull the chair out in order to see what was going on that day. She was sympathetic until she saw the popsicle sticks. [laughter] 'That's a bit ridiculous, isn't it?', she says now, passing by on her way somewhere and seeing me crammed into my old space. 'What's ridiculous is that there's nowhere in this house to do homework,' I reply. 'What do you call that big table in the dining room?' 'What do you call the crap all over it that I'm sick of cleaning up?' She peers over the top of the chair at me. I open the tempest and stare into it. 'Listen. If this is how you talk to your family, you'll stay home tonight.' 'How I talk? You just called me ridiculous," I say to my book. 'I did not,' she answers. 'Look at me.' I look up at her. She has rollers in her hair. 'I did not. I said it might be a bit ridiculous to be jammed in there like that when there are plenty of other places you could read in this house.' 'That's not what I heard.' 'I actually don't care what you heard, and I'm not going to stand here arguing with a teenager about what I did or didn't say,' and with that, she wanders away because she knows she's in the wrong." ^M00:23:40 [ Laughter ] ^M00:23:46 >> Jo Ann Beard: "I'm sick of being a teenager. Being a teenager so far hasn't gotten me anything beyond period cramps and nameless yearning, which I had as a kid, too, but this is a new kind of nameless yearning that has boys attached to it. And one thing is for sure - there are boys close behind wherever the popular girls are, like wolves following the campfires. What if they show up at the party tonight? What will I do then? What if there are popular boys there, ones who aren't used to being around uncute girls? I think about getting up to call Felicia to see how nervous she is, but the register is pouring out heat, and the dog and I have melted together." Thank you. ^M00:24:30 [ Applause ] ^M00:24:49 >> Maud Casey: What a pleasure and an honor to be here to, to celebrate Louisa May Alcott's birthday. It's really just delicious. So thank you. ^M00:24:59 [ Pause ] ^M00:25:06 >> Maud Casey: "'November's the most disagreeable month in the whole year,' said Margaret [laughter] standing at the window one dull afternoon looking out at the frostbitten garden. 'That's the reason I was born in it,' observed Jo pensively, quite unconscious of the blot on her nose." This is, of course, our beloved Jo from Louisa May Alcott's "Little Women", and I'm so glad that Jo Ann spoke to Jo's kind of radicalness and Louisa May Alcott's radicalness because as I was thinking about Jo and thinking about Louisa May Alcott, I realized that kind of claiming Jo as her favorite little woman was a little bit akin to claiming John Lennon as her favorite Beatle. You know, [laughter] sort of the obvious cool choice, but there are legions of us girl writers all grown up who found solace and inspiration in this rock star, in the rock star who created her. So back to that disagreeable month and that pensive girl. When my parents first read "Little Women" allowed to me, that word "disagreeable" registered as naughty, and the ink blot on Jo's nose was funny, a relief to a kid who probably had one on her nose, too. But after reading and rereading "Little Women" over the years, that word "pensively" has slowly come to the fore. Jo observed pensively her relationship to that disagreeable month. There's much more to it than naughtiness, and while the ink blot on her nose is still funny, it also links Jo's writing to that disagreeableness, which has to do with her quick temper, but also to do with discontentedness, restlessness, and longing. Emotions that spill out and over like Jo's quick temper but which are also part of something deeper for artistic temperament. That disagreeableness fueled the writing of Jo, Alcott's fictitious alter ego, as they fueled Alcott's own writing life. About Alcott, her father, Amos Alcott, who as we now shares her birthday today, wrote, "She was a girl fit for the scuffle of things. Filled with ferocity, ungovernable energy, passionate obstinacy." In her journal at the age of 14, Louisa wrote of herself, "I am old for my age and don't much care for girls' things. People think I'm wild or queer," to which I say my kind of girl and my kind of writer. My parents, who were writers, are writers. So the idea of writing as a profession was not odd to me as a child, but it was still mysterious. Who were these people hanging around in their bathrobes all day, locking themselves away in rooms, demanding silence? With Jo, Alcott offered me to paraphrase Forester the secret life of a girl writer. This, this secret life included wildness and queerness. It included frustration and her circumstance as a girl in a transcendentalist man's world. This feeling of frustration was something Alcott knew well. She wrote tirelessly upstream against convention. It's very moving to me that Alcott sends the fictional patriarch Mr. March off to the Civil War when it was Alcott herself who got on a train to come serve as a nurse in Washington, no small thing especially given that she contracted typhoid fever and was treated with mercury that effectively poisoned her and caused her ill health for the rest of her life, although it's interesting that it was after she was treated that she began really writing. So it's sort of part of her, part of that process. Also that it was in writing and in large part "Little Women" that paid off the Alcott family's substantial debts is impressive and, and also the sign of someone with that ferocity and governable energy, passionate obstinacy. So the passages I've chosen from "Little Women" are to do with, with Jo and her Alcottese [phonetic] fierceness. That disagree, disagreeableness which includes messy, uncontained emotions as well as the ability to shape them into something artful. So this first excerpt is from an earlier chapter, and it's the chapter in which Jo has become enraged with Amy, and because Amy had burnt her, her book that she's been, been writing in. And she's, due to her negligence, Amy has fallen through the ice. And so this is Jo with Marmee. "'Are you sure she is safe?' whispered Jo, looking remorsefully at the golden head, which might have been swept away from her sight forever under the treacherous ice. 'Quite safe, dear. She is not hurt, and won't even take cold I think. You were so sensible in covering and getting her home quickly,' replied her mother cheerfully. 'Laurie did it all. I only let her go. Mother, if she should die, it would be my fault,' and Jo dropped down beside the bed in a passion of penitent tears, telling all that had happened, bitterly condemning her hardness of heart and sobbing at her gratitude for being spared the heavy punishment which might have come upon her. 'It's my dreadful temper. I try to cure it. I think I have, and then it breaks out worse than ever. Oh, mother, what shall I do? What shall I do?' cried poor Jo in despair. 'Watch and pray, dear. Never get tired of trying, and never think it is impossible to conquer your faults,' said Mrs. March, drawing the blousy head to her shoulder and kissing the wet cheek so tenderly that Jo cried harder than ever. 'You don't know, you can't guess how bad it is. It seems as if I could do anything when I'm in a passion. I get so savage. I could hurt anyone and enjoy it. I'm afraid I shall do something dreadful some day and spoil my life and make everybody hate me. Oh, mother, help me. Do help me.' 'I will, my child, I will. Don't cry so bitterly, but remember this day, and resolve with all your soul that you will never know another like it. Jo, dear, we all have our temptations, some far greater than yours, and it often takes us all our lives to conquer them. You think your temper is the worse in the world, but mine used to be just like it.' 'Yours, mother? Why, you are never angry.' And for the moment, Jo forgot remorse and surprise. 'I've been trying to cure it for 40 years, and have only succeeded in controlling it. I am angry nearly every day of my life, Jo, but I've learned not to show it, and I still hope to learn not to feel it, though it may take me another 40 years to do so.' The patience and the humility of the face she loved so well was a better lesson to Jo than the wisest lecture, the sharpest reprove. She felt comforted at once by the sympathy and confidence given her, the knowledge that her mother had a fault like hers and tried to mend it made her own easier to bear and strengthened her resolution to cure it, though 40 years seemed rather a long time to watch and pray to a girl of 15.' [laughter] Marmee, angry, so angry. ^M00:31:32 [ Pause ] ^M00:31:38 >> Maud Casey: OK. So this next one is from a much later chapter called "Literary Lessons", and at this point, Jo has started to write, and it's, it's just a little bit about, a description of her writing. And, and Louisa May Alcott described her own writing as falling into a vortex, and, and so you'll see that here as well. "Fortune suddenly smiled upon Jo and dropped a good-luck penny in her path. Not a golden penny exactly, but I doubt if half a million would have given more real happiness than, than did the little sum that came to her in this wise. Every few weeks, she would shut herself up in her room, put on her scribbling suit, and fall into a vortex as she expressed it, writing away at her novel with all her heart and soul. For 'til that was finished, she could find no peace. Her scribbling suit consisted of a black woolen pinafore on which she could wipe her pen at will and a cap of the same material adorned with a cheerful red bow into which she bundled her hair when the decks were cleared for action. This cap was a beacon to the inquiring eyes of her family, who during these periods kept their distance, merely popping in their heads semi-occasionally to ask with interest, 'Does genius burn, Jo?' They did not always venture even to ask this question, but took an observation of the cap and judged accordingly. If this expressive article of dress was drawn low upon the forehead, it was a sign that hard work was going on. In exciting moments, it was pushed rakishly askew, and when despair seized the author, it was plucked wholly off and cast upon the floor. At such times, the intruder silently withdrew, and not until the red bow was seen gaily erect upon the gifted brow did anyone dare address Jo. She did not think herself a genius by any means, but when the writing fit came on, she gave herself up to it with entire abandon and led a blissful life, unconscious of want, care, or bad weather while she sat safe and happy in an imaginary world full of friends, almost as real and dear to her as any in the flesh. Sleep forsook her eyes, meals stood untasted, day and night were all too short to enjoy the happiness which blessed her only at such times, and made these hours worth living even if they bore no other fruit. The divine afflatus usually lasted a week or two, and then she emerged from her vortex hungry, sleepy, cross, or despondent." And this final excerpt is from a much later chapter called "All Alone", and this is, this is the chapter when Jo has, has learned that, that Laurie has married Amy, and, and she feels OK about it, but she's a little torn. And so she's, she's now sort of the only unmarried daughter. "Now, if she had been the heroine of a moral story book, she ought at this period of her life to become quite saintly, renounce the world, and gone about doing good in a mortified bonnet with tracks in her pocket. But you see, Jo wasn't a heroine. She was only a struggling human girl, like hundreds of others, and she just acted out her nature, being sad, cross, listless, or energetic as the mood suggested. It's highly virtuous to say we'll be good, but we can't do it all at once, and it takes a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull altogether before some of us even get our feet set in the right way. Jo had got so far, she was learning to do her duty, and to feel unhappy if she did not, but to do it cheerfully, that was another thing. She'd often said she wanted to do something splendid, no matter how hard, and now she had her wish for what could be more beautiful than to devote her life to father and mother, trying to make home as happy to them as they had to her, and if difficulties were necessary to increase the splendor of the effort, what could be harder for a restless, ambitious girl than to give up her own hopes, plans, and desires and cheerfully live for others? Providence had taken her at her word. Here was the task, not what she had expected but better because self had no part in it. Now could she do it? She decided that she would try, and in her first attempt, she founded the helps I had suggested. Still another was given her, and she took it, not as a reward but as a comfort as Christian and, and pilgrim's progress took the refreshment afforded by the little arbor where he rested as he climbed the hill called difficulty. 'Why don't you write? That always used to make hap, you happy,' said her mother once when the desponding fit overshadowed her. 'I've no heart to write, and if I had, nobody cares for my things.' 'We do. Write something for us, and never mind the rest of the world. Try it, dear. I'm sure it would do you good and please us very much.' 'Don't believe I can.' But Jo got at her desk and began to overhaul her half-finished manuscripts. An hour afterwards, her mother peeped in, and there she was, scratching away with her black pinafore on and an absorbed expression, which caused Mrs. March to smile and slip away, well pleased with the success of her suggestion. Jo never knew how it happened, but something got into that story that went straight to the hearts of those who read it. For when her family had laughed and cried over it, her father sent it, much against her will, to one of the popular magazines, and to her utter surprise, it was not only paid for, but others requested. Letters from several persons whose praise was honor followed the appearance of the little story. Newspapers copied it, and strangers as well as friends admired it. For a small thing, it was a great success, and Jo was more astonished than when her novel was commended and condemned all at once.' ^M00:36:57 [ Pause ] ^M00:37:04 >> Maud Casey: So because of this event, I, I, I found myself reading this, this wonderful dual biography of, of Louisa May Alcott and her father called "Eden's Outcast" by John Madison. Lots of other people liked it. It won the Pulitzer Prize. But Madison wrote of Louisa that she had become habituated to desire, and I, I think it's a really apt and lovely description of her. Desire, after all, is a state of always wanting but never quite having. It is the state of seeking, and it's, it's a large part of the condition of, of being a writer, chasing after that deliciously elusive mystery of, of story. So I'm going to finish with a, a short that, from my own work. And the connection may not be so obvious, but in it, there's a bit of that longing and restlessness and desire and searching. And it, it's also, it's a, it's, it's a small, self-contained chapter from my novel "Genealogy", and in it, a father reads to his daughter. So that seemed apt as, as "Little Women" was first read aloud to me and to, to many of us I imagine. So the, the chapter has a title, and the title is the, the name of the fairy tale, and the name of the fairy tale is "The Story of the Young Boy Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was." "'Storytellers would tell these stories originally as a form of entertainment when the light began to fade,' Bernard would say to the top of Marguerite's tiny head, tucked into the crook of his arm. How could a head be so tiny? Before TV, he would say in the dark ages, you know, when things were dark. He pulled the words out of the air [laughter], articulating forever shifting night, carving out the rhythm of the dark with his voice. It wasn't long before he didn't need the thick book of Grimm's fairy tales, whose binding had cracked because over the years, four-, five-, six-, seven-, eight-year old Marguerite was stubbornly determined to hear this particular story and only this story. Nothing else would do. 'This story has realness,' she said, and Bernard knew what she meant. He had the story memorized, and when he began to tell it, the shapes of the objects in Marguerite's room, the wooden horse on the bureau, her clothes hanging in her closet, the paper mache musical note that her brother made for her birthday one year grew starker, their outlines more evident. It seemed to Marguerite that the telling of the story invited the night, and everything she thought she knew was suddenly not itself, but something strange and unfamiliar and, therefore, more beautiful. At first, Bernard worried the story was too scary, but it was a story about longing, and, well, longing was scary. Still, Bernard did make some changes that he didn't tell Marguerite about. He made the younger son rebellious and wily as opposed to stupid because Marguerite so fiercely identified with this wandering child, and, really, Bernard thought, the story was wrong. The kid was anything but stupid. He was adventurous and eccentric but not dumb. 'Read, read,' Marguerite would chant, and Bernard would begin. 'A farmer had a younger son who wasn't afraid of anything, but it wasn't a good thing. The son wanted to know what it was like to shudder the way his older brother did whenever he was in the dark or in a graveyard or any other grim or dismal place.' 'Grim,' Marguerite would say with delight. Dismal, and it always alarmed Bernard how frighteningly at home these words were in the mouth of his young daughter. 'When the older brother got old enough, he became a farmer like his father, but the younger brother wasn't sure how he wanted to earn his living. When his father asked him how he expected to survive, the younger son said, 'Before I decide how to make my way in the world, I would like to learn how to shudder.' Luckily, a villager agreed to teach the youngest son how to shudder. In the middle of the night, he pretended to be a ghost, but the boy wasn't afraid. In fact, the boy challenged the so-called ghost and threw him down the stairs. In the morning, when the villager's wife asked the boy if he had learned how to be scared, the boy said no, but a ghost had bothered him, and he had thrown him down the stairs. 'Eek,' Marguerite would exclaim, pretending to be the wife, exclaiming in horror because it made Bernard laugh. 'With despair, the father sent the boy out into the world because he was no longer welcome in the village.' 'He's in trouble, right,' Marguerite would say giddily. 'And how,' Bernard would answer. 'Hold on. There's more. The boy wandered out into the world and came upon a king in his haunted castle. The king told the boy that if he was able to stay in the haunted castle for three nights without leaving, then the king would allow him to marry his beautiful daughter, the princes. Other men had tried, but none of them succeeded because they were too scared. Well, this was exactly what the boy was looking for, a chance to learn what fear was. So the boy agreed to stay in the haunted castle. The first night, two enormous black cats with fiery red eyes tried to eat the boy, but he fought them off with a hot poker. The second night, the boy's bed moved across the room, and instead of being afraid, the boy said faster.' [laughter] And the third night, a dead man who'd been cut in two fell down the chimney in two pieces, which sewed themselves together once he landed on his feet, and the half man turned whole tried to strangle the boy, but the boy took a hatchet and cut the man in half again, and the two parts of the man skulked out of the castle.' At this point, Marguerite would hold her hands like claws, hold up her hands like claws and wave them around at Bernard's face. 'OK, enough skulking,' Bernard would say. 'When the king returned and found the boy unscathed, he offered him his daughter's hand in marriage. The boy accepted because the daughter was very beautiful, but, still, the boy didn't know what it was to shudder. He didn't know what fear was. After several weeks of listening to her new husband complain, the princess decided to teach him a lesson. She went to a nearby river and filled a bucket with tiny flickering fish. When she returned to the castle, she snuck into her, into their dark bedroom and poured the fish down the back of her husband, husband's nightshirt. 'Oh, it makes me shudder so,' the young boy turned husband shouted, jumping from the bed. 'Oh, wife,' he said, 'you've taught me what it is to be afraid, and for that, I am forever grateful.' Marguerite thought Bernard's fairy tale voice was a little scary, and she worried that it might stay that way forever deep and ghostly. At the same time, she wished that his voice would get stuck, and he, he would be forced to read the story over and over again. This boy who wanted nothing more in life than to shudder made her own fear seem important, something that would some day lead her to wisdom and gratitude. 'It's about how sometimes the smaller things are the scariest,' Bernard said the first time he read it, feeling professorial need to end with an exclamation. 'But it's mysterious, too,' Marguerite said, and Bernard was proud that his daughter appreciated at such a young age the joy in a story's ability to continue to exist just out of reach.'" Thank you. ^M00:43:49 [ Applause ] ^M00:44:04 >> Amanda Zimmerman: Good afternoon, everyone. Can everyone hear me? I think I'm close enough. I'm really thrilled to be here today celebrating the life of Louisa May Alcott. She's a really gifted writer and, really, a remarkable woman. The books that I chose today for our display, which after I'm done you'll be welcome to come up and, and take a look at and ask me questions, not only came from the Library through copyright deposits, but also through gifts to the Library and larger collections, which I will talk to, talk more about later. What I wanted to do with my selections was not just focus on her most well-beloved tale, "Little Women", but to also note the, perhaps lesser-known aspects of her literary career and interests. So I'm going to go through each one, and tell you a little bit about it. The first one which is up here in the front is a book called "Flower Fables". It was published in 1855, and it was actually dedicated to Ellen Emerson. One interesting thing to note about Louisa May Alcott, her extraordinary childhood as a result of her father's influence, both good and bad. He was a noted transcendentalist, and he was friends with many noted authors such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Now, though Bronson Alcott took charge of his four daughters' education, their education was supplemented by teachings from these other authors, and that really impacted Louisa in particular. Thoreau, for example, would take them on berry-picking adventures through the woods around Walden Pond, and he would refer to the woods as fairy land, and this really inspired Louisa to think about things like elves and fairies and, and nature in a whole new light. And while they were on these expeditions, Louisa would make up these stories, and she would share them with her friends and her sisters and with Thoreau, and Ellen Emerson, who would come with them on these berry-picking expeditions loved the story so much that eventually she did publish the book. This is a first edition of that book. The dedication in there is to Ellen Emerson, and it's a really, it's a really fabulous book with short stories that focus on the themes of love and kindness and responsibility. And the next book I have out here is "Hospital Sketches", which was mentioned earlier. While she, while Louisa was serving in the, in the Civil War as a nurse, she was, as Maud said, down in, in Georgetown, D.C. at the Union, Union Hospital, and she wrote these letters back home that when she returned home after the six weeks she served, were then gathered, reworked. She gave herself a pseudonym, and then they were published. Initially, they were published in 1893. The version we have here is published in 1869, which is when they published it the second time with some additions. So this is kind of an updated version of the original publication. We also have out a book called "Moods", which is lesser known, and it was the first novel Louisa ever tried to write. This is a really interesting story for a number of reasons. It dealt with the story of a, of a woman trying to make a life for herself and be self-sufficient and not fitting into society's rules. And what happened was she submitted the story to a number of publishers, who then told her it was too long, and she edited and chopped it down and chopped it down, and when it was finally accepted for publication, the story was completely different. It, Louisa was really unhappy with it, and she ended up rewriting and working it over over the next 10, 20 years, and I think she was never really pleased with it again, and John Madison, who Maud had mentioned also, noted quote Louisa had begun the novel as a psychological study of her heroine. By the time the editing was finished, the story no longer read like a nuance meditation on an unbalanced mind but like a tangled romance, a work of high ambition and extreme candor. "Moods" fell victim to the inexperience of its author and to the overly commercial sensibilities of the editor. So an unfortunate story, but we have it here for you to look at in its published form. Unfortunately, she was unhappy with it, but that's how it goes. I do have a copy of "Little Women" out for display. It's a first edition. It's illustrated by her younger sister, May Alcott, who the character Amy was based off of in "Little Women". And it's, as you know, it was published in 1868. It was, she didn't want to write the story. It was her publisher at the time, Thomas Niles, had asked her to publish a girls story, which she refused to do for a long time, and then her father was talking to the publisher, and the publisher agreed to publish something of his if he got her to write this story. So she sat down, and in two and a half months, wrote "Little Women". And she thought it was dull. She didn't really love it. She gave it to her publisher. He also thought it was dull. [laughter] He gave it to his niece. She read it and loved it, who gave it to a friend of hers, who read it and loved it. And so they said, well, you know, I, these girls like it. Let's go with it, and it sold, it was an immediate success. It sold 2,000 copies first printing, and then people demanded second parts and more editions, and it ended up being this, you know, this whole set of works. So the, another book that I have here is "Little Men", which was published a couple years later. It was 19, 1871, and it was a follow-up story. The reason I pulled this out is because we have two really interesting copies of this book at the Library. The one I have out here was the first book to be a part of a much larger collection that was given to the Library in 1936. The collector's name was John D. [inaudible], and he had a collection of about 1,500 works of significant Western literary works. And so in his whole collection, he had this book, and in the book is a little piece of paper that says "This book was purchased and published the year of John [inaudible] birth." So it was the start of his collection, the start of his life, and I thought it was a really fantastic part of, it's, if, if his collection was of significant American Western literature, and this was in it, I mean, it's just a really great start for his collection. The other copy of "Little Men" that we have that's really special is our Russian Imperial Collection, and that is actually inscribed by the emperor and empress to their daughter. So I thought that was really interesting because it shows how far reaching the impact of Louisa May Alcott's work was and is, and so I don't have that one out, but it's here. So you can always come back and ask for it, and we will be glad to show you. Another thing that I thought was interesting when I started doing research about Louisa was she often wrote under pseudonyms. She had one name, A.M. Bernard, which she wrote more lurid gothic tales, which she preferred to write actually, and we have one book, the blue one in the front is called "The Mysterious Key and What it Opened". It's a dime novel that was published originally under the pseudonym A.M. Bernard, and it wasn't discovered that these unknown works were hers until the 1970's, 1980's, which really opened up a whole new vein of critical interest in her work in more modern times. We're taking a whole new look at things. So that was a really interesting story, and then we have in the no name series a title "The Modern Mephistopheles", which is her retelling of the Faust tale. It's really, it's really fantastic, and I highly recommend reading it. And it, it was published anonymously, and as I said, it was only discovered later that these works she be attributed to her, which adds a whole new dimension to her character, and we know her as writing these quaint stories about responsibility and morality, and, and here she is writing these, like, really gruesome, passionate, fiery novels that we, you know, we usually don't attribute to her. The final item that I have on the table, the book is "Jack and Jill", which was one of her later stories. It was published in 1880, eight years before she passed away, and though it's, the book itself is not a copy that's magnificent or it, I mean, it's a lovely copy, but what I found inside were four manuscript leaves in her handwriting of the story. So I recommend you come up and take a look at everything. And so I, I would be happy to show and turn pages for everyone, and come up and see the display. ^M00:53:22 [ Applause ] ^M00:53:28 >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc dot gov.