Nightingales: The Extraordinary Upbringing and Curious Life of Miss Florence Nightingale

Name: Nightingales: The Extraordinary Upbringing and Curious Life of Miss Florence Nightingale
Price: 19.60 USD
Availability: InStock
Author: Gillian Gill
ISBN: 9780345451880

Born to an adoring wealthy, cultivated father and a mother whose conventional facade concealed a surprisingly unfettered intelligence, Florence was connected 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 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. This matrimonial refusal was at once an act of religious dedication and a cry for her freedom. 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. 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.