NOTE: This listing is for registration for the in-person event only. Register to receive the link to the live stream feed via the live stream listing.

The Concord Free Public Library’s William Munroe Special Collections will host Kent Bicknell and Alcott scholar Daniel Shealy for a program and an exhibition of newly acquired Alcott Family books and manuscripts. The recently revealed holdings feature the work of long-time Alcott enthusiast and collector Dr. Kent Bicknell, who assembled key items relating to Louisa May Alcott and her family in a collection, which the library acquired in 2024, and the Alcott archive of Colorado entrepreneur Tim Mather, who, to honor Sant Bani School, donated his collection to the William Munroe Special Collections in 2025. You can read more about these collections here.

Kent Bicknell is an educator who, in 1973, became the founding head of Sant Bani School in Sanbornton, NH, a role he held for the next 44 years. During that time, he worked with schools across the U.S. and in Bhutan, Canada, Colombia, Guatemala, India, and Venezuela. A graduate of Yale, Kent is an independent scholar and passionate bibliophile with interests in the New England Transcendentalists. In 1995, he acquired, edited, and published Louisa May Alcott’s gothic thriller A Long Fatal Love Chase, which became a New York Times best-seller. His memoir about a spiritual path, Rainbow On My Heart (2002), is based on many trips to India over five decades.

Daniel Shealy is Professor of English at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, where he teaches American literature. He has published thirteen books on Louisa May Alcott, including co-editing The Selected Letters of Louisa May Alcott and The Journal of Louisa May Alcott. He also edited Little Women: An Annotated Edition, published by Harvard University Press. His most recent book, Little Women at 150, was published in 2022.

This event is sponsored by the Concord Free Public Library Corporation, a nonprofit organization funded through the generosity of donors.