18 Dec “The Phantom” (1860) speculated to be Alcott’s feminist take on A Christmas Carol
It was recently discovered that Louisa May Alcott may have written her own version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol under the pseudonym E.H. Gould. A post-doctoral teaching associate at Northeastern University, Max Chapnick, unearthed his discovery of the potential Alcott pseudonym E.H. Gould when he was conducting research for his dissertation in 2021.
Chapnick started his search in the American Antiquarian Society’s digital archives and came across “The Phantom or The Miser’s Dream” by E.H. Gould in a March 1860 print of the Boston newspaper The Olive Branch. Chapnick initially dismissed the piece because it wasn’t under Alcott’s name, but it later occurred to him that she may have written this story under another name.
Alcott is known to have written under pseudonyms. In the 1940s, rare book dealers Madeleine Stern and Leona Rostenberg discovered a series of gothic thrillers Louisa May Alcott wrote under the pseudonym A.M. Barnard. Among scholars there were rumored to be more Alcott stories under other names, including one entitled “The Phantom,” that Alcott made reference to in her journals.
E.H. Gould serving as a pseudonym for Alcott is not wholly confirmed, but the circumstantial evidence surrounding the themes of the story and its publication strongly point to her.
E.H. Gould leaves several clues as to her potential identity throughout the story. The most obvious being that one of the characters bears the Alcott name. The feminist elements of the plot also align with themes from several of her known works . For example, the ghost in this story is a woman and the moral message is not just a warning of greed, but of what happens to men who use their wealth in coercive and outright abusive ways to control women.
Alcott has strong ties to both Boston and the Old Corner Bookstore. The Atlantic Monthly was purchased by Old Corner Bookstore publishers Ticknor and Fields around 1860. Years later, Alcott would submit a piece for publication to James T. Fields. Fields scathingly sent her $40 for school supplies to continue as a kindergarten teacher, saying she couldn’t write and that she could pay him back when she “made her pot of gold.” Alcott was undaunted. After she published Little Women in 1868 and became wildly successful, she repaid Fields with a note:
“Once upon a time you lent me forty dollars, kindly saying that I might return them when I made ‘a pot of gold.’ As the miracle has been unexpectedly wrought I wish to fulfill my part of the bargain, & herewith repay my debt with many thanks.”
Fields was a huge fan of Dickens himself and arranged his 1867 trip to Boston where, up the street at Tremont Temple, Dickens famously conducted the first public reading of A Christmas Carol in the United States.
This holiday season, we welcome you to get into the spirit with a reading of both “The Phantom” and A Christmas Carol.