Nightingales: The Extraordinary Upbringing and Curious Life of Miss Florence Nightingale [Kindle Edition]
Author: Gillian Gill | Language: English | ISBN: B000XUBCXG | Format: PDF, EPUB
Nightingales: The Extraordinary Upbringing and Curious Life of Miss Florence Nightingale
Download for free books Nightingales: The Extraordinary Upbringing and Curious Life of Miss Florence Nightingale [Kindle Edition] for everyone book mediafire, rapishare, and mirror link 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.
From the Hardcover edition. Books with free ebook downloads available Nightingales: The Extraordinary Upbringing and Curious Life of Miss Florence Nightingale
Download for free books Nightingales: The Extraordinary Upbringing and Curious Life of Miss Florence Nightingale [Kindle Edition] for everyone book mediafire, rapishare, and mirror link 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.
From the Hardcover edition. Books with free ebook downloads available Nightingales: The Extraordinary Upbringing and Curious Life of Miss Florence Nightingale
- File Size: 2971 KB
- Print Length: 592 pages
- Publisher: Random House (December 18, 2007)
- Sold by: Random House LLC
- Language: English
- ASIN: B000XUBCXG
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #205,941 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #20 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Professional & Technical > Medical eBooks > Nursing > Management, Leadership & Administration
- #75 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Professional & Technical > Medical eBooks > Special Topics > History
NIGHTINGALES: THE EXTRAORDINARY UPBRINGING AND CURIOUS LIFE OF MISS FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE BY GILLIAN GILLBy Judith J. Janone
By all accounts, Florence Nightingale was a saint although she belonged to a church that did not make such claim. A privileged Victorian family of sister, mother and father nurtured this enigma. A woman from the British upper classes ventured beyond the drawing rooms, beyond the nurseries, to find vermin and rats and sewage infesting Scutari and the Crimea where she nursed soldiers at war. To read of hospital conditions during the Crimean War is one thing, to see the organization, the singleness of purpose and the dedication that manifested a turnaround in those conditions, is perhaps difficult to fathom given current medical practices. Gillian Gill portrays an ambitious if eccentric Nightingale clan whose reach extended to 10 Downing Street and Buckingham Palace. Sibling rivalry between Florence and young Parthenope was staggering. The development of relationships within the family and those working for them is fully realized. This is a fine book. Let it not be forgotten that Florence's superiors in the Crimea were all male and they watched (and fumed) while a tiny woman succeeded where they had failed. Namely in the care of the wartime solider.
Judith Janone
Burlington, Vt.
Florence Nightingale's life holds a fascination for me. This is an extremely detailed read and Miss Gill's vocabulary is so extensive that one may desire a dictionary by one's side at times. The lifestyles of the families of privilege during the Victorian era painted a new portrait of a true hero, and opened windows to how those times still effect us today! The descriptions of hospital life during the Crimean War were eye-opening, as were the the illnesses in the Nightingale family were thought provoking from a medical and psycological standpoint. As a nurse myself, I am sorry I have not adequately appreciated "Flo"! Not easy reading, but worth the effort.By G. Martyn
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