The Publication & Importance of "Hospital Sketches"
Shortly after her return home and recovery from illness Louisa began to organize her journal and the letters she had written home into a series of “hospital sketches” for publication in The Boston Commonwealth, an antislavery paper. Despite a fictional narrator (Tribulation Periwinkle) and location (Hurly Burly Hospital), Hospital Sketches described her six week experience as a nurse at the Union Hotel Hospital in Washington D.C. The published letters received a strong response. As one Union Hotel Hospital doctor wrote to Louisa, “I thank you for writing them from the bottom of my heart…I feel humbled by the lesson which they teach me.” Shortly after publication, abolitionist publisher James Redpath indicated his desire to publish Hospital Sketches in book form. Louisa May Alcott received her first book copy of Hospital Sketches August 1863. She was delighted to see “townsfolk buying, reading, laughing, and crying over [her book] wherever [I] go.” Despite its apparent popularity, Louisa May Alcott would only make two-hundred dollars from the sale of all editions from her book.[26]
A Leading Female Author
Many historians note the wide importance of Louisa May Alcott’s Hospital Sketches. Historian Jane Shultz explains that Louisa May Alcott originated the genre of female war writing in which seventeen relief workers published their narratives in the years between 1863 - 1870. In these works, as in Hospital Sketches, women had to swallow their pride to work effectively as nurses. As was Louisa, the female nurses in these narratives were strong supporters of Civil War soldiers. Qualities of loyalty, determination, and self-reliance were found among these nurses turned authors.[27] The publication of Hospital Sketches, established Louisa as a leading female author. As Jan Turnquist, Executive Director of Orchard House, wrote, “…for its truth, its charm, and its picture of a side of the war largely overshadowed by the military and political emphases historians have given the [Civil War], Miss Alcott’s book merits a permanent place in the literature of military medicine and the impact of women on the practices related to it.”[28] Without Hospital Sketches our understanding of the female nursing experience would be incomplete; Louisa May Alcott gives voice to the thousands of women nurses who served Union Army soldiers during the Civil War.