Here is another side of Lousia May Alcott. How many readers know she wrote "blood and thunder tales," as she called them, six years before "Little Women," in a dire effort to make some money? The first of her Gothic novelettes,"Pauline's Passion and Punishment," written anonymously, was entered in a newspaper contest and netted her $100. Most of the others were written under the pseudonym of A. M. Barnard and provided her a livelihood for many years. She wrote in her journal, "I enjoy romancing to suit myself; and though my tales are silly, they are not bad; and my sinners have a good spot somewhere." Probably the best of this genre is "Behind a Mask" in which a calculating woman of 30 (who appears to be 19)uses drama, deceit and charm to get a husband, title and money. The stories are extremely good--even though I am not fond of Gothic tales--well-written, well paced, suspenseful, with characters of flesh and blood.

I was incredibly satisfied with Alcott's story, yet I'm torn at the same time. The characterization of Jean Muir becomes a strong advancement for feminism, however Alcott villainizes Jean at the end of the book by uncovering her true intentions. The book clearly displays the power of women through the deliberate lies Jean uses to marry into a rich family-even going so far as to fake a suicide attempt--yet the character of Jean herself is, excusing bluntness, a bitch.

The story begins slowly, but once reader's get used to the language Alcott uses and get a few chapters into the book, the story will pick up and become a much more enjoyable read. Setting aside the feministic undertones, the plot is well developed and easily understandable. The book is more than capable of being read in a single sitting, time permitting.

“That is a very nice, moral little story, but I wish there had been some real ghosts in it.”

It’s just an honor to have access to the “Blood-and-Thunder” that Louisa so famously wrote on the side under her male pseudonyms.

Fans of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women who wanted to know what Jo March's 'blood and thunder' tales were like should read this collection. These are the newspaper stories Alcott published before she became a famous children's writer.

I thought I had read all of Alcott's writings until I devoured a biography on her by Harriet Resien. I am now on the hunt to find Alcott's newspaper published items - including Hospital Sketches and these romantic tales.

Alcott's masterful turn of phrase and creativity of fanciful scenes and intriguing characters all show up in these tales - they will draw you in. And of course, not all is as it seems.

This was my 2013 #HalloweenRead and I was very please with the result. Mystery and intrigue abound with a dash a paranormal.

Chilling and darkly dramatic; perfectly delicious!

Its similar to lousia may Alcotts other books in the way all of her books are reminiscent of each other but it's still very different from her norm

I truly loved the excellently written introduction to this collection of "pot boilers" by Louisa May Alcott. The editor, Madeleine Stern, has provided a thorough background to the material and to her and her colleagues' research to unearth it -- because Miss Alcott's ventures into such popular literature were really not known until beginning in the 1940s. Very nice, Miss Stern. Thank you.

Miss Alcott entered into the dime-novel world because she -- and her family -- really needed the money. And Miss Alcott could really churn it out. She became quite a minor success in this demi-world of guilty pleasures. And, after she'd gained some attention in the legitimate world with her sketches about her nursing during the Civil War, her publishers wanted to make more money off her writing by putting her real name and not a pseudonym on her products.

I think there was another reason, besides money, why Miss Alcott wrote pot-boilers. She enjoyed it! She had an active imagination, she obviously loved to put words together on paper, she wrote pretty good characters, and she delighted in the hyper-drama (my word) of the clash of bad and good and how the clash would evolve into a good ending.

In this collection, I have read so far only "Behind a Mask." Believe me, this is not great literature. But Miss Alcott sets up her scene and her characters and the tone of each of them in just the first few pages. And they all make sense. She must have reveled in the deceit and self-regard. I imagine she must have smiled to herself sometimes when she held her pen. Nonetheless, the book is just not "Little Women" which is IMO a magnificent and serious book about growth and choices. But I will say Miss Alcott can excite and manipulate the reader. For example, in perhaps the antepenultimate chapter, all hangs in the balance for the not very nice protagonist, and Miss Alcott makes us waver between sympathy for her and a sense that a defeat at this point would be the right thing in a moral world. And that wavering occurs because the other characters, that is, the potential victims of the protagonist, are either so totally unlikeable or so dumb. They are fairly selfish and their self-regard is based really only on their class in society. So, one can see that Miss Alcott works her magic even in the vaudeville of literature!

I want to add, almost as an aside, that I regard Miss Alcott as a remarkable woman and I admire her tremendously. After all her hardships -- and scrimping for her family -- she deserved all the fame and fortune that came with "Little Women." I wish I could meet her!

I will, in fact, go back to this book. Reading all four of the novelettes in a row is just too much for me! But I am curious about "Pauline's Passion and Punishment" will bring. Yay!

You go, girl.

Partial read for American Women Writers before 1924 with Dr. Ginsberg. Spring 2020. Read "Behind a Mask" and "V.V., or Plots and Counterplots." So fun to read the kinds of stories LMA really wanted to write.

These creepy stories were great. Again, I like Alcott's better known works, but everyone loves a good thriller or ghost story once in a while.

Behind a Mask is an excellent way to become acquainted with Alcott's racier side. With a hidden identity used for publication (A.M. Barnard) it all fits together nicely in this unique thriller.

Jean Muir is hired to be the Governess to the Coventry house but upon her arrival realize that something is amiss and that Miss Muir is nothing like Nanny Fine. She is very syrupy but yet seduces everyone in the family with her charm. With calculated moves, "introducing" herself as a sweet innocent girl down on her luck, quickly wins the hearts of the gentlemen of the house making all the right connections and begins to weave her web. Can we say welcome to my parlor said the spider to the fly?

From the beginning I knew that there was something fishy going on, and was pretty sure I knew the motive; my suspicions were confirmed in the shape of a letter. There really is something to be said about disclosing a plot in the form of a letter, I think it adds to the dramatic flare, especially here with the ending drawing so near. While Behind a Mask was a pageturner all in its self, I couldn't press my Kindle's "Next Page" button fast enough when reaching the conclusion.

Last year, I very much enjoyed Louisa May Alcott’s secret ‘blood and thunder’ novel, The Long Fatal Love Chase. I loved it for the sense of joy it had in its own breathless abandon. Everything in the book is gleefully heightened and it’s all tremendous fun. I was keen to read Behind a Mask: The Unknown Thrillers to enjoy more.

Behind a Mask itself is a story that has a lot of fun with the governess cliché. Generally, if not written by a Brontë, a governess was a strange, duplicitous kind of woman, neither servant nor family who would undoubtedly try and bag any of the family’s single men. Jean Muir is exactly that. She’s also aware of the cliché and will use it if she can.

Jean Muir is almost supernaturally talented in her skills at manipulating people. It’s not just that she is charming and attractive (or at least with her very physical mask on, she is) but she can tailor her approaches to the characters she meets. It’s easy to charm the younger daughter she has been sent to teach, as it is to flatter the old duffer and excite the admiration on the younger brother - it’s the older brother and his presumed affianced that she needs to work at.

With the older brother, she surprises him, overhearing his muttered comments at her bad acting when she pretends to faint.. whispering to him that ‘the last scene will be better’. His interest piqued, she plays on his love of music and constantly find ways to make herself unavailable and distant. She never quite wins round the woman who loves him.

Although it’s clear that Jean has an agenda, it’s not fully clear what that is for a while and it is a nice little twist when it happens, and a killer last line. Though her duplicity is obvious from the almost Swiftian scene where she takes off her beautiful young face, revealing the rot inside, she seems to have Alcott’s support and wins over the reader’s. The tension is not, ‘will the evil woman succeed,’ but ‘I hope she does’.

Pauline’s Passion and Punishment was the first of Alcott’s pseudonymous tales to make money, winning a hundred dollar prize. It’s about a woman who finds out that her lover has gone away because he was already married and, being scorned, will have her revenge. To do this, she marries Manuel, the poor boy who’s been pining after her and uses him to make her former lover mad with jealousy and bitterness.

The situation with Manuel is fascinating because she is utterly honest about what she’s up to and that her love for him is partly an instrument of her revenge, and he just accepts the situation because it means having Pauline. Especially heart-breaking/mirth-inducing is the conversation, after they’ve had a week of almost unparalleled honeymoon bliss, when she tells him she was faking it because she knows her former lover can peek in through their window.

Oddly, things go sort of wholesome from there. The two couples form attachments between each other, forming a peculiar four-way dynamic happening, before things turn tragic/farcical and the poor quapple (like a couple or thrupple, but with four) is irrecoverably destroyed.

There’s a stagier element to this book, with Pauline giving the reader a great many Richard III-esque asides but it’s hard to believe she really is so heartless so quickly.

The Mysterious Key is a little closer to ‘classic’ gothic, with a big old house and lots of secrets. It involves secret love-children and a noble servant who may be more than he seems. It reminded me a little of Clara Reeve’s The Old English Baron but with less legal wrangling. Good, but a little forgettable. It did have a happy ending though, and that was nice.

The Abbot’s Ghost starts with a bunch of clunky exposition that is wheeled through quickly. The reader is introduced to a complicated family dynamic in which one brother saved the other but as a result is in a wheelchair. There are romantic histories, complicated will stuff and a big Christmas party.

There were some very surprising events in this, including a medical miracle caused by a skirt bursting into flames and some ghost sightings caused by some naughty goings-on. The characters were very clear, and the clashing and intermingling of all their perspectives was gripping to follow and predict.
All these stories have really interesting uses of expressions and micro-expressions. If you leave aside that the characters all seem to have black eyes and all seem to be expert readers of faces, Alcott is very alert to the small twitches and changes that reveal inner thought. She also has a lot of fun with characters who can feign these expressions. It might seem a little like the characters in these stories are constantly shifting between expressions like Jim Carey, but they add weight and depth to even these (fairly stock) characters. The villains should probably learn to stop speaking their evil plans out-loud though.