Hospital Sketches (Bedford Series in History & Culture) [Paperback]

Louisa May Alcott (Author), Alice Fahs (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 25, 2003 | ISBN-10: 0312260288 | ISBN-13: 978-0312260286 | Edition: First Edition

Several years before Louisa May Alcott created Little Women (1868), her most well known novel, she worked as a nurse at a soldiers’ hospital in Washington, D.C., during the Civil War. Drawing on that experience, Alcott wrote Hospital Sketches (1863), a vivid account that offers rich insights into women’s wartime roles, the shocking conditions in soldiers’ hospitals, the lives of the soldiers themselves, and the racial prejudice of the time. Part of a vast outpouring of popular Civil War literature published during the conflict, Hospital Sketches tells us much about mid–nineteenth-century literary culture and the ways in which the war was re-created in literature for the reading public in the North. Alice Fahs’s introduction supplies biographical, literary, and historical context for Alcott’s work. Illustrations, a chronology, questions for consideration, and a selected bibliography add to the volume’s value.

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About the Author

ALICE FAHS is associate professor of history at the University of California, Irvine. Her book The Imagined Civil War: Popular Literature of the North and South, 1861-1865 (2001) was awarded Honorable Mention for the 2002 Lincoln Prize. She has also published articles on Civil War history, gender history, popular culture, and popular literature.

Product Details

• Paperback: 138 pages
• Publisher: Bedford/St. Martin's; First Edition edition (September 25, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312260288
• ISBN-13: 978-0312260286
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 6.5 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #538,277 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Louisa May Alcott was both an abolitionist and a feminist. She is best known for Little Women (1868), a semi-autobiographical account of her childhood years with her sisters in Concord, Massachusetts. Alcott, unlike Jo, never married: "... because I have fallen in love with so many pretty girls and never once the least bit with any man." She was an advocate of women's suffrage and was the first woman to register to vote in Concord, Massachusetts.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

67 of 68 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The experience of an author turned Civil War nurse., April 4, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Hospital Sketches (Paperback)

Louisa May Alcott was the first Civil War army nurse to publish an account of her service. Not yet famous at the author of "Little Women," the appearence of "Hospital Sketches" in the summer of 1863 was the also the first of her works to win her widespread attention.

Bored with life at home and wanting to contribute something to the war effort, Alcott volunteered to serve as an nurse. After a wait of several months, she was assigned to the Union Hotel Hospital in Washington DC.

She arrived in mid-December, and her very first day brought her responsibility for forty patients when another nurse fell ill. It was a sign of things to come. Three days after her arrival, the hospital was flooded with wounded from the Battle of Fredericksburg.

Initially horrified at the idea of giving the wounded sponge baths, Alcott quickly overcame this misplaced modesty and became accoustomed to the sights and sounds of the the ward. By the end of her brief service, she had learned how to feed, bathe and comfort the wounded, change dressings and administer medicine. . .even watch amputations without revulsion.

It was as the night nurse on a three-room ward that she found the vivid charachters she would bring to life in "Hospital Sketches." There was a little Ohio sargent she called "Baby B," who had lost his right arm in battle and was teaching himself to write left handed. (He would later become one of her faithful correspondents) There was a 12-year old drummer mourning the loss of a buddy, a helpful Prussian who spoke no English, and a nameless man so addled by war that he was given to running up and down the aisles yelling all night long. Most poingant was the story of John, a Virginia blacksmith whose death was a model of the 19th Century Christian ideal.

Only six weeks after she arrived in Washington, Alcott fell dangerously ill with typhoid fever. Doctors wrote her parents, and before long her father had arrived to take her home. She would spend months recovering. Given a mercury-based compound common in the treatment of typhoid, she would suffer the effects of mercury poisioning for the rest of her life.

She was still confined to bed when she began writing "Hospital Sketches." As "Nurse Tribulation Periwinkle" -- a name adopted under the dictum that a lady's name should not appear in print -- the short book illustrated the flair for charachterization and the delightful sense of humor that would make her later works so popular.

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Hospital Sketches, January 31, 2010

By 

Stephen Balbach (Ashton, MD United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hospital Sketches (Kindle Edition)

In 1863, in the midst of the American Civil War, women military nurses were considered a novelty; fears were of harming their "naturally weak nature" and fraternizing with men. But it was a role successfully pioneered by Florence Nightingale in the Crimea War, and the Union was looking for all the help it could get. Before she became a famous novelist with Little Women, upbeat and adventurous 30 year old Boston native Louisa May Alcott volunteered at a Union hospital in Washington DC. During her intern of 6 weeks she was able to help soldiers wounded at The Battle of Fredericksburg. She wrote a series of letters home vividly describing what a Civil War hospital was like, and the many characters who made up the patients and staff. The letters display a keen sense of humor and observation that would become her hallmark. A short book but highly engaging and fascinating for the quality of writing, the drama of life and death, historical detail, and Alcott's infectious optimism, humor and strength. This is a short book of about 93 pages easily read in a day, but filled with memorable scenes of humor, love, pain and horror.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Vivid Account of the Civil War Wounded, August 1, 2002

By 

Caitlin (Ipswich) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hospital Sketches (Paperback)

I loved "Hospital Skeches" by Louisa May Alcott. It tells of many wounded soldiers that Louisa actually met in her nursing period at the Georgetown Hospital. It tells of Sergeant Bane and his "Dearest Jane", Doctor P., the 'quiet sleeper', who "would like a drink of water, if you ain't too busy", Billy, Kit, and many others. The only things that I didn't absolutly love about "Hospital Sketches was the font, which was difficult to read, and the fact that Louisa herself isn't the exact main character, name and all. However, Nurse Periwinkle, who replaces Louisa, is an almost carbon copy of Alcott, so I can't really complain. People just don't write books that are as good and as true as this anymore. As I said in my title, this is a truly vivid account of the wounded men and the nurses in the Civil War.