Behind a Mask

€ 36,00 EUR

Original Price

This edition of Behind a Mask by Louisa May Alcott is the very first book I’ve sewn under L’ÉCRIN PRESS. A story about a femme fatale deserved a design steeped in noir atmosphere — so I turned to vintage cinema stills, archival lantern slide frames once used in early theatres, and antique heart-shaped lockets as ornaments. The typography echoes film noir title cards, and between chapters you’ll find a series of early 20th-century Positive Paper Prints, each framed in elaborate carved borders. The entire book is printed on certified, highly tactile Italian and German artist papers, and sewn by hand with a single thread of synthetic silk — a durable binding that opens completely flat. The lace peeking from the spine is genuine 19th-century Spanish or French lace. A quiet governess with delicate manners. A wealthy family ripe for the taking. But nothing is quite what it seems. In this sharp, subversive novella, Louisa May Alcott-writing under a pseudonym-introduces a heroine who is cunning, ambitious, and unapologetically in control. Behind a Mask is a gothic tale of performance and power, where femininity is a weapon and class is a game to be played-and won. A deliciously dark take on the femme fatale, and a proto-feminist call to eat the rich.