Florence Nightingaleas European Travels: Collected Works of Florence Nightingale, Volume 7

This seventh volume in the Collected Works of Florence Nightingale consists of letters, observations, and notes from Florence Nightingale’s many trips to Europe, beginning with a family journey when she was a teenager. It includes annotations she made on opera libretti from her ‘music mad’ phase and her winter in Rome (1847-48) which were so important in shaping her liberal politics and support for independence movements. Her letters and notes from Greece and central Europe in 1850, and her Kaiserswerth stay in 1851, reveal her developing ideas on social reform, as well as her first professional training. Materials from 1853 provide information on her training in Paris hospitals. Volume 7 also contains letters and observations from her excursions to Scotland, Ireland, and all over England, from her childhood on. Many of the letters in European Travels were uncatalogued items buried in archives and will be new to Nightingale scholars. The information gathered in this volume adds considerably to what can be learned about the formative influences in Nightingale’s life, politics, and faith.