Florence Nightingale was one of the most prolific letter-writers of the Victorian era. For forty years after she returned to England at the end of the Crimean War, most of her correspondence was with government officials, civil servants, scientists and medical professionals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lynn McDonald, a former professor of sociology at he University of Guelph, organised an international collaboration of scholars aiming to transcribe and catalogue all<\/u> of Nightingale’s letters. Many were in academic archives, but some were in private hands where they had become family heirloooms. McDonald published some of the letters in her 16-volume Collected Works of Florence Nightingale,<\/em> and has now made the complete transcripts available online. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Searching the archive is well within the capacity of most home computers. It is a valuable primary source for independent historians. <\/p>\n\n\n\n