Louisa May Alcott and Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué

Another post, another youthful Gilded Age reader. I must have perused the opening passages of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women (1868-9) a good handful of times by now, and every time one moment has given me pause.

The Reading of a Bad Boy

Following on from Charles Dudley Warner's fireplace reveries, another postbellum scene of reading.

"The wizard harp of the North" and International Copyright

So it appears that posts on international copyright in the nineteenth century are like buses: you wait and wait and then two come along at once.

Backlog Studies

In which I find myself surprisingly beguiled by Charles Dudley Warner.

A Narrative of the Life and Travels of John Robert Shaw, The Well-Digger (1807)

Reading John Jeremiah Sullivan's wonderful Blood Horses recently, I was delighted to be introduced to the extraordinary misadventures of John Robert Shaw, Well-Digger, pictured above sans a few body parts. I was equally delighted to discover that his madcap 1807 autobiography is available in full here.