SOURCE: "The Witch's Cauldron to the Family Hearth: Louisa M. Alcott's Literary Development, 1848-1868," More Books: The Bulletin of the Boston Public Library, Vol. XVIII, No. 8, October, 1943, pp. 363-80.

In the following article, Stern provides the biographical and literary context behind Alcott's creation of Little Women.

When Louisa Alcott first began to write in the Hillside attic, she dipped her pen into the romantic, melodramatic ink that has ever been the property of sixteen-year-old authors. Wandering through a stormy world where noblemen unsheathed their daggers and stamped their boots, Louisa and her sister Anna produced a series of "lurid" plays aptly termed by the latter Comic Tragedies.¹

"Norna; or, The Witch's Curse" and "The Captive of Castile; or, The Moorish Maiden's Vow" were produced in the barn with the aid of red curtains, ancient shawls, and faded brocades. The young actresses tossed roses from balconies, gathered herbs in...