A Long Fatal Love Chase by Louisa May Alcott

By Taylor Jasmine | On April 18, 2015 | Updated September 24, 2022 | Comments (0)

From the 1995 Random House edition of A Long Fatal Love Chase by Louisa May Alcott, circa 1866, written by under the name A. M. Barnard, and unpublished during her lifetime: “I often feel as if I’d gladly sell my soul to Satan for a year of freedom.”

This passionate cry from a beautiful, impetuous young woman marks the opening of an extraordinary novel of obsessional love …

Rosamond Vivian has been brought up as a recluse by her heartlessly indifferent grandfather on a remote island off the English coast. Her only knowledge of he outside world is derived from the books she devours so voraciously.

The mysterious Philip Tempest

When Philip Tempest — charming, devastatingly handsome, and almost twice Rosamond’s age — mysteriously appears one stormy night, he finds a peach ripe for the plucking.

“I’m willing to pay for my pleasure if necessary,” Rosamond asserts boldly, but nothing can prepare her for the life that Philip Tempest will lure her into sharing with him.

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Caught in a web of intrigue and cruelty

Instead of finding the freedom she craves, Rosamond is caught up in a web of intrigue, cruelty and deceit stretching far back into the strange past of the man she must call her husband. Fearful that her spirit will be broken, she flees Tempest’s clutches, and so the chase begins — across Italy, across France and Germany, from Parisian garret to mental asylum, from convent to chateau.

But no sooner does she find each new refuge that Philip Tempest hunts her down — for he has never allowed anything he wants to escape, and Rosamond has become his obsession.

Remarkable for its portrayal of the sensuality and spirit of its Victorian heroine, A Long Fatal Love Chase tells a compulsive tale of love, desire, and deceit. Its publication after lying untouched for more than a century marks a new page in literary history.

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More about A Long Fatal Love Chase by Louisa May Alcott

•  Wikipedia
• Reader discussion on Goodreads
• 1995 review of A Long Fatal Love Chase in The New York Times

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