Hospital Sketches

The narrator of the stories was renamed Tribulation Periwinkle but the sketches are virtually authentic to Alcott's real experiences.

[4] The first of the sketches was published on May 22, 1863, in the abolitionist magazine Boston Commonwealth edited by family friend Franklin Benjamin Sanborn.

[7] The author was approached by Thomas Niles, an up-and-coming employee of Roberts Brothers, to publish the sketches in book form.

[8] At her father's suggestion, the book was dedicated to Hannah Stevenson, a friend who had helped Alcott secure her position as a volunteer nurse.

[5] Years later, Walt Whitman contacted Redpath, hoping he would publish his own recollections as a Civil War nurse.

"[9] Fourteen years later after its publication, Alcott reflected on avoiding Roberts Brothers, who later published Little Women (1868): "Shortsighted Louisa!

"[8] After that novel's success, Niles offered to republish Hospital Sketches under the Roberts Brothers imprint, and Alcott slightly expanded it.

As she wrote: "I cannot see why people like a few extracts from topsey turvey letters written on inverted tea kettles, waiting for gruel to warm, or poultices to cool, [or] for boys to wake and be tormented.

"[12] The Boston Evening Transcript called the book "fluent and sparkling, with touches of quiet humor and lively wit".