Of Miss Alcott's own reading she says:–
"Never a student, but a great reader. R. W. E. gave me Goethe's works at fifteen, and they have been my delight ever since. My library consists of Goethe, Emerson, Shakespeare, Carlyle, Margaret Fuller, and George Sand. George Eliot I don't care for, nor any of the modern poets but Whittier; the old ones–Herbert, Crashaw, Keats, Coleridge, Dante, and a few others–I like."
She gives this account of the beginning of her literary career:–
"This gem ['The Robin'] my proud mother preserved with care, assuring me that if I kept on in this way I might be a second Shakespeare in time. Fired with this modest ambition, I continued to write poems upon dead butterflies, lost kittens, the baby's eyes, and other simple subjects till the story-telling mania set in; and after frightening my sisters out of their wits by awful tales whispered in bed, I began to write down these histories of giants, ogres, dauntless girls, and magic transformations till we had a library of small paper-covered volumes illustrated by the author. Later the poems grew gloomy and sentimental, and the tales more fanciful and less tragic, lovely elves and spirits taking the places of the former monsters."
Of her method of work she says:–
"I never had a study. Any pen and paper do, and an old atlas on my knee is all I want. Carry a dozen plots in my head, and think them over when in the mood. Sometimes keep one for years, and suddenly find it all ready to write. Often lie awake and plan whole chapters word for word, then merely scribble them down as if copying.
"Used to sit fourteen hours a day at one time, eating little, and unable to stir till a certain amount was done.
"Very few stories written in Concord; no inspiration in that dull place. Go to Boston, hire a quiet room and shut myself up in it."
The following letter gives her advice to young writers:–
To Mr. J. P. True.