From an early age, literature influenced her thoughts. Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, which the March sisters in Little Women read and from which Alcott took many of the novel's chapter titles, was a family favorite. Modern writers also figured prominently: Scott, Goethe, Hawthorne, Frederika Bremer, and Fanny Burney. But Dickens ranked above the rest. Alcott's journals over three decades reveal her and her family reading, rereading, and dramatizing scenes from Oliver Twist, Dombey and Son, David Copperfield, and Bleak House; in Little Women, the sisters form the ʻPickwick Club,ʻ producing a weekly newspaper, The Pickwick Portfolio. Alcott's own aspirations to author- ship also reflected her appreciation for other women authors: After reading a biography of Charlotte Bronte in June 1857, she wrote, ʻSo full of talent, and after working long, just as success, love and happiness come, she dies. Wonder if I shall ever be famous enough for people to care to read my story and struggles. I can't be a C.B., but I may do a little something yetʻ (Journals, 85).