Newbery Wayback Machine: Invincible Louisa, by Cornelia Meigs (1934)

 

An interesting facet of the experience of reading some of the older Newbery winners is the difference between their reception at the time of their publication and the way they come across now. When Invincible Louisa, Cornelia Meigs' 1934 winner was published, Children's Literature raved that it was a "graceful, well-written account," adding that Meigs "weaves in many evocative descriptions of Louisa's environment and feelings, thus creating a biography that seems more interesting and appealing than a more factual, unadorned work."

Reading Invincible Louisa in 2020, I found it a dull grind of a book. The tone, full of mawkish sentimentality and unconcealed hero worship, was off-putting and strange. In order to enjoy Invincible Louisa at all, one has to fully sign on to the theory that Louisa May Alcott was not only one of The Greatest Writers Ever, but that both she and every member of her family were some of the finest specimens of humanity that America has ever produced, worthy of the most profound respect and admiration. The hagiographic tone sits uneasily with me, and starts to feel downright defensive in places -- most notably when discussing Louisa's father, Bronson Alcott, the least practical of the New England Transcendentalists, and a man who, let's be honest, failed out of a lot of the things he tried to do. 

It also helps -- a lot -- if the reader already possesses a wealth of background knowledge on its subject. Invincible Louisa assumes that its audience has already read and is intimately familiar with the details of Alcott's most famous work, Little Women. Now, that book remains a classic, and there are still plenty of modern children who are familiar with the story -- if not from the novel, then perhaps from one of the four classic film adaptations of it. However, my guess is that the number of children who require no explanation as to the identities and importance of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Thoreau is miniscule, as are those who can tell you the entire plot and theme of Pilgrim's Progress -- which are additional things that Invincible Louisa takes for granted. Given all of this, it's hard for me to picture many children who would make much headway with the book, assuming they even picked it up.

Speaking of children picking Invincible Louisa up, I'm not sure I've ever seen a book issued with so many different covers with such little appeal. The image at the top of this article is the edition I read, which, with its severe black and white shot of Alcott in profile on a faded gold background, is almost confrontationally off-putting. But there's a whole wealth of other choices:

There's the original 1933 edition, where Louisa seems to be in the process of turning into a giraffe

A 1975 printing, in which Louisa is a knockoff Paul Klee drawing, and her soul is trying to escape from her puckered eyeballs.

The 1968 printing, with near-unreadable text on the blue cover, and an "insert image here" silhouette of Louisa

The "I did this in five minutes using royalty-free images and fonts" Kindle cover

The 1991 cover, which depicts the time that Louisa spent attending Sweet Valley High

And the 1995 "designed by grandma" cover, which, bizarrely, seems to still be the one the publisher is using.

Poor Louisa. An iconic writer deserves better than this.

Eight Honor books were named in 1934, which is tied with 1931 for the all-time high. The best known of them is Wanda Gág's The ABC Bunny, which is the book I would have chose for the Newbery, but which, as a picture book, probably didn't stand a chance of taking the top honor that year. At any rate, we still have Invincible Louisa, though it's clad in some of the worst packaging imaginable.