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[Louisa May Alcott Visits the Sorosis Club in 1875] Anonymous The account of Louisa May Alcott’s visit to the Sorosis Club, where she was presented as “the most successful woman author in America” is typical of the lionizing that she was now experiencing. The year 1875 had been a profitable one, with Roberts Brothers printing sixteen thousand copies of her newest novel, Eight Cousins, which had already been serialized (January to October) in St. Nicholas, and eleven thousand copies of her other books. Eight short stories also appeared that year, most in The Youth’s Companion. She earned $7,264—not a bad sum for one who had been told almost a dozen years earlier by James T. Fields: “Stick to your teaching, Miss Alcott. You can’t write.” The Sorosis Club in New York City had been founded by Jane Croly, editor of Demorest’s Magazine, in 1868 to promote women’s interest in art, science, and literature. Reporting on her February 1875 trip to Vassar College, Alcott wrote: “talk with four hundred girls, write in stacks of albums and schoolbooks , and kiss every one who asks me” ( Journals, 196). Her extended visit to New York during the late fall and winter of 1875 saw her hailed as a celebrity, and she attended dinners, receptions, galleries, and theaters, including the fashionable Sorosis Club. She noted: “See many people, and am very gay for a country-mouse. Society unlike either London or Boston” ( Journals, 197). Louisa M. Alcott may be credited with inventing a substitute for a speech. She visited the Sorosis the other day, and was formally presented to the Club by the president as the “most successful woman author in America,” and being on her feet told a little story. She said at Vassar College the girls, as usual, asked for a speech; and when she, also as usual, told them she never had and never intended to make one, they requested that she would place herself in a prominent position, and turn around slowly. This she consented to do; and, if revolving would satisfy or gratify Sorosis, she was willing to “revolve.” “Personalities,” New York Graphic (18 December 1875): 374. [20] * ...

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