Florence Nightingale is one of the most famous figures in modern history, yet questions have been raised as to her real achievements. Much of what we know of her emanates from unreliable second-hand accounts and from a misreading of the primary sources.
Based on her writings, Florence Nightingale at First Hand lets the legendary founder of nursing and heroine of the Crimean War speak for herself. Author Lynn McDonald is the editor of the Collected Works of Florence Nightingale (WLU Press) and the world’s foremost Nightingale authority. Chapters relate Nightingale’s background, her faith and political creed, her work during Crimean War and its aftermath, on later wars, and on reform in nursing, health care, midwifery, workhouses, hospitals, and India.
Published to commemorate the centenary of Nightingale’s death, this book presents a Florence Nightingale for the twenty-first century: she was a prodigiously astute researcher, a bold systems thinker, and a witty writer well connected with political and intellectual leaders. Her passionate dedication to her causes shines through her writing, making this book a great read.

Lynn McDonald is a professor of sociology at the University of Guelph, Ontario. She is a former president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, Canada’s largest women’s organization. As a Member of Parliament (the first “Ms” in the House of Commons), her Non-smokers Health Act made Parliamentary history as a private member’s bill, and made Canada a world leader in the “tobacco wars.” She is the author of The Early Origins of the Social Sciences (1993), and The Women Founders of the Social Sciences (1994) and editor of Women Theorists on Society and Politics (WLU Press, 1998), all of which have significant sections on Florence Nightingale.

Lynn McDonald's profile page

The author carefully documents each aspect of Nightingale's life and writings.... Clear and comprehensive.... This firsthand look at Nightingale also should serve as a catalyst for experienced researchers interested in pursuing additional resources, in both the collected works and among secondary sources, to more fully understand Nightingale's considerable influence.... Recommended.

M.P. Tarbox, Mount Mercy College, Choice, November 2010, 2010 November

This is the best short study of Florence Nightingale available and a welcome addition to the literature for Nightingale's centenary year.

Mark Bostridge, author of <i>Florence Nightingale: The Women and Her Legend</i>, 2010 February

Justly famous as the founder of modern nursing, Florence Nightingale's fame has endured from the 1950s until today. The two books under review here provide ample evidence as to why this should be so. As both author and editor Lynn McDonald has spent much of her professional 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 Thought and McDonald's short biography—published to mark the centenary of Nightingale's death—show her to have been a hard-headed, clear-thinking reformer, in addition to a heroic nurse.... The Nightingale project ranks with both the Gladstone diaries and the Disraeli letters as a major undertaking 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, Anglican and Episcopal History, Vol. 81 (1), March 2012, 2012 April