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Members’ Summer Book Club
June 29, 2021 at 5:00 PM – 5:45 PM
Read along in the Museum’s summer book club that includes both the new and noteworthy and Concord classics. Whether you are on the beach, a mountain, or your sofa members can join us virtually for monthly reads, discussions, and themed cocktails all summer long. Book club meetings will be held remotely over Zoom. The Zoom link will be sent to registrants.
The first book club read is Louisa May Alcott’s unpublished debut novel The Inheritance, written when she was just 17. 20 years before the publication of Little Women, Alcott was in the midst of what she described in her journals as her sentimental period. The romantic tale of an Italian orphan who learns she is the heir to an English estate where she is employed is reminiscent of her influencers including Charlotte Brontë, Jane Austen, and Sir Walter Scott. But it also shows a budding maturity of the suffragist, abolitionist, and leading author of the 19th century. The Inheritance’s manuscript was uncovered in the Alcott family papers kept in Houghton Library at Harvard and first published in 1997. The discovery of this early writing tells us much about the development of one of America’s most beloved and widely published authors. And, what better way to start the summer than with a novel vignetted with a midnight boating party, jealous interloper, and a missing will?
Order your copy of The Inheritance through the Concord Bookshop.
For members of the Concord Museum. Become a member to participate!
Image: Louisa May Alcott, Warren’s Portraits, Boston, around 1875; Carte de visite, photograph on cardstock. Gift of Mr. Charles P. Munroe and Mr. William M. Munroe (2008) 2009.4.172.