In 1861 Miss Alcott published her novel Moods, the most ambitious work she had yet attempted, and one on which she placed many fond hopes.

But although Moods represented all the ideality and poetry of life as it then appeared to the young author, it was not a great success. She had toiled faithfully over its composition, and had wrought into it many of her own girlish dreams, but the heroine was not real, and many of the situations were artificial.

The defect lay in the author's own gift, which did not reach out to work of a purely imaginative character. Miss Alcott was bitterly disappointed over the meagre success of Moods, which she attributed to the many changes she had made in it, through the advice of the different publishers who had rejected it.

In spite of the fame that her other books brought, Moods always held a warm place in her heart.