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.
In contrast to her refusal to commit herself publicly on domestic politics, EG
supported the struggle for Italian independence. Her name appeared on a petition spearheaded by Florence Nightingale
in support of Garibaldi
's troops...
Occupation
Elizabeth Gaskell
She also corresponded with Florence Nightingale
to ask if any of the unemployed women could train as nurses, and solicited donations from philanthropists.
Uglow, Jennifer S. Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories. Faber and Faber.
502, 665n20
Textual Features
Elizabeth Gaskell
The issue of female employment is as important to this text as its better-known concern with sexual transgression, since Ruth is a redundant woman with few options open to her. In fact, her infusion of...
Intertextuality and Influence
Monica Furlong
This book reflects MF
's wide reading and an impish sense of humour employed to help her and her readers live with the unacceptable. Each chapter comes headed by a very funny cartoon and a...
Her letter-writers range from such prominent figures as Frances, Lady Nelson
, and Florence Nightingale
(two women whose connections with warfare by sea and land were unusual to say the least), to ordinary women, most...
FF
's father, William Farr
, was a successful doctor, medical statistician, and reformer. He lectured and published on the subject of hygiene, which he preferred to call hygiology. Bernard Shaw
describes him as...
Friends, Associates
Frances Isabella Duberly
FIDmade friends with almost all hands of the Shooting Star, on which she sailed to the Crimea, and they gathered to cheer her as she left the ship at Varna.
Duberly, Frances Isabella. Mrs Duberly’s War. Journals and Letters from the Crimea, 1854-6. Editor Kelly, Christine, Oxford University Press.
19
(She also mentions...
Textual Production
Mary Angela Dickens
Taylor worked as a nurse alongside Florence Nightingale
in the Crimean War before converting to Catholicism
and establishing her Congregation
. She published a novel about historical persecution of English Catholics as well as an...
Occupation
Monica Dickens
Quite early in 1940 (after a spell as a writer and another collecting scrap iron for armaments) MD
joined the Red Cross
as a VAD (that is, a Voluntary Aid Detachment
volunteer nurse), then became...
Textual Production
Lettice Cooper
LC
issued further biographies of eminent Victorians designed for young people: The Young Florence Nightingale, 1960, The Young Victoria, 1961, The Young Edgar Allan Poe, 1964, and A Hand Upon the Time...
Reception
Frances Power Cobbe
FPC
's importance to her contemporaries is most readily recalled today by the fact that Matthew Arnold
thought her a worthy target of his corrective wisdom in The Function of Criticism at the Present Time...
Family and Intimate relationships
Arthur Hugh Clough
In 1853, AHC
married Blanche Smith
, a cousin of Florence Nightingale
.
Family and Intimate relationships
Caroline Clive
In a letter Florence Nightingale
wrote of CC
: She is now married and has two children and I never saw happiness so stamped on any human creature's face. I liked her exceedingly and admire...