Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands
Summary
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Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands by Mary Seacole
A far cry from the nineteenth-century slave narrative tradition, this book, written in 1857, is a special kind of success story. With delightful urbanity and wit, Mary Seacole, a free-born Jamaican Creole, recounts her childhood as a daughter of a Scottish army officer and a free black boarding-house keeper, her years as a storekeeper in a Central American frontier town, and her role as a battlefield 'doctress' to British troops in the Crimean War. She emerges as an independent and respected maternal figure, the acme of female achievement in Victorian culture, and a symbol of 'home' to British soldiers alienated by war.
"Seacole's urbanity and cosmopolitan wit, along with her indomitable spirit and frankness about her own troubles, make her narrative one of the most readable and rewarding black women's autobiographies of the nineteenth century"--William L. Andrews, in his Introduction
Mary Seacole was born in Kingston in 1805 to a Scottish father and free Jamaican mother. She learnt West African herbal medicine from her mother who ran a boarding house. She travelled extensively honing her medical knowledge and she set up a number of businesses. When the Crimean War broke out she applied for nursing work but was denied multiple times. She decided to travel to Crimea herself and opened a very successful hotel providing food and respite to soldiers. She returned to England in poor health and deep in debt. However her supporters organised fundraising events in her honour which revived her fortunes and she published her memoirs in 1857. She died in 1881.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780195052497 |
| ISBN 10 | 0195052498 |
| Title | Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands |
| Author | Mary Seacole |
| Series | The Schomburg Library Of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press Inc |
| Year published | 1988-07-28 |
| Number of pages | 256 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |