Louisa May, gone astray?

Answers the Library: 'No Way'

By Marvin Hightower

Gazette Staff

The literary world was all abuzz this week over news that outside scholars working in Harvard's Houghton Library had "discovered" an unpublished first novel by Louisa May Alcott, author of the classic Little Women.

To the ears of Houghton librarians, however, the "discovery" struck a decidedly false and melodramatic note. Contrary to widespread reports that the Alcott manuscript had long been "miscataloged," it has in fact been correctly listed in Houghton's records for nearly 22 years.

Houghton contains more than 5 million manuscripts dating from ancient to modern times, as well as some 500,000 rare books. Many of the manuscripts -- including some by authors of great renown -- have never been published.

"The literary heirs of Louisa May Alcott presented and sold a significant collection of Alcott family papers to the Houghton Library during its 50th anniversary in 1992," according to Houghton Librarian Richard Wendorf. "Other Alcott manuscripts are on deposit in the Library, including The Inheritance. All of the Alcott manuscripts materials in Houghton have been cataloged and fully accessible to the public since they arrived."

Wendorf also pointed out that as with most Houghton manuscript collections, catalog information on this manuscript -- including its status as an unpublished work -- has been electronically accessible to scholars throughout the world for several years.

Catalog records clearly indicate that Alcott's 166-page manuscript for The Inheritance was written in Boston in 1849 and arrived at Houghton in July 1974. The October 1974 card-catalog record describes the papers as "Unpublished; her first novel."

The manuscript of The Inheritance is available to scholars through microfilm examination in the Houghton Reading Room, and the Library has put the manuscript itself on indefinite special display for the public.

Students and scholars from around the world make the most intensive regular use of the University Library (to which Houghton belongs), but its vast and varied collections have inspired notable nonacademic endeavors as well.

Researchers for the Ken Burns PBS documentary on The Civil War consulted the extensive photographic archives of the University Library, for example. Other researchers have visited Houghton to consult the letters of Col. Robert Gould Shaw for Glory, Edward Zwick's 1989 Civil War film; and the papers of John Reed '10 (author of Ten Days That Shook the World) for Reds, Warren Beatty's 1981 epic on the Russian Revolution.

The Houghton Library also contains personal papers of authors such as John Ashbery, John Cheever, e. e. cummings, Emily Dickinson, T.S. Eliot, the Lowells (James Russell, Amy, and Robert), Herman Melville, John Updike, Tennessee Williams, and Thomas Wolfe. The bulk of John Keats's manuscripts are also preserved in Houghton.

With nearly 13 million volumes, the University Library ranks as the world's preeminent academic library in both quantity and quality of holdings. The University Library also includes hundreds of unique collections beyond the realm of books.