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

Having been written at long intervals during the past seven years, this story is more faulty than any of its very imperfect predecessors; but the desire to atone foi an unavoidable disappointment, and to please my patient little friends, has urged me to let it go without furtner delay. To account for the seeming neglect of Auit, let me add, that, since the original of that character died, it has been impossible for me to write of her as when she was here to suggest, criticise, and laugh over her namesake. The same excuse applies to JVIakmee. But the folded leaves are not blank to those who knew and loved them, and can find memorials of them in whatever is cheerful, true, or helpful in these pages.