An Open Memo to Publishers and Literary Scholars

RE: Dead Authors’ Unpublished Works

Dear Sirs and Madams:

I have just finished what has been promoted as Louisa May Alcott’s “first novel written at seventeen” and as “the book ‘Jo’ wrote”. If I understand the Afterword correctly, this novel was discovered intact among Alcott’s papers. I imagine the scholars who discovered this were incredibly excited and thought that the rest of the reading public would be awestruck at a “new” Alcott novel.

I hate to say this, since Alcott is a respected author, but: it was horrible. Maudlin. Trite. The characters were mere caricatures. (Noble True Love, Long-Suffering Poor Governess, Prideful and Haughty High-born Lady, Older Haughty Lady Who Learns a Lesson, Less-Worthy Love Interest, etc.) The plot was predictable and underdeveloped. Sure, there was some intellectual curiosity about it: one could tell, reading the book, that Alcott’s early influences were Dickens, Austen and the Bronte sisters. But really, the manuscript should have been left where it was found: in the red notebook among her papers.

As you well know, the process a book takes from an idea to publication is a long and arduous one. Many revisions and edits are necessary to make a good final draft. When an author has died, that process cannot be completed, for obvious reasons. Thereby, any works that are published after said authors death can never be as good as anything that author published in life. (There are exceptions, true, but they are rare.) While you may think that fans of the author may want, for completion’s sake, to read everything that author ever wrote, please refrain from publishing unfinished works. We really don’t want to remember Lloyd Alexander or Madeline L’Engle (or any other deceased author for that matter) for the first drafts of novels they had saved on their computer drives; we want to remember them for the works they finished and polished and published and won awards for.

I am sorry for this aberration in Alcott’s published repertoire. It would be much better for the reading public to read and enjoy her original published works, the ones in which she had control of the writing process, and ignore this travesty.

Thank you.