Florence Nightingale Letters

A collection of letters written by and to Florence Nightingale.

Woodward Library acquired most of this collection of letters written by and to Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) from a Boston book dealer in the 1960s. The first were obtained in 1966 and are a memorial to Jean McCash Fleming Moore, RN, whose parents donated money toward their purchase. Many of this group of letters were written by Nightingale to Mme Julius Mohl (nee Mary Clarke) her long-time friend. A second purchase of about 80 letters was made also in the 1960s. A few other items have been received as individual gifts and seven letters were acquired from Hugh M. Sinclair with books and papers purchased from him.

For a lively account of some of these purchases see Dr. W.C. Gibson's remarks on the history of the Woodward Library Memorial Collection.


Thanks to Dr. Lynn McDonald at the University of Guelph for her transcriptions of the letters written by Florence Nightingale.

Additional Resources

Other sites with digitized Florence Nightingale letters:
University of Illinois at Chicago
University of Kansas, Clendening History of Medicine Library