Did you know that Louisa May Alcott did not like Huckleberry Finn? In fact, she disliked it so much that she reportedly was instrumental in getting the committee of the Concord Public Library (in the state of Massachusetts) to ban the book from their library.

Basis for the ban? The book's "tawdry subject matter" -- after all, it was a story about a black slave and the son of an alcoholic -- and "the coarse, ignorant language in which it was narrated" -- because it was written in the vernacular, the sort of dialect a young, uneducated boy would use. [source]

The story goes that Twain, upon learning of this ban, proceeded to take out advertisements in newspapers across the country, saying, "My latest book, Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain, has been banned in the state of Massachusetts FOR ALL OF ITS DIRTY INCIDENTS." Sales of the book, which had been slow, picked up overnight.

I'm rather sceptical about this advertisement business, though, because I've only been able to find one reference to it, from Elliot Engel in A Dab Of Dickens & A Touch Of Twain. Makes for a good story, but needs more verification.

Nevertheless, I found this little tidbit interesting. Perhaps because it makes Alcott less of a one-dimensional name printed of the cover of a book and brings out her human-ness. But also because I wouldn't have expected her to dislike or criticise the work of another well-loved author. I mean, you'd think she'd recognise good writing when she saw it, considering the fact that she herself wrote so well. But nooooo--!

Moreover, it's astonishing (to me, at least) that she felt so strongly about the book that she even approached the board of the public library to get it banned. Obviously, the book aroused some fierce emotions in her, so fierce that she wasn't content simply to criticise it or write angry letters to the author. She had to Do Something.

Come to think of it, I didn't even know that Alcott and Twain were from the same time period, let alone that they knew of each other. I always somehow think of authors as autonomous entities who churn out books... not as real people who might interact with one another! Especially when their books are as unrelated as Little Women and Huckleberry Finn!