But Alcott’s career as a writer was much more varied. From fairy tales to romances, didactic novels to sensational blood-and-thunder stories, Alcott, like any professional author, knew how to reach her reading audience and how to judge the literary marketplace. Aunt Nellie’s Diary, the beginning fragment of an early tale, now published here for the first time, reveals the influences that sparked Alcott’s imagination and shows us an emerging talent on the cusp of a promising career at age seventeen. Written in 1849, the same year as her first novel The Inheritance, which was not published until 1997, Aunt Nellie’s Diary forms part of what Alcott, in January 1850, called “The Sentimental Period” (Journals 61). By then, the aspiring writer, whose first story was not published until 1852, was reveling in the works of Charles Dickens, Sir Walter Scott, and Charlotte Brontë.
This story is from the Issue 60, 2020 edition of The Strand Magazine.
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This story is from the Issue 60, 2020 edition of The Strand Magazine.
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INTERVIEW Laurie R. King
CREATING new works based on an iconic fictional character who’s been around for over a century can be a minefield for an author.
ADVENTURE ON A BAD NIGHT
BEFORE dinner was quite finished Vivien began wanting to get outdoors, into the air she hadn’t seen since afternoon.
THE EDINBURGH BANKERS
“MR. Holmes, I’m not asking for myself. It’s for the livelihood of the rest of us.”
The Adventure of the Home Office Baby
FOLLOWING the occasion of my marriage, and relocation with Mary to our newlywed home in the Paddington district, only a few blocks east of the great station itself, I was able to continue building my new practice while still finding time to assist Sherlock Holmes in a number of investigations.
KEVIN OF THE DEAD
PEOPLE often say to me, “Kevin, what’s it like being undead and all that?” And I say, “It’s a job, you know?” You get up at sunset, brush off the dirt and slugs, climb out of the box, and off you go into the night looking for some poor unfortunate to siphon a pint from.
AUNT NELLIE'S DIARY
MANY contemporary readers know Louisa May Alcott only as the author of the classic Little Women, the much-beloved story of the March sisters’ journey from childhood innocence to mature womanhood.
INTERVIEW John Grisham
FOR the last thirty years, the term legal thriller has been synonymous with John Grisham. Credited with single-handedly popularizing the genre, he has inspired scores of other authors and, in the process, has become both a commercial and critical success.
The Dowser's Discovery
“IF you don’t mind, sir,” said old Fiedler as he finished pouring our coffee, “I’d like to go into the village this morning with the others. It’s market day.”
THE AMIABLE FLEAS
IN May 1954, more than fifteen years after writing Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck rented a house for himself and his family a stones-throw from the Champs-Elysées in Paris.
INTERVIEW Don Winslow
EVER since Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett revolutionized the crime novel with hardboiled heroes, gritty settings, and moral complexity, countless authors have tried to carry the torch.
