SOURCE: "Louisa Alcott's Self-Criticism," in Studies in the American Renaissance, edited by Joel Myerson, University Press of Virginia, 1985, pp. 333-43.

In the following essay, Stern examines Alcott's artistic development throughout her career, focusing in particular on the author's approach to both the craft and the business of fiction writing.

The self-portrait of a writer is a comparatively rare phenomenon; yet, to the literary critic, it provides insights available nowhere else. Unlike most major—or minor—writers, Louisa May Alcott had few illusions about herself, and when she wrote about the development of her own craft she wore no rose-colored glasses. Her literary self-criticism reveals a consciousness of her limitations, an awareness of her experimentations and growth, her use of source materials, her techniques, her attitude toward language, and her ultimate professionalism. That self-criticism is to be found in her letters, published and unpublished, in her journals, her prefaces...