Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Florence Nightingale
-
Standard Name: Nightingale, Florence
Birth Name: Florence Nightingale
Nickname: Flo
Nickname: The Lady-in-Chief
Nickname: The Lady of the Lamp
Nickname: Commander-in-Chief
Nickname: Wild Ass of the Wilderness
FN
's fame began when she headed nurses in the Crimean war. After the war, she worked to reform health care and promoted sanitation at home and abroad. To this end she composed speeches, government reports, statistical analyses, articles, and pamphlets. She travelled extensively in her youth, producing many letters which were later collected and published. She also wrote theology, including the work which contains her feminist fragment Cassandra. Although FN
was a versatile, political, and prolific writer (she produced over two hundred literary works during her career), she is remembered almost solely for her nursing work.
Brothers, Barbara, and Julia Gergits, editors. Dictionary of Literary Biography 166. Gale Research.
KM
's decision to become a nurse was inspired by her own interests and her family's financial insecurity. In early 1877, she began to study and work at the Deaconesses' Institution and Training Hospital
at...
Textual Production
Kate Marsden
She ends this part of the volume not with her own signature but by quoting what she represents as an encouraging prayer or blessing from Florence Nightingale
, who tells Marsden she prays the Father...
Occupation
Catherine Marsh
When in early 1854 England and France were in alliance to defend Turkey, and declared war on Russia on 28 March, launching the first Crimean War,
O’Rorke, Lucy. The Life and Friendships of Catherine Marsh. Longmans, Green & Co.
96
CM
immediately set about distributing New Testaments...
Reception
Catherine Marsh
Her father's biography was well-received, particularly because he was a widely-known and respected man. It incorporated an excerpt of a review from The Guardian, which complimented the portrait as a vehicle for emotion, stating...
Textual Production
Catherine Marsh
The book includes frequent letters to and from Marsh's sisters as well as her close friend Caroline Maitland
. She also kept a regular correspondence with Florence Nightingale
, Hedley Vicars
, the Archbishop of Canterbury
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Una Marson
Through her editorship of the magazine, UM
drew attention to issues such as single motherhood, women struggling on meagre incomes, and unemployment among domestic workers. This is the age of woman: what man has done...
Literary responses
Harriet Martineau
Maria Edgeworth
wrote to HM
to express her admiration of The Hour and the Man, and Florence Nightingale
said after the author's death that she had read it repeatedly and considered it the finest...
Textual Production
Harriet Martineau
This paper, a challenger to the Times, favoured free trade and other liberal causes.
Chapman, Maria Weston, and Harriet Martineau. “Memorials of Harriet Martineau”. Harriet Martineau’s Autobiography, James R. Osgood, pp. 2: 131 - 596.
449
Webb, Robert Kiefer. Harriet Martineau: A Radical Victorian. Columbia University Press.
314
HM
wrote on everything from politics to agriculture, and from geography and history to the East and West...
Textual Production
Harriet Martineau
Although Martineau appeared as the book's sole author, she and Nightingale
were in effect collaborators. The latter solicited her help on the issue of sanitary reform, and supplied the data, including printer's plates for statistical...
Publishing
Harriet Martineau
HM
furthered Nightingale
's work in other ways too, producing a lengthy piece in the Quarterly Review (seizing the occasion to promote her own earlier Life in the Sick-Room) and a shorter one in...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Harriet Martineau
Female Industry is a wide-ranging review covering the 1851 census results, the reports of Poor Law Commissioners
on women and children in agriculture, the Governesses' Benevolent Institution
, and The Lowell Offering, as well...
Publishing
Harriet Martineau
HM
was one of the first to be aware of the movement towards regulating prostitution in Britain by means of instituting in military districts the arrest and medical examination for syphilis of women who were...
HM
's England and Her Soldiers took up Florence Nightingale
's cause of sanitary reform in the army.
Chapman, Maria Weston, and Harriet Martineau. “Memorials of Harriet Martineau”. Harriet Martineau’s Autobiography, James R. Osgood, pp. 2: 131 - 596.
453
The Athenaeum Index of Reviews and Reviewers: 1830-1870. http://replay.web.archive.org/20070714065452/http://www.soi.city.ac.uk/~asp/v2/home.html.
Health
Harriet Martineau
She had a difficult journey home. Her brother James
accompanied her, and several friends—Julia Smith
(also an abolitionist and the aunt of Florence Nightingale
), who had been her travelling companion along with her...