SOURCE: "Introduction," in Louisa May Alcott Unmasked, edited by Madeleine Stern, Northeastern University Press, 1995, pp. xi-xxix.

In the following excerpt, Stern discusses characterizations, themes, and literary sources for Alcotts sensation stories.

What was the nature of the stories written in secret by the author of Flower Fables, Hospital Sketches, and The Rose Family, and published anonymously or pseudonymously in the weeklies of the 1860s? Their backgrounds and some of their characters reflect perhaps more of her imagining than of her observation. Alcott reveled in foreign backgrounds and set many of her narratives overseas. A haunted English abbey boasted, besides the "Abbot's Ghost" of the title, a thick-walled gallery and an arched stone roof, armored figures and screaming peacocks. An altogether different backdrop was painted for "Pauline's Passion and Punishment," the sequence of passion and punishment being enacted in an exotic paradise, a green wilderness with tamarind and almond...