Nightingales: The Extraordinary Upbringing and Curious Life of Miss Florence Nightingale
by Gill, Gillian
- Used
- Fine
- Hardcover
- first
- Condition
- Fine/Fine
- ISBN 10
- 0345451872
- ISBN 13
- 9780345451873
- Seller
-
Santa Barbara, California, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
New York: Ballantine Books, 2004. xxiii, 535 pages, illustrations; 24 cm. Tight, clean copy. Stated First Edition. Dust jacket protected in a mylar cover. A fine copy of the first printing. "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 Englands 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 incendiaryespecially 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. / Gillian Gill, who holds a Ph.D. in modern French literature from Cambridge, has taught at Northeastern, Wellesley, Yale, and Harvard. She is the author of Agatha Christie: The Woman and Her Mysteries and Mary Baker Eddy. She lives in a suburb of Boston." - Publisher.. 1st. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. 8vo. Collectible.
Synopsis
Gillian Gill , who holds a Ph.D. in modern French literature from Cambridge, has taught at Northeastern, Wellesley, Yale, and Harvard. She is the author of Agatha Christie: The Woman and Her Mysteries and Mary Baker Eddy . She lives in a suburb of Boston. From the Hardcover edition.
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Details
- Bookseller
- LEFT COAST BOOKS (US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 200286
- Title
- Nightingales: The Extraordinary Upbringing and Curious Life of Miss Florence Nightingale
- Author
- Gill, Gillian
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover
- Book Condition
- Used - Fine
- Jacket Condition
- Fine
- Edition
- 1st
- ISBN 10
- 0345451872
- ISBN 13
- 9780345451873
- Publisher
- Ballantine Books
- Place of Publication
- New York
- Date Published
- 2004
- Size
- 8vo
- Keywords
- Collectible
- Bookseller catalogs
- XXX / COLLECTIBLES;
Terms of Sale
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About the Seller
LEFT COAST BOOKS
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Santa Barbara, California
About LEFT COAST BOOKS
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Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Fine
- A book in fine condition exhibits no flaws. A fine condition book closely approaches As New condition, but may lack the...
- First Edition
- In book collecting, the first edition is the earliest published form of a book. A book may have more than one first edition in...
- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...
- Tight
- Used to mean that the binding of a book has not been overly loosened by frequent use.