What would happen if Louisa May Alcott had read 50 Shades of Grey and wrote her own erotic diary?
OR Books will publish Fifty Shades of Louisa May: A Memoir of Transcendental Sex, a book written by the mysterious “Louisa May Anonymous.” It is billed as a “literotica,” revealing the private desires of the Little Women author.
We caught up with “Louisa May Anonymous” for more details. You can read our interview with the mysterious author below…

GC: Why did you want to bring erotica into Louisa May Alcott’s life?
LMA: The real Louisa May probably died a virgin, so she probably didn’t have much erotica in her life. Fifty Shades of Louisa May is an attempt to give her a second chance at sex. In it, Louisa May has many sexual encounters—though they end up being more hilarious than erotic, as is frequently the case in life and literature. But why not let Louisa May cut loose and have a little fun for once?
GC: Was it hard to imagine?
LMA: Sex in any era is still sex. It’s not like we’ve come up with lots of great innovations in sex lately, beyond Internet porn, of course. The Transcendentalists are often thought of as fancy-thinking deities. Fifty Shades of Louisa May imagines them on a more human level, where they shed all of their pretensions. And their clothes.
GC: How did a modern novel (the actual Fifty Shades) inspire a historical work?
Well, it’s clear that the Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon has hit a literary g-spot by revealing the inner desires of fictional characters. Fifty Shades of Louisa May just takes it further, revealing the sexual secrets of literary figures—Melville, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and more. Luckily, all are too dead to sue. So call it lewditure. Call it literotica. Call it an antidote to mommy porn.
To be clear, my book is not a parody of the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy. It just hijacks the modern erotica category, throws away the seriousness and the bondage, and lets legendary authors perform ridiculous and embarrassing sexual acts. As writers of any era often do.
GC: So who are you, exactly?
LMA: Can’t tell. Though the answer’s hidden in the book.