Reimagining RealismBeginning with one of Louisa May Alcotts Hospital Sketches, originally published in 1863, this anthology offers a refreshing perspective on American literature from the latter half of the nineteenth century through the first decades of the twentieth. Based on Alcotts brief stint as a Civil War nurse, Hospital Sketches stands in contrast to the sentimentality of her better known Little Women and illustrates a blending of romanticism and realism.