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.
Some of these nurses, trained by FS
, later went to Crimea with Florence Nightingale
during the Crimean War.
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder.
Sutherland, John. The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford University Press.
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Harriet Smythies
Towards the end of this poem about the Crimean War, HS
calls on the women of England. She regards them as formed with gentle hands / To minister to suffering,
Smythies, Harriet. Sebastopol.
19
but she nevertheless...
Textual Features
Mary Stott
Here MS
writes grippingly of her own life, and illuminatingly about myriad subjects of public or cultural interest: the lives, customs, and deaths of newspapers, the conspiracy of silence about sex which had not dissipated...
Several are based on historical or biblical material. The title play, named after a district of Edinburgh, features the actual Duncan Forbes
, a local Whig who was remembered for showing compassion and clemency to...
Literary responses
Sarah Trimmer
ST
's work made a great impact. She was one of the twenty-four most-reviewed women writers of 1789-90.
Hawkins, Ann R., and Stephanie Eckroth, editors. Romantic Women Writers Reviewed. Vol. 3 vols., Ashgate Publishing Company.
From this time on, JT
sometimes published a new book as Caroline Harvey, and sometimes reassigned to her pseudonym works first issued under her own name. Leaves from the Valley, for instance (whose...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Marina Warner
In Our Lady of the CountercultureMW
writes of her own early search for heroinism from heroines like Eleanor of Aquitaine
or Florence Nightingale
(featured in the young people's comic Girl) through scandalous women...
Uglow, Jennifer S. Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories. Faber and Faber.
219
Wedgwood, Barbara, and Hensleigh Wedgwood. The Wedgwood Circle, 1730-1897: Four Generations of a Family and Their Friends. Studio Vista.
258
Textual Production
Jane Williams
She produced the book after a meeting with Davis in 1856 that took place under circumstances which led the writer to appreciate more fully the extraordinary character and history of Elizabeth Davis.
Beddoe, Deirdre et al. “Introduction”. The Autobiography of Elizabeth Davis, Honno, p. ix - xix.
ix
The book...
Intertextuality and Influence
Jane Williams
In offering an alternative to the official account of the war and the hagiography surrounding Nightingale
, as well as in seeking to improve the material circumstances of its subject, the book resembles that of...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Amabel Williams-Ellis
Her exemplars represent the arts, science, politics, religion, and service to humanity. Two of the nine are female— Sarah Siddons
and Florence Nightingale
.
ECW
once rescued Evelyn
while he was serving in the Crimean War. He was afflicted by typhoid fever when she insisted on visiting him in a hospital. Florence Nightingale
, who ran the hospital, said...
