Louisa May Alcott (November 29, 1832 - March 6, 1888) was an American novelist. She is best known for the novel Little Women, which she wrote in 1868. This novel was loosely based on her childhood experiences with her three sisters.

These sketches, taken from letters hastily writter in the few leisure moments of a very busy life, make no pretension to literary merit, but are simply a brief record of one person's hospital experience. As such they are republished, with their many faults but partially amended, lest in retouching they should lose whatever force or freshness the inspiration of the time may have given them