Let us Talk of Many Things; of Books and Queens and Pirates, of Mystery and Kings...: Only Gossip Prospers: A Novel of Louisa May Alcott in New York by Lorraine Tosiello

My Guest This Week Lorraine Tosiello

How the Only Gossip Prospers: A Novel of Louisa May Alcott in New York Came to Be

BACKSTORY

Four years ago, I visited Emily Dickinson’s home and Louisa May Alcott’s home on sequential days. I was struck with a feeling, a hunch, a wild idea that the two women might know each other. I came home and read everything I could about the two of them. They have multiple common friends, MULTIPLE, from Louisa’s hero Thomas Wentworth Higginson (who was Emily’s first editor) to Emily’s Norcross cousins, who lived in Concord and attended Bronson Alcott’s School of Philosophy, and believe me many many more. But of course, no clear documented connection existed between these two women who seem from absolute different universes yet lived exactly contemporaneously in Massachusetts.

Emily Dickinson

Three months later, I reconnected with a high school friend (we are in our early 60’s!) and asked her impetuously: “Who is your favorite poet?” “Emily Dickinson”, was the reply of course. And Louisa May Alcott reigned for me as the guiding light of my life, morally, socially, personally. Emily and Louisa.

Louisa May Alcott

Thus, a book began, in completely episulatory style, letters between the “secret pen pals” Emily and Louisa. I write the Louisa letters and Jane writes the Emily letters. We are about two-thirds finished and the work is luminous. However, my Emily, being Emily, is much more thoughtful and reticent to write, so Louisa is waiting for some letters owed…..and it was suggested that rather than twiddle my thumbs waiting for Emily to catch up, that I write a novel about Louisa May Alcott.

THIS NOVEL

A novel requires a plot and a lot of words….hmmm….and the entire plot came to me almost in a dream (I woke one day and set the chapter titles down, with the events and characters.) But, of course that moment occurred only after I walked the streets where Louisa had visited friends, where the Bath Hotel once stood, found Mrs. Croly’s home address, etc. I spent weeks in the New York Public library reading newspapers of 1875. One personal ad is word for word and letter for letter the one that catches Louisa’s eye about the piano player. yes, it did have the initals L.W. and that he was from Poland. Yes, that is how I figured out to have Laddie in New York with Louisa.

Bird's eye panoramic view print of Manhattan in 1873, looking north.
The Hudson River is on the west to the left.
The Brooklyn Bridge (to the right) across the East River
was under construction from 1870 until 1883.
Image: Wikipedia

Other findings are historical, and perhaps some of the first connections ever made to Louisa May Alcott in New York. The one that places Matilda Heron, G.W. Bishop and Louisa at the same table at the Bath Hotel has never been stated in any Alcott scholarship that I have read (and I think I have read it all.), and I found it by a Google search in an obscure theatrical journal. Louisa herself wrote in her essay “My Girls” about F (my inspiration for Rebecca) “I think Bijou Heron will never play a sweeter part than that, nor have a more enthusiastic admirer than F was when we went together to see the child actress play “The Little Treasurer” for charity.” Father Isaac Hecker was indeed in New York the same winter that Louisa was. Did they ever reconnect after the Fruitlands disaster 30 years before? Why wouldn’t they? So, it is in the story.

But, the most interesting thing to me, was when I started out the work, it appeared to a modern eye that Louisa had wasted her time with a lot of “unknowns and no-names.” Because the names of Gibbons, Croly, Booth and Botta are unknown to us today. But in reading about the women, I was blown away by their literary, social and intellectual impact on New York of their day. Yet, they are lost to our collective interest today.

I am certain that Louisa could have gone about writing a similar story on her own. She would take a topic (Victorian women’s impossible standard of conduct, imposed on them by the men of the time; women’s author’s rights; the untenable position of women in marriage---all things Louisa would write about) describe real family and personal situations, spin it as a fiction and have her iconic style.

My book is a love letter to New York of 1875, a celebration of forgotten herstory and a wild fiction based on fact about three months in Louisa May Alcott’s life.

Lousia's signature

THE BONUS

As everyone knows, having a manuscript does not always translate into having a published book. Enter Pink Umbrella Books, who in 2018, the 150th anniversary of the publication of Little Women, sent out a call for essays to be including in an anthology of writings about Little Women. My essay “Piccole Donne” was included in Alcott’s Imaginary Heroes: The Little Women Legacy. And I met the editors and the publisher on a glorious day to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Little Women at Alcott’s Orchard House. It was a day of book signing and music, readings and cake, all celebrated on the autumnal lawn of the famed home of the authoress of Little Women.

Louisa

These lovely women agreed to publish my novel. Their commitment and their energy, knowledge and fearless (ie. brutal) editing ideas made the book a delight to read. I wish, truly that Louisa May Alcott could have experienced the warmth and support of an all female publishing firm.

Only Gossip Prospers: A Novel of Louisa May Alcott in New York

Lorraine Tosiello

About the Book:

In late 1875 Louisa May Alcott spent a winter in New York City. Her journals give a rough sketch of the people she met, the salons she attended and a few outings that she enjoyed. She intended to stay “until I am tired of it,” but left abruptly in mid-January.

Filled with biographical references to Louisa’s family, New Yorkers of the time and Alcott’s literary works, Only Gossip Prospers intertwines the real people Louisa met, the actual events of New York City and a host of fictional characters who inhabit a world that Louisa herself would recognize. Written in a style reminiscent of Alcott’s juvenile fiction and short adventure stories, the book is part historical fiction, part love letter to the charm of 1870s New York and part biography of Louisa and her contemporaries. Only Gossip Prospers enters the debate that still hovers over Little Women as to what was “real” and what was “made up.” There are some twists and surprises, including one that will satisfy the greatest question left unanswered for fans of Little Women: what really happened between Jo and Laurie?

Only Gossip Prospers mashes together fact and fiction to draw a realistic portrait of Louisa May Alcott at the height of her fame.

About the author:

Lorraine Tosiello read Alcott’s Little Women in the first grade—and re-read it again and again throughout most of her childhood. The book equipped her to set off on a journey of motherhood, traveling, rabble-rousing and work as a physician devoted to medical education and primary care medicine. Rereading Little Women in later adulthood rekindled her Alcott enthusiasm, and years of happy study resulted in her first novel, Only Gossip Prospers. She lives with her husband in midtown Manhattan and at the New Jersey shore.

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Buy the Book:

Amazon UK

Amazon US