46. Let Genius Burn — Louisa May Alcott

KIM: Hey everybody! Welcome back to another Lost Ladies of Lit mini episode. I’m Kim Askew, here with my co-host Amy Helmes...

AMY: Hey guys!

KIM: … and Louisa May Alcott is definitely not a lost lady of literature (she’s one of the grande dames!), but if you’ve listened to our past episodes, you know that we are both fans of hers. In fact, I recently raved about Rose in Bloom in one of our earlier episodes because my mom had a beautiful copy of it on her bookshelf when I was a kid. I still have that copy and I treasure it. And Amy, I know Little Women was one of the first “big girl” books you read — we talked about that back in a previous episode.

AMY: Right. And we’ve also both been to Alcott’s girlhood home, Orchard House. So let’s just cut to the chase here, it’s also why we’re also fans of “Let Genius Burn,” a new podcast that takes a deep-dive into Alcott’s life and writings. It premiered in July, and we’ve got the two creators and co-hosts with us today to tell us a little bit more about it. We figure if you guys are enjoying our podcast, this is one you might also appreciate. And we are all about supporting other female podcasters, especially when they love books as much as we do.

KIM: Right. So without further ado, it’s our pleasure to introduce Jamie Burgess and Jill Fuller to the show. Hi ladies, we’re so glad you could join us!

JILL FULLER: Thank you so much for having us.

JAMIE BURGESS: Thank you! So excited!

AMY: So why don’t you guys start by telling us a little bit about the podcast. How did the idea come about, and what can listeners expect when they tune in?

JILL: Yeah, so “Let Genius Burn” is a podcast, like you said, about Louisa May Alcott. It's really a focus on her life, her legacy. So we don't tell her story chronologically. It doesn't start with her birth and then go through till her death; we look at her life from a lot of different angles. So kind of like as if, you know, her life is a puzzle and we're filling in those pieces. So we look at her as a celebrity, as an activist, as a daughter — all of these different pieces that made up her life, and that influenced her writing.

JAMIE: The episodes are half-scripted, and then half more casual conversation. So listeners can expect about 20 minutes of hearing about Louisa's life from one perspective — we kind of tried to cover a lot of different anecdotes and little stories under one theme, and then we have a chance to talk about it. And we have a chance to bring those stories into the present moment, relate them to current events or relate them to things going on even within our lives.

KIM: So we’ve gotten to connect with you a bit over Instagram, which has been really fun, but we’d love to know more about you. Can you talk a bit about who you are, individually? And where does your own interest in Alcott spring from?

JAMIE: So my interest in Alcott started, really, when I was in college. We read “Hospital Sketches” in my American Lit class (I was an English major), and I got so into it that I went to Orchard House. And then I said, “I'm going to work here,” and I started as a volunteer in the garden and then became a guide and was a guide there on and off for the next, about, six years. So it really was kind of my “home place,” especially intellectually. There is an amazing community of women that are connected to Orchard House. Many of them are retired from their original careers. So I really studied this for such a long time, but I've never done a culminating project that brings together all of this knowledge. I've written a couple of essays. I wrote a piece for PBS, when the PBS “Masterpiece” version came out in 2018, about what we can learn from Louisa May Alcott. But other than that, I never felt like I did the project that kind of brought together all of my interest in Alcott and all this knowledge I have. So the podcast is kind of this big culminating project. I live in Massachusetts still, just down the road from Louisa's house.

AMY: Jill, what about you? What’s your story?

JILL: So I first got interested in Louisa, not through Little Women. I was really interested in the movie (I watched that a lot when I was a kid), but I didn't really read the book Little Women, and I first really got to know Louisa, the person, when I was reading the biography Eden's Outcasts by John Matteson, which is like this kind of seminal biography of Louisa and her father. And I read that one maybe about eight years ago or so, and I just connected to her as a person. I just loved her personality, I was drawn to her experiences or life experiences. And my background is not in literature. It was in history. And now I'm a librarian, and did, like, kind of archival work and genealogy and things like that. So I was really drawn to her as a historical figure, you know? Where she was in time and kind of her legacy as a writer and just how much more there was to her story than Little Women, which is really, like ... you were saying at the beginning, you know, she's not a “lost lady” — we know who she is. (Most people know who she is.) But most people actually don't really know anything about her at all. Because there was so much more to her than just this one book that she wrote, as incredible as it is. So that's just what really caught my attention. And then I just kind of went down that rabbit hole of just, like, every biography I could just, you know, connecting with other people who are interested in Louisa. There's a Facebook group, there's the Louisa May Alcott Society. So just kind of immersing myself in her. And that's how I first kind of got to know who Jamie was. And the thing that I've loved the most about this podcast is that up until now, I've just been reading and taking in everything I can about Louisa — everything, everything I can. And now I'm actually finally contributing something, and I'm creating something about her, which I just love. Like I'm participating even in a very small way to helping other people meet Louisa.

AMY: I love that. And Jamie, maybe this is a question for you: You guys almost kind of answered it, because we've been pronouncing it AL-COTT, which is how I have always pronounced her last name. But I did see a video last year, which I think was somebody from Orchard House. They did like a little news piece or something for a local news station. And they're like, “It's actually pronounced ALL-kut.” And I'm like, “What?!” So where do you weigh in on this?

JAMIE: So we talked about this a lot before we started recording, because at Orchard House, we do say that the pronunciation is ALL-kut. I think that that actually originally came from something like a poem where there was a rhyme, and that was how we realized like, “Oh, it would have rhymed with this.” But I also think that people take liberties with the rhyming, and I'm not really sure that that was a concrete example of the pronunciation. And because we know that people recognize AL-COTT, that was the way that we decided to say it in the podcast, and that's the way we're consistently using it.

JILL: The other interesting thing is that Bronson, her father, his original last name was Alcox — and that, you wouldn't really pronounce like ALL-cux. So we, you know, yeah, there isn't 100% sure of how to pronounce it. But it's like Jamie said, we just wanted to make sure it was recognizable.

AMY: Got it. Okay, let’s get back to the title of your show for a second: “Let Genius Burn” … where does that come from?

JILL: Oh, we had such a good time coming up with our title. And when we finally did, it was like Louisa handed it to us on a plate. We were like, “YES!!!!”

JAMIE: So “genius” is mentioned many times in Little Women. Specifically in Chapter 27, there's that kind of iconic line, when Jo is in the attic, and she's in her writing outfit and she goes into her vortex. (Her vortex is like a writing episode where she really can't stop writing and her meals go untouched, and, you know, she doesn't sleep. She's just writing and writing.) And the question is, “Does genius burn, Jo?” And this is something that I think Louisa did really well in Little Women, is to address this question of what makes a genius? Can it be taught? Can it be something that you achieve over time or is it innate? And I love in the 2019 Greta Gerwig version of Little Women where she actually addresses that head-on between Amy and Laurie, when she says you know, “Talent isn't genius, and no amount of work can make it so.” And Laurie says “Do you know of any women geniuses?” and she says maybe the Brontes. I think it was a big question for Louisa, in her time of like, “Can I achieve genius? Is it even possible for a woman?” And I think looking back, one of our thesis statements for the podcast is: Louisa really was a singular genius of her time. We think of her as this children's author. But she truly was so talented at this one specific type of storytelling that really connected to readers. And just because it is somewhat simple doesn't make it trite and doesn't make it less. And that is something that we are working really hard in our podcast to convey to our listeners — that Louisa was truly gifted in this one type of writing.

KIM: I love that title, I have to say, too, and even hearing you explain it makes me love it even more. So wonderful.

JILL: Yeah, I wanted to jump onto that, too, to add to that. The other thing with “genius” that, when we were really thinking about it, I came across another quote of hers. So genius doesn't just come up in Little Women; it also comes up in some of her journals and letters and some of her own writings, because like Jamie said, she was kind of working through this idea of “What does genius mean?” And, you know, she ran with transcendentalists. They were kind of a generation ahead of her, but, you know, Emerson, Thoreau, you know, that was in her town, like, she's surrounded by these thinkers. And, you know, genius was, for the longest time, really the domain of men. It was a public idea, you know? If you have genius, you have been gifted with something. And she came up with this line that I found in one of her letters, where she says, “Genius is infinite patience.” And I love that, because Louisa worked really hard. Really hard ... on her writing, on ... I mean, she was just — she was a hard worker, just to put her butt in the seat and she, you know, she cranked it out and she did it. And you know, to her, I think that that's what genius was; genius was putting in that work. But that was something that women were not supposed to do. Women were not supposed to work, and especially at something so public as writing, and so when I think of “Let Genius Burn,” it's like, you know, not just Louisa but, (we mentioned this in the podcast) but let women have the space, and let women have the time to create. Let women be able to claim that name of genius. Let that genius burn, not just for Louisa, but for all of us, you know? For all of us who really have that drive and that ambition. That is something that we are entitled to, as well, and that we can work towards.

AMY: Am I the only one that just wants to bust out into like, Elsa, “Let it Go?”

JILL: I know. We need a girl-power song.

KIM: So you talked a little bit about it, but can you tell us a little bit more about how you know each other and maybe a little bit about your friendship?

JAMIE: We don't know each other, because we've been in a pandemic and we've never met in real life.

AMY: What?? I can’t believe that!

JILL: So sad for us.

JAMIE: We did meet originally through an “invite only” Louisa May Alcott superfan Facebook group, and we became internet friends. And we've worked on this project together now for a long time and we have become very close friends and love learning about each other's lives. But we dream of the time when we will hole up in some cabin somewhere and just like finally get to tell each other all of our stories. 

JILL: I can't wait.

KIM: Slumber party time!

JILL: Oh, yeah. When I had the idea for the podcast, it came to me after I was ... I’d just gotten to see the 2019 Greta Gerwig Little Women. I'm driving home and I'm thinking, “Oh my gosh, all I want to do is just talk to someone about Louisa right now. Like there's so many things I just want to say and discuss.” I was like, “I should do a podcast!” And then I immediately thought of Jamie's name and again, like, I knew of her and we were on Instagram together and I'd read some of her pieces so I knew she was a good writer. Her name just, like, popped into my head. It was just like it was there, this, like, fully-formed thought, and it ended up being serendipitous. We are so similar and we get along so well. And we've ended up becoming, like, really close friends. It's just been such a joy. 

AMY: And you live in different parts of the country then?

JILL: Yeah, I'm in Wisconsin. She's in Massachusetts. So our idea, like our dream idea, was to record our episodes in real life. To get together for like a week. But that was before Covid happened. So we, yeah, that's all right. We will soon.

KIM: So obviously, listeners, if you listen to Let Genius Burn, you’re going to get an in depth introduction to Louisa May Alcott, and they came to our show, basically, to give some breadcrumbs to help tempt you, right, ladies? Some Alcott trivia?

AMY: Yeah, so lay it on us!

JAMIE: Sure. So we know in Little Women, that Jo March cuts and sells her hair for money so her mom can go to Washington to get Mr. March. And in real life. It wasn't the father who was sick and suffering in Washington DC, it was Louisa herself. And that haircutting is actually a reference to ... Louisa had typhoid fever, which she caught when she was working in Washington DC as a nurse during the Civil War. And they cut off all her hair to alleviate her fever. 

AMY: Let genius burn!

JILL:  Let her fever burn!

JAMIE: Yeah. And so it's one of the little twists in Little Women are many of these kind of, like, hidden little twists about Louisa's real life that come through in the story, but you have to kind of know her backstory to be able to fully understand them.

AMY: Okay, you guys, this is exactly why you need to listen to this podcast because there's going to be all sorts of stuff like this. I'm gonna love it! Okay, what's next? 

JILL: All right, so another one that is kind of similar from Little Women: In Little Women, Jo writes a lot of these sensational stories, and Louisa does well ()she called them her “Blood and Thunder” tales.) So most people think of Louisa as, you know, she was called, like, “The Children's Friend.” But for years, she made money selling these scandalous, really just shocking, (especially for the time) tales full of like murder, drug use, suicide, spousal abuse, like just, you know, just chock full. And the thing (I personally love these stories), you can actually get them; they're published, The thing that I love about them is that the protagonists are these really strong female characters who are fed up with the patriarchy and fed up with, you know, being rejected or whatever, and they're just gonna make their own way in the world. That's what Louisa churned out and made a lot of her early money before Little Women was published. And the really cool thing about these thrillers is that for the longest time, people knew she had written them or had an idea, but they weren't found; nobody knew what they were or where they had been published. And they weren't found until the 1950s by two Alcott researchers who figured out what her pen name was, because she had a pseudonym. (She had probably multiple pseudonyms). So we actually, there's more stories out there that have not been found, but yeah, a lot of them were found under this pseudonym and they were finally published in the ’70s. So that's how recent they are. And most people are not aware of them and really haven't read them, but they're really cool, Gothic thrillers in that kind of Gothic tradition. It's really fun.

KIM: Wow, I mean, I want to go read them now.

AMY: So pulp fiction, basically. That’s cool.

JILL: Yeah.

AMY: Okay, got anything else?

JAMIE: Yeah, so one thing that people don't really know about Louisa necessarily was that, in her time, she truly was a celebrity. She was like, the best known female author in her day, to the point where people were like, on her lawn, trying to, you know, meet her. And there's a funny remark in Jo's Boys about people trying to steal crickets off the lawn as, like, a souvenir. And we've always thought at Orchard House, that there's probably some truth to that. And also, in addition to this celebrity, she was incredibly wealthy because of her writing. She started out truly destitute in life, and then became astronomically wealthy. Like, the house she lived in at the end of her life on Beacon Hill, when it most recently sold, it was for $19 million. That was the most recent sale, but it's, you know, a five-story mansion. It's like one of the most coveted spots in Boston in Louisburg Square. And so she really was a huge celebrity and incredibly wealthy, which I think is just so cool.

JILL: Yeah, she deserved it. Another thing that people don't know is that her family was actually involved with the Underground Railroad. They had freedom seekers in their home. There's a reference to it in Bronson's journal, or her father's journal. And so yeah, they were really heavily involved in the abolition movement. Her parents were in like 1840s/1850s Boston, and Louisa was a child when they had freedom seeker staying in their home in Concord.

KIM: I love it. Oh, you’re making me so excited for your podcast!

AMY: Is there anything else we ought to know?

JILL: She loved owls. That was her favorite bird. And there's owls, an owl painted on her mantle in her bedroom.

AMY: And that's also reminding me of at Orchard House that you can see May, who was the character of ... Amy is based on her sister May ... that you can actually see some of her drawings on the wall in Orchard House. That was my favorite part of visiting. I just couldn't believe that.

JAMIE: Well, I always say this, but you know, people come to Orchard House to learn about Louisa, but when they leave, they are enamored of May, which I think was kind of true to the Alcotts’ real lives. Louisa could be a bit (especially as she got older), more of a curmudgeon, and she wanted her alone time. And May was always very gregarious. She was always very outgoing, social, certainly the most-loved around town. She's just as fascinating as Louisa. She's so cool. I love seeing May’s work all over Orchard House. It makes it so special.

AMY: So Jamie, I'm dying to know more about what it was like working at Orchard House. Tell us more about that.

JAMIE: I have so many fun anecdotes from working at Orchard House because we got to dress up like the Alcotts and pretend to be them, which is the most fun thing in the world. And we would do the May pole in springtime, and we would do the Christmas program, which was so fun. In between visitors ... so the Christmas program is a little bit different than like the regular tours because regular tours you had one guide with a group going through the house. The Christmas program we had people stationed in each room. So when we didn't have visitors we could all get together and have funny chats about Victorian times. So the living history was always really funny and interesting. But I also got to see some really behind-the-scenes things with the Alcotts; I got to see locks of their hair for example, and all their baby shoes and things like that that are in the house archives that don't make it into the permanent collection so you don't necessarily get to see them on display. And then some of the, you know, the preservation of the house could be really fun because you're getting to handle the Alcotts’ real belongings. About eighty percent of the house is furnished with the Alcotts’ real belongings, the things that were in the house when they were there. We even have pictures of the rooms and have tried to recreate them exactly as they were in the Alcotts’ time. So you can, you know, with gloves on, you could touch and handle some of the Alcotts’ real belongings.

KIM: So how often does the podcast come out? And is it going to be a limited series? And also where can our listeners go for more information?

JILL: New episodes drop every Monday and so they can go to you know wherever they listen to podcasts and look for “Let Genius Burn.” They'll find it there. We are also on Facebook and Instagram at “Let Genius Burn,” and we’ve got the website letgeniusburn.com, so any of those places they can find us. It is a limited series; it's eight episodes plus an intro episode (so nine), but we do plan on having some bonus episodes later this year with hopefully some interviews with some Alcott scholars and other people involved in the Alcott world. And then we will just kind of see where it goes from there; if we're going to move on to a Season Two next year or something else. We're just going to kind of see how this one plays out.

KIM: Jill, Jamie, congratulations on the release of “Let Genius Burn.” I know you worked your butts off putting the episodes together. And thank you for dropping by to tell us about it!

JAMIE: Thank you, thank you, thank you!

JILL: Thank you guys so much for having us. We really appreciate it. We love your podcast, so we're just so happy to be part of this.

AMY: It was more fun than a ball at the Moffatts.

JILL: I love it!

KIM: That’s all for today’s episode, check back next week when we’ll be discussing a “lost ladies” sister act!

AMY: Yes, the Scottish sisters Jane and Mary Findlater were once literary celebrities whose admirers included Henry James, Virginia Woolf, and Rudyard Kipling.

KIM: And we’ve got another sister act joining us to talk about them — Hollywood screenwriting duo Shawna and Julie Benson.

AMY: I’m fascinated to find out the pluses and pitfalls of writing with one’s sister — I’m sure the Bensons (who are hilarious, by the way) will spill all the tea for us.

KIM: It’s going to be so much fun. In the meantime, don’t forget to rate and review us (five stars? please?) if you’re enjoying the podcast, and help spread the word! Give us a shout-out on social media or tell your book-loving friends!

AMY: See you next week!

KIM: Our theme song was written and performed by Jennie Malone and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. Lost Ladies of lit is produced by Kim Askew and Amy Helmes.