‘Little Women’ Film Generates Alcott Interest

More than 100 years after her death, Louisa May Alcott is enjoying a double dip of renewed popularity.

First, “Little Women,” Gillian Armstrong’s film version of the Civil War-era novel, opened last week. The films stars Winona Ryder and Susan Sarandon.

Second, a manuscript for an unpublished Alcott novel rejected as too sensationalistic when it written in 1866 was recently purchased by a publisher for a price reported to be in seven figures.

What’s doubly surprising about Alcott’s new moment in the spotlight is that it stems from two such varied works: a beloved children’s book and a page-turner about a woman stalked by a former lover.

Interest in the racy manuscript is undoubtedly linked with the enduring popularity of “Little Women,” which has remained in print since it was first published in 1868 and has spawned three movies - the first, directed by George Cukor in 1933, starred Katharine Hepburn. But the manuscript’s potential appeal - as the hefty price tag indicates - seems greater than that of a curiosity.

“What speaks particularly to our time is, I think, obsessional love,” Random House editor Ann Godoff told The New York Times after she purchased the manuscript from an Alcott collector.

Titled “A Long, Fatal Love Chase,” it tells of a young woman named Rosamond who lives on an island off England with her mean grandfather. She falls for a wealthy, older man named Philip Tempest; they marry, and he sets her up in a villa in Italy. Rosamond learns a secret from his past and flees, and Tempest pursues her across Europe.

“I tell you I cannot bear it,” the novel opens. “I shall do something desperate if this life is not changed soon. It gets worse and worse, and I often feel as if I’d gladly sell my soul to Satan for a year of freedom.”

Alcott wrote the novel at the suggestion of a magazine publisher. He requested a story of 200-250 pages in 24 chapters with a cliffhanger ending at every second chapter. The plan was to run two chapters in each issue of the magazine, The Flag of Our Union. But after it was completed, he rejected it because it was too long and too sensational.