They say that behind every great man is a hard-working woman. Behind the titanic that was Florence Nightingale, there was a lesser-known sister, Frances Parthenope. While Florence achieved iconic fame for her work with wounded soldiers in the Crimea, Parthenope spent her days gathering supplies for those same soldiers, especially the ever-needed dry socks, and sending them overseas. With hands badly damaged by rheumatic fever, Parthenope tirelessly penned letters to Florence’s supporters and tactfully requested donations. Eventually, Parthenope married and turned her writing talents to fiction and non-fiction that exposed Victorian injustices toward the poor and women. Florence Nightingale’s older sister never achieved the fame that came to the “Lady of the Lamp.” However, in her own right, Frances Parthenope Verney was a great Victorian. A novelist, journalist, and activist, she supported her sister’s reform of the medical profession while being a thought influencer on the subject of the urban poor and the British peasantry.
Florence Nightingale is best known as a woman of action—a founder of modern nursing, a reformer in the field of public health, and a pioneer in the use of statistics. What is not generally appreciated is that Nightingale was deeply engaged in the religious and philosophical thought of her time and that the primary aim of her life was not to reform social institutions but to serve God. Although Nightingale gave primacy to her spiritual life, few of the books written about her have done so, and, until recently, few of her own writings about religion have been published. This failure to attend to Nightingale's spiritual life began to change during the 1980s, most significantly with the 1994 publication of Suggestions for Thought, her own presentation of her religious views. At the heart of The Friendship of Florence Nightingale and Mary Clare Moore are forty-seven letters written by Nightingale to Moore—her "Dearest Reverend Mother"—the founding superior of the Roman Catholic Sisters of Mercy in Bermondsey, London; ten letters written by Moore to Nightingale; and five letters written by Nightingale about Clare to other Sisters of Mercy. These letters illustrate the personal lives and spiritual struggles and aspirations of two highly influential women in Victorian England: one working to achieve military and governmental reforms, the other designing and implementing new church-related services to the poor-both bound together by their devotion to those who were neglected, by nursing and other skills, by mature Christian faith, and by their engaging affection for one another.
Florence Nightingale is famous as the “lady with the lamp” in the Crimean War, 1854—56. There is a massive amount of literature on this work, but, as editor Lynn McDonald shows, it is often erroneous, and films and press reporting on it have been even less accurate. The Crimean War reports on Nightingale’s correspondence from the war hospitals and on the staggering amount of work she did post-war to ensure that the appalling death rate from disease (higher than that from bullets) did not recur. This volume contains much on Nightingale’s efforts to achieve real reforms. Her well-known, and relatively “sanitized”, evidence to the royal commission on the war is compared with her confidential, much franker, and very thorough Notes on the Health of the British Army, where the full horrors of disease and neglect are laid out, with the names of those responsible.
Florence Nightingale is best known as a woman of action—a founder of modern nursing, a reformer in the field of public health, and a pioneer in the use of statistics. What is not generally appreciated is that Nightingale was deeply engaged in the religious and philosophical thought of her time and that the primary aim of her life was not to reform social institutions but to serve God. Although Nightingale gave primacy to her spiritual life, few of the books written about her have done so, and, until recently, few of her own writings about religion have been published. This failure to attend to Nightingale's spiritual life began to change during the 1980s, most significantly with the 1994 publication of Suggestions for Thought, her own presentation of her religious views. At the heart of The Friendship of Florence Nightingale and Mary Clare Moore are forty-seven letters written by Nightingale to Moore—her "Dearest Reverend Mother"—the founding superior of the Roman Catholic Sisters of Mercy in Bermondsey, London; ten letters written by Moore to Nightingale; and five letters written by Nightingale about Clare to other Sisters of Mercy. These letters illustrate the personal lives and spiritual struggles and aspirations of two highly influential women in Victorian England: one working to achieve military and governmental reforms, the other designing and implementing new church-related services to the poor-both bound together by their devotion to those who were neglected, by nursing and other skills, by mature Christian faith, and by their engaging affection for one another.
More than any other family, the Verney's - a dynasty of Buckinghamshire squires - embody the tragic conflicts and divided loyalties of the English Civil War. The family patriarch, Sir Edmund Verney, was a courtier and former close friend of King Charles I, even accompanying Charles on his fruitless marriage mission to Madrid when he attempted to woo the Spanish Infanta. However, as MP for Wycombe, Verney often found himself in opposition to Royal policy - and as a staunch Protestant particularly deplored Charles' devotion to High Anglicanism and Bishops. However, when the push of Parliamentary politics came to the shove of Civil War, Verney reluctantly placed his loyalty to the Crown above his conscience, telling a friend: 'For my part I do not like the quarrel and do heartily wish that the King would yield and consent to what they [Parliament] desire... [but] I have eaten his bread and served him near thirty years, and will not do so base a thing as to forsake him; and choose rather to lose my Life (which I am sure I shall do) to preserve and defend those things, which are against my conscience to preserve and defend'. Sure enough, in accordance with his own prophecy Verney did die in the Civil War's first battle, Edgehill. According to legend, he defended the Royal Standard so stoutly that his severed hand was found still clutching it after the battle. Verney's eldest son and heir, Sir Ralph, also an MP, was a stout Parliamentarian; but his younger brother, Edmund junior. was a passionate Royalist who died at the hands of Cromwell's troops in the massacre that followed the storming of Drogheda in Ireland. This two-volume family history, published in 1892, and much drawn upon by Civil War historians, tells the story of the conflicted family's fortunes - and the tragic wounds inflicted on close families who find themselves 'by the sword divided'.
Florence Nightingale was for a time the most famous woman in Britain–if not the world. We know her today primarily as a saintly character, perhaps as a heroic reformer of Britain’s health-care system. The reality is more involved and far more fascinating. In an utterly beguiling narrative that reads like the best Victorian fiction, acclaimed author Gillian Gill tells the story of this richly complex woman and her extraordinary family. Born to an adoring wealthy, cultivated father and a mother whose conventional facade concealed a surprisingly unfettered intelligence, Florence was connected by kinship or friendship to the cream of Victorian England’s intellectual aristocracy. Though moving in a world of ease and privilege, the Nightingales came from solidly middle-class stock with deep traditions of hard work, natural curiosity, and moral clarity. So it should have come as no surprise to William Edward and Fanny Nightingale when their younger daughter, Florence, showed an early passion for helping others combined with a precocious bent for power. Far more problematic was Florence’s inexplicable refusal to marry the well-connected Richard Monckton Milnes. As Gill so brilliantly shows, this matrimonial refusal was at once an act of religious dedication and a cry for her freedom–as a woman and as a leader. Florence’s later insistence on traveling to the Crimea at the height of war to tend to wounded soldiers was all but incendiary–especially for her older sister, Parthenope, whose frustration at being in the shade of her more charismatic sibling often led to illness. Florence succeeded beyond her wildest dreams. But at the height of her celebrity, at the age of thirty-seven, she retired to her bedroom and remained there for most of the rest of her life, allowing visitors only by appointment. Combining biography, politics, social history, and consummate storytelling, Nightingales is a dazzling portrait of an amazing woman, her difficult but loving family, and the high Victorian era they so perfectly epitomized. Beautifully written, witty, and irresistible, Nightingales is truly a tour de force.
Florence Nightingale: An Introduction to Her Life and Family introduces the Collected Works by giving an overview of Nightingale’s life and the faith that guided it and by outlining the main social reform concerns on which she worked from her “call to service’’ at age sixteen to old age. This volume reports correspondence (selected from the thousands of surviving letters) with her mother, father and sister and a wide extended family. There is material on Nightingale’s “domestic arrangements,’’ from recipes, cat care and relations with servants to her contributions to charities, church and social reform causes. Much new and original material comes to light, and a remarkably different portrait of Nightingale, one with a more nuanced view of her family relationships, emerges. The Series In the Collected Works of Florence Nightingale all the surviving writing of Florence Nightingale will be published, much of it for the first time. Known as the heroine of the Crimean War and the major founder of the modern profession of nursing, Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) will be revealed also as a scholar, theorist and social reformer of enormous scope and importance. Original material has been obtained from over 150 archives and private collections worldwide. This abundance of material will be reflected in the series, revealing a significant amount of new material on her philosophy, theology and personal spiritual journey, as well as on her vision of a public health care system, her activism to achieve the difficult early steps of nursing for the sick poor in workhouse infirmaries and her views on health promotion and women’s control over midwifery. Nightingale’s more than forty years of work for public health in India, particularly in famine prevention and for broader social reform, will be reported in detail. The Collected Works of Florence Nightingale demonstrates Nightingale’s astute use of the political process and reports on her extensive correspondence with royalty, viceroys, cabinet ministers and international leaders, including such notables as Queen Victoria and W. E. Gladstone. Much new material on Nightingale’s family is reported, including some that will challenge her standard portrayal in the secondary literature. Sixteen printed volumes are scheduled and will record her enormous and largely unpublished correspondence, previously published books, articles and pamphlets, many of which have long been out of print. There will be full publication in electronic form, permitting readers to easily pursue their particular interests. Extensive databases, notably a chronology and a names index, will also be published in electronic form, again permitting convenient access to persons interested not only in Nightingale but in other figures of the time.
Emissions data (2006) from the Energy Information Administration, population (2007) from the Population Reference Bureau. Chart prepared by Lynn McDonald and Patricia Warwick. --
This third volume in the Collected Works of Florence Nightingale reports her controversial theological essays (only two of which have been previously published) and a great array of correspondence, from such Roman Catholics as Cardinal Manning and the Reverend Mother of the Sisters of Mercy of Bermondsey to the liberal Protestant Benjamin Jowett, evangelicals and missionaries. Nightingale’s recommendations for a revision of the Bible for schoolchildren and excerpts from her devotional reading are given. Currently, Volumes 1 to 11 are available in e-book version by subscription or from university and college libraries through the following vendors: Canadian Electronic Library, Ebrary, MyiLibrary, and Netlibrary. The Series In the Collected Works of Florence Nightingale all the surviving writing of Florence Nightingale will be published, much of it for the first time. Known as the heroine of the Crimean War and the major founder of the modern profession of nursing, Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) will be revealed also as a scholar, theorist and social reformer of enormous scope and importance. Original material has been obtained from over 150 archives and private collections worldwide. This abundance of material will be reflected in the series, revealing a significant amount of new material on her philosophy, theology and personal spiritual journey, as well as on her vision of a public health care system, her activism to achieve the difficult early steps of nursing for the sick poor in workhouse infirmaries and her views on health promotion and women’s control over midwifery. Nightingale’s more than forty years of work for public health in India, particularly in famine prevention and for broader social reform, will be reported in detail. The Collected Works of Florence Nightingale demonstrates Nightingale’s astute use of the political process and reports on her extensive correspondence with royalty, viceroys, cabinet ministers and international leaders, including such notables as Queen Victoria and W.E. Gladstone. Much new material on Nightingale’s family is reported, including some that will challenge her standard portrayal in the secondary literature. Sixteen printed volumes are scheduled and will record her enormous and largely unpublished correspondence, previously published books, articles and pamphlets, many of which have long been out of print. There will be full publication in electronic form, permitting readers to easily pursue their particular interests. Extensive databases, notably a chronology and a names index, will also be published in electronic form, again permitting convenient access to persons interested not only in Nightingale but in other figures of the time.
