Copyright holder: Tyndale University, 3377 Bayview Ave., Toronto, Ontario, Canada M2M 3S4 Att.: Library Director, J. William Horsey Library Copyright: This Work has been made available by the authority of the copyright owner solely for the purpose of private study and research and may not be copied or reproduced except as permitted by the copyright laws of Canada without the written authority from the copyright owner. Copyright license: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License Citation: Faught, C. Brad. Review of Florence Nightingale at First Hand, by Lynn McDonald. Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2010 ; Florence Nightingale’s Suggestions for Thought, Volume 11 of The Collected Works of Florence Nightingale, edited by Lynn McDonald. Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2008.Anglican and Episcopal History 81, no. 1 (2012): 90-92. ***** Begin Content ****** TYNDALE UNIVERSITY 3377 Bayview Avenue Toronto, ON M2M 3S4 TEL: 416.226.6620 www.tyndale.ca Note: This Work has been made available by the authority of the copyright owner solely for the purpose of private study and research and may not be copied or reproduced except as permitted by the copyright laws of Canada without the written authority from the copyright owner. Faught, C. Brad. Review of Florence Nightingale at First Hand, by Lynn McDonald. Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2010 ; Florence Nightingale’s Suggestions for Thought, Volume 11 of The Collected Works of Florence Nightingale, edited by Lynn McDonald. Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2008. Anglican and Episcopal History 81, no. 1 (2012): 90-92. 90 ANGLICAN AND EPISCOPAL HISTORY Florence Nightingale at First Hand. By Lynn McDonald. (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2010, Pp. xv, 197. CN $24.95); Florence Nightingale's Suggestions for Thought, Volume 11 of the Collected Works of Florence Nightingale. Edited by Lynn McDonald. (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2008, Pp. xiv, 794. CN $150.00.) Justly famous as the founder of modern nursing, Florence Nightin- gale’s fame has endured from the 1850s until today. The two books un- der review here provide ample evidence as to why this should be so. As both author and editor Lynn McDonald has spent much of her profes- sional career probing virtually every aspect of Nightingale’s ninety years of life. And what an amazingly productive life it was, which Nightingale’s sixteen-volume Collected Works—edited principally by McDonald— makes clear. But if the received public image of Nightingale continues to be that of the “Lady of the Lamp,” then both her own Suggestions for 91 BOOK REVIEWS Thought and McDonald’s short biography—published to mark the cen- tenary of Nightingale’s death—show her to have been a hard-headed, clear-thinking reformer, in addition to a heroic nurse. Born into wealth and social standing, Nightingale was raised to be an English gentlewoman. But in 1836, at the age of sixteen, she received a “call to service” that changed her life. The kind of service she had in mind was that of nurse. Her parents, however, would not allow it. Nursing was then the province of the lower classes and as such it was regarded as wholly unrespectable. Eventually, and despite the social op- probrium in which nursing was held, young Florence was allowed to travel to Germany and France in order to both observe and gain practical nursing experience with Lutheran deaconesses and Roman Catholic nuns. Following these experiences she was determined to devote herself to the nursing vocation. Her persistence finally convinced her father to bestow upon her an annuity in 1853, which she used to become the su- perintendent of a small hospital for women of means in London. While there Nightingale quickly turned herself into a knowledgeable nursing practitioner, with a keen eye for modernization. By 1854, her reputation in the field was such that she was asked by the British Gov- ernment (she volunteered at approximately the same time) to travel to the Barracks Hospital at Scutari to see if the appalling mortality rate of Britain’s Crimean War soldiers could be reduced. This she did success- fully, an accomplishment that won her the approbation of the press and the esteem of the government. She returned to England at war’s end in 1856 a national hero. Nightingale also returned home with a debilitating illness herself and, as a result, would live the rest of her life as a semi- invalid. Nevertheless, despite spending these years in seclusion, she en- gaged steadily in debate and policy prescription related to soldiers’ health—beginning with her 900-page Notes on the Health of the British Army, published in 1858—and, more broadly, public health reform in Victorian Britain. Throughout her life Nightingale was animated by a strong and insis- tent Christian conviction to serve society’s sick and less fortunate mem- bers. As McDonald describes it in her polemical biography, Nightingale’s service was full-orbed, modernizing, and selfless. If anything, the author is over-exercised on these points, although in her view a straightening of the record regarding Nightingale’s legacy has been made necessary by a number of ill-informed treatments in recent years. In this vein she points especially to F. B. Smith’s Florence Nightingale: Reputation and Power (1982), about which she could not have been more critical. In a way, 92 ANGLICAN AND EPISCOPAL HISTORY McDonald’s corrective had already been made with the publication of Mark Bostridge’s Florence Nightingale: The Woman and Her Legend (2008). While McDonald’s biography is useful, pointed, and, at just 197 pages, accessible, her much greater achievement lies in the meticulous editing of Nightingale’s Suggestions for Thought, along with the many other vol- umes of the Collected Works. In this regard the Nightingale project ranks with both the Gladstone diaries and the Disraeli letters as a major un- dertaking in the field of Victorian-era scholarship, and therefore is of surpassing value to historians of the period, as well as to general readers. C. Brad Faught Tyndale University College, Toronto ***** This is the end of the e-text. This e-text was brought to you by Tyndale University, J. William Horsey Library - Tyndale Digital Collections *****