“In an age when English women writers like the Brontës and George Eliot had disguised their identities under male pseudonyms, Alcott might have done the same. Instead she first followed the American model of hyperfeminine pen names, calling herself first ‘Flora Fairfield,’ then self-mocking names…such as Minerva Moody, Oranthy Bluggage, or ‘Tribulation Periwinkle.’”
—from Elaine Showalter’s introduction to Little Women
(Not Alcott or anyone she knew, just a woman from 1868, the year Little Women was published, who’s wearing a sweet dress and looks like she could have been nicknamed Oranthy Bluggage.)
Suck My Alcott
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