
Best known for her novel Little Women — published under her real name — Louisa May Alcott has also written fiction under the androgynous pseudonym A.M. Barnard. Historian Leona Rostenberg first discovered this incognito pen name while researching at Harvard’s Houghton Library. Rostenberg found a collection of letters written to Alcott from a group of Boston publishers. These letters, written in 1865 and 1866, revealed the pseudonym, along with the name of the periodical where corresponding works were published and the titles of three of Alcott’s sensational narratives. Rostenberg and her fellow historian and rare books dealer Madeleine B. Stern, who also researched Alcott, brought the discovery to light in the 1970s when they published some of the author’s little-known works.