Stern, Madeleine B. 1912–2007

(Madeleine Stern, Madeleine Bettina Stern)

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born July 1, 1912, in New York, NY; died August 18, 2007, in New York, NY. Antiquarian book dealer, biographer, editor, and author. Stern and her longtime companion and business partner Leona Rostenberg spent sixty years discovering, selling, and writing about rare books. They opened Rostenberg and Stern Rare Books in New York City in 1945 and maintained their collaboration until Rostenberg's death in 2005. Stern was also a founding member of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America and a founder of the annual New York Antiquarian Book Fair. Stern wrote more than thirty books, many of them biographies of women who were pioneers in their fields, but she is known chiefly as the literary detective who exposed the secret life of Louisa May Alcott. As early as the 1940s, Stern and her partner uncovered hints that the beloved author of Little Women and its successors had an alter ego, A.M. Barnard, who published dozens of steamy thrillers in pulp fiction magazines. Stern wrote several books about Alcott, including a 1950 biography and the 1998 book Louisa May Alcott: From Blood and Thunder to Hearth and Home. She also took it upon herself to edit and introduce half a dozen or more collections of Alcott's ‘lost’ stories, as well as collections of Alcott's letters and journals. Stern and Rostenberg wrote several memoirs of the shared life in the world of books, in which they discussed their travels in search of literary treasures, their thoughts on the businesses of bookselling and publishing, and their life together, which they repeatedly defended as a platonic love affair. Stern's books include, in addition to her works on Alcott: Purple Passage: The Life of Mrs. Frank Leslie (1953), Antiquarian Bookselling in the United States: A History from the Origins to the 1940s (1985), From Revolution to Revolution: Perspectives on Publishing and Bookselling, 1501-2001 (2001), which she wrote with Rostenberg, and Detection and Discovery (2003), also with Rostenberg.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

BOOKS

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 111: American Literary Biographers, Second Series, 1991, Volume 140: American Book-Collectors and Bibliographers, 1994.

Stern, Madeleine B., and Leona Rostenberg, Old and Rare: Thirty Years in the Book Business, Schramm (New York, NY), 1974, revised edition published as Old and Rare: Forty Years in the Book Business, Modoc Press (Santa Monica, CA), 1988.

Stern, Madeleine B., and Leona Rostenberg, Old Books in the Old World: Reminiscences of Book Buying Abroad, Oak Knoll Press (New Castle, DE), 1996.

Stern, Madeleine B., and Leona Rostenberg, Old Books, Rare Friends: Two Literary Sleuths and Their Shared Passion, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1997.

Stern, Madeleine B., and Leona Rostenberg, Bookends: Two Women, One Enduring Friendship, Free Press (New York, NY), 2001.

PERIODICALS

Los Angeles Times, September 9, 2007, p. B14.

New York Times, August 25, 2007, p. B10.

Times (London, England), September 29, 2007, p. 68.