
In Search of Mary Seacole
The Making of a Black Cultural Icon and Humanitarian
- 416 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
From New York Times bestselling author Helen Rappaport comes asuperb and revealing biographyof Mary Seacole that is testament to her remarkable achievements andcorrective to the myths that have grown around her. Raised in Jamaica, Mary Seacole first came to England in the 1850s afterworking in Panama. She wanted tovolunteer as a nurse and aide during the Crimean War.When her services were rejected, she financed her own expedition to Balaclava, where her reputation for her nursingâand for her compassionâbecame almost legendary.Popularly known as 'Mother Seacole', she was the most famous Black celebrity of her generationâan extraordinary achievement in Victorian Britain.She regularly mixed with illustrious royal and military patrons and they, along with grateful war veterans, helped her recover financially when she faced bankruptcy. However, after her death in 1881, she was largely forgotten.More recently, her profile has been revived and her reputation lionised, with a statue of her standing outside St Thomas's Hospital in London and her portraitârediscovered by the authorânow on display in the National Portrait Gallery. In Search of Mary Seacole is the fruit of almost twenty years of research and reveals the truth about Seacole's personal life, her "rivalry" with Florence Nightingale, and other misconceptions.Vivid and moving, In Search of Mary Seacole shows thatreality is oftem more remarkable and more dramatic than thelegend.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Prologue: âA Real Crimean Heroineâ
- Chapter 1: âThe Isle of Springsâ
- Chapter 2: âMy Father was a Soldier, of an Old Scotch Familyâ
- Chapter 3: âThe Most Broiling Place in the Universeâ
- Chapter 4: The Myth of Blundell Hall
- Chapter 5: âAn Admirable Doctressâ
- Chapter 6: âThat Longing for Travel Which Will Never Leave Meâ
- Chapter 7: âA Certain Arrangement Timidly Proposed by Mr Seacoleâ
- Chapter 8: âLeft Alone to Battle with the Worldâ
- Chapter 9: âThe Graveyard of Europeansâ
- Chapter 10: âA Villainous Looking Little Placeâ
- Chapter 11: âThe Yellow Woman with the Cholera Medicineâ
- Chapter 12: âA Wild and Unprofitable Speculationâ
- Chapter 13: An âUnknown Creole Womanâ Goes to War
- Chapter 14: âThe Rightness of the Step I Had Takenâ
- Chapter 15: A âTea-shedâ at Balaclava
- Chapter 16: âA Good Mother, Doctor and Nurse to Allâ
- Chapter 17: âThe Dark Maid of the Eastern Warâ
- Chapter 18: âNothing in the World I Would Not Do For Themâ
- Chapter 19: âThe âGood Samaritanâ in the Crimeaâ
- Chapter 20: âAm I Not a First-Class Woman?â
- Chapter 21: Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands
- Chapter 22: âMy Sister Wanted to Go to Indiaâ
- Chapter 23: âThat Brave and Charitable Old Womanâ
- Chapter 24: âMrs Seacoleâs Specificâ
- Chapter 25: âA Niche in the Temple of Fameâ
- Chapter 26: âThe Identity of Mrs Seacole: A Little Yellow Womanâ
- Chapter 27: The Making of a Cultural Icon
- Photographs
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Copyright