A. (Alphonse) Loisette

A. (Alphonse) Loisette was the pen name used by Marcus Dwight Larrowe, a nineteenth-century promoter of memory training. He became known for teaching a system meant to sharpen attention, strengthen recall, and make learning feel more methodical.

His best-known book, Assimilative Memory; or, How to Attend and Never Forget, presents memory as something that can be improved through practice rather than treated as a mysterious gift. That practical, encouraging approach helped the work stand out among early self-improvement books.

At the same time, Loisette's career was controversial. Contemporary sources and later catalog records connect the name directly to Larrowe, and critics in his own era challenged both his methods and his business practices. That mix of ambition, showmanship, and instruction makes his work an unusual piece of memory-training history.