In her Autobiography, written in 1916 at the request of the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts (abbr. JAZU) – which, in preparation for the Croatian Biographical Dictionary, contacted numerous prominent individuals with questionnaires about their lives and work – Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić notes that she first felt a strong desire to write as a young girl. The girlhood diary of Ivana Mažuranić (ages 14 to 18) also bears witness to her early literary calling and contains numerous short texts, poems and literary fragments. Interestingly enough, the diary does not include a single fairy tale. These adolescent literary efforts were often made in secret, and marked by a strong feeling of guilt caused by the belief that it is not proper for a girl to occupy herself with anything other than "woman's" work (that is to say, household, domestic, parental and marital duties). The feeling of guilt briefly subsided after the death of her grandfather Ivan Mažuranić, when the fifteen-year old Ivana surreptitiously placed a piece of paper bearing her poem on his work desk, hoping that – at least in this sly way – her work would be published. To her great disappointment, the poem was not published after all. It is interesting to note that Ivana's views on writing and women's duties changed once she became a mother. As a young woman (she had her first child when she was 19) she had already begun to tell her children stories.

Dubravka Zima, 2013