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    The Biography of Florence Nightingale
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    The Biography of Florence Nightingale
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    The Biography of Florence Nightingale
    Ebook72 pages1 hour

    The Biography of Florence Nightingale

    By Lytton Strachey

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Florence Nightingale was a healer, a comforter, and a nurturer. But like all of us, she had a dark side. Because of her mystique and her charisma, she always got what she wanted. Seldom did anyone really know her. They were drawn to her. They had to be with her. They admired her. At least one man literally worked himself to death for her. But they did not really know her. There is no doubt she was a force with which one had to attend. Denial of her passion and abilities generally led only to personal devastation! Now you can discover the darker side of Florence Nightingale.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherStart Publishing LLC
    Release dateFeb 6, 2013
    ISBN9781625582966
    Unavailable
    The Biography of Florence Nightingale
    Author

    Lytton Strachey

    Lytton Strachey (1880-1932) , one of the most famous writers of his time, was a pioneer of a new style of biography. A founding member of the Bloomsbury Group, he was best known for writing Eminent Victorians, a collection of biographies of Victorian heroes: Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Thomas Arnold, and General Gordon. He is also the author of, among others, Landmarks, Elizabeth and Essex and Queen Victoria.

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    Reviews for The Biography of Florence Nightingale

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    • 4/5
      This book was undoubtedly daring and iconoclastic when it was published. It skewers some Victorian sacred cows while exposing the worst characteristics of the Victorians, dourly cruel religiosity, ruthlessly cruel ambition, and stupidly cruel hypocrisy. The prose is deft and devastating.
    • 4/5
      I read "Eminent Victorians" a few years ago, but I don't think I understood why it was considered an interesting or notable history. After this rereading, I think I might get it. It's not the biographical data it contains that makes it important: it's bibliography isn't exactly extensive, and, while Florence Nightingale is likely to be the only figure here that is still familiar to modern readers, all four of its subjects were extremely famous in their own day. In witty, strategically understated prose, Strachey argues that these four personages owed a great deal of their success to less-than-admirable character traits: a superficial morality that masked powerful ambitions, a constant tension between self-promotion and self-abnegation, a talent for organization and bureaucratic maneuvering, and an overweening self-confidence and, sometimes, an astonishing disregard for facts. I was, for example, amazed to learn that for all the work she did in sanitation and medical training, Ms. Nightingale wasn't convinced by Pasteur's germ theory. It should probably be noted that Strachey might have been writing with an agenda in mind; he belonged to a social set that sought to unmask what they saw as Victorian hypocrisy. Still, the portraits he presents here are largely convincing. He seems to have a talent for isolating the most revealing bits of the mountains of personal memoranda and personal docuementation that each of his subjects left behind. In any event, his book still serves as a valuable historical document: reading the self-lacerating diary entries of the thinkers involved in the Oxford Movement, or bits of General Gordon's manic, messianic account of the siege of Khartoum might tell you more about the Victorian mindset than an armful of Trollope. Especially recommended to those with a special interest in the Victorian period or in the Modernists who sought to overcome their Victorian origins and seek a new path.
    • 3/5
      Although it sometimes comes at the expense of clarity, there is some artful writing here. Some examples: On public school education: "A system of anarchy tempered by despotism. A life in which licensed barbarism was mingled with the daily and hourly study of the niceties of Ovidian verse." On Monsignor Talbot: He could apply flattery with so unsparing a hand that even princes of the church found it sufficient." On Dr. Hall: "A rough terrier of a man who had worried his way to the top of his profession." On Cardinal Newman: "With a sinking heart, he realized at last the painful truth: it was not the nature of his views, it was his having views at all that was objectionable." If it is sardonic wit you want, you will find it here, in these four essays. Whether you will find these particular Victorians interesting is another matter. General Gordon, Florence Nightingale, Dr. Thomas Arnold, and Cardinal Manning are not as relevant today as they once were. But these psychological essays created quite a stir in their time, and even changed the course of the art of biography.
    • 2/5
      I think a lot of the ground-breaking irreverence and wit of Eminent Victorians was lost on me as a 21st century reader where our leaders and heroes are often presented warts and all. No one is so revered that he or she is not subject to some sort of ridicule and in fact I'd go so far as to say that dwelling on someone's faults tends to be the norm. At any rate, it was an informative read and I did find myself chuckling here and there at the author's cheek. I found the section on Florence Nightengale most interesting.
    • 5/5
      Lytton Strachey is credited with reinventing the art of writing biographies in his brilliant Eminent Victorians. Strachey published the book in 1918, not long after the end of the Victorian Era. Rather than attempt a comprehensive history of the Victorian Era, which he viewed as impossible, Strachey instead wrote short biographies of four truly eminent Victorians that punctured the moral pretensions and historical myths of that famous era. Strachey's subjects are barely remembered today. I suppose Florence Nightingale's name has some small current familiarity because of its association with selflessly nursing injured soldiers. I found her biography to be the flattest of them all. She came from a privileged background, stubbornly resisted her parents' efforts to marry her off, and exerted remarkable energy, persistence, and fortitude to accomplish significant changes in military medicine (which previously languished in a horrific state). Strachey's Dr. Arnold is a cautious educational reformer at best, rather than the revered innovator who established the English Public School system. The education provided at Arnold's Rugby School was quite limited with a dreary focus on religion and the classics. The sciences were entirely neglected. He did establish the prefectorial system whereby the old boys terrorized the younger boys who in their turn got to terrorize the next batch. Readers of Flashman will recognize Dr. Arnold as the head of the school that produced Tom Brown (and kicked Flashman out for drunkenness). Strachey's treatment of the life of Cardinal Manning is fascinating although the subject is arcane. Even in 1918 when Strachey wrote his book he said that few remembered Manning. The Pope's recent visit to the UK highlighted one Manning's archrivals, Cardinal Newman. Both Manning and Newman had risen high in the Anglican hierarchy when the Oxford Movement gradually led them to doubt that Henry VIII had been divinely inspired when he founded that church. Both converted to Catholicism, but the politically astute Manning managed a meteoric rise to Cardinal (with the connivance of the Pope's top assistant) while Newman languished in obscurity. Newman had ideas and ideas were threatening and indeed essentially heretical to Pio Nono, Pius IX (the pope who formally decreed papal infallibility). Only in his dotage was Newman gifted the red hat when the Duke of Norfolk intervened with the Pope on his behalf. Strachey's life of Cardinal Manning is simply a treat of wonderful writing, wit, with a thorough skewering of papal pomposity. The highlight of Eminent Victorians, for me, was the final biography of General Gordon, in which Strachey blows apart the mythology surrounding Gordon and indeed the Empire. Gordon had been hired by the leaders of Shanghai during the Taiping Rebellion to lead the Ever Victorious Army, which as Strachey notes had been seldom victorious prior to Gordon's ascendancy. Gordon famously dispatched the rebels. Gordon later served as British governor-general of the Sudan, but more often worked as a mercenary. He had returned to England and relative obscurity when the Mahdi Revolt broke out in the Sudan (see Mahdi Revolt). Gladstone wanted nothing more than to exit the Sudan, but he needed someone self-effacing with diplomatic skill for the job. Conservative elements in Gladstone's own government hit upon Gordon as the ideal man for the job. It is difficult to imagine any person less suited for the task of withdrawing than the strong-willed, idiosyncratic, and mercurial Gordon. With the appointment made, the die was cast: Gordon arrived in Khartoum, decided he could not abandon those fine people, and ended up a martyr when the city was predictably overrun (refusing numerous opportunities to leave for safety). The Gordon biography is simply high art. Bertrand Russell described Eminent Victorians as "brilliant, delicious, exquisitely civilized". I agree completely. Read it.
    • 5/5
      Ok. Monocle? Check. Queen Anne chair? Check. Glowing embers, hearth? Check. So then, camera, action! "There comes a time, as one explores British Literature more thoroughly, when one encounters the name 'Lytton Strachey' with increasing frequency. At some point a refererence is made to his innovations in the craft of biography. Or perhaps, as one learns of the Bloomsbury group, or the euphemism, 'the love that dares not speak its name,' one becomes intrigued, and indulges in a bit of the old Googly-Wikipee."Cough.Well, finally, I did get around to reading Strachey's Eminent Victorians, after many years of encountering his reputation. My motivation was to learn a bit more about the Victorian era. I attached an extra memory disk to my cerebral jack slot, and prepared for a bit of a slog. History, even when made more palatable by the spice of biography, can be a cross between beef jerky and a dog chewy. And it was not like I knew anything about Cardinal Manning, Dr.Arnold, or General Gordon. As for Florence Nightingale, somehow, over the years, her name had become all bollixed up in my storm ravaged brain with Jenny Lind, and it was a relief to be reminded that she had something to do with hospitals. I knew that...What a surprise! Turns out that Lytton Strachey is the grandfather of Kitty Kelley, and the great-grandfather of E! News. To simplify this review a tad, these Victorian Eminences were:- a clerical backstabber (Manning)- a prig of an educator (Arnold)- a mad dog of a military man (Gordon)- a workaholic do-gooder (Nightingale).Not that Strachey is quite so blunt. The section on Manning is an excellent introduction to the Oxford Movement, Tractarianism, Cardinal Newman, and the upheavals in the Anglican Church. The section on Arnold provides a picture of the possibilities of educational modernization and reform that were shelved for a generation. General Gordon illustrates how the British military, and by implication the Empire, grew more unwieldy, like an extended halberd, with its operations in China and Africa. Nightingale is treated in a kindly manner; her leadership in hospital reform, and heroic work with Crimean war wounded were commendable. But it took her monomaniacal personality to budge the inertia and chauvanism of the British bureaucracy.Strachey's style is colorful and clear. And after a mere 340 pages, he provides the reader with psychological portraits of four vivid and distinct Victorian personalities. But the genius of Strachey's masterpiece, is how, just as laser beams create a hologram, these four flawed personalities illuminate the Victorian era, recreating its dynamism and its confusion. In short, suggesting how an Empire came to be, and came to be lost.
    • 4/5
      Strachey's intent is to criticize Victorian England by presenting humorously satirical biographies of the age's heroes. I think he is successful, except in the case of Florence Nightingale, who comes off as a great, brave woman in spite Strachey's revelation of her flaws (which seem to me rather typical of those who achieve great things in spite of huge obstacles). Now I want to read a good biography of Nightingale.
    • 2/5
      Perhaps more a literary classic than good history. Probably unfair to its subjects, but notoriously clever about saying it.
    • 5/5
      A little man's attempts to pull down his betters so as to salve his fragile ego; he fails. Maybe it just me, but what person with half a wit doesn't know everyone is screwed up somehow! This is news to Strachey? I just assume people are screwed up from the git go and then see what they do from there. I'm no Anglophile, but Strachey made Gordon a human character to me, I'm sure that wasn't his intent, just goes to show.