Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands (Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers) [Hardcover]

Mary Seacole (Author), William L. Andrews (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 14, 1988 | Series: Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers

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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"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

About the Author

William L. Andrews, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (April 14, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195052498
• ISBN-13: 978-0195052497
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,583,182 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mother Seacole's adventures makes you thirst for excitement, August 12, 2006

By 

Kali "bengaligirl" (United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands (Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers) (Paperback)

Mary Seacole's reputation after the Crimean War certainly rivalled that of her counterpart Florence Nightingale but for a very long time she was a forgotten footnote in history, and this probably had a lot to do with the fact she was not a white middle class woman, but was instead the offspring of two races, that of a Scottish father and a black Jamaican mother.

She was a born healer and a woman of tremendous energy, she overcame official indifference and racial prejudice as she strove to prove her worth as a Nurse on par with Nightingale herself.

Seacole got herself out to the war by her own efforts and at her own expense, she risked her life to bring comfort to the wounded and dying soldiers; and became one of the first black woman to make a mark on British public life.

But while Florence Nightingale has gone down in history, Mary Seacole was relegated to obscurity until very recently.

This book tells her story in her own words, of her travels, her experiences, her life as a woman in colour living in a time of bigotry, prejudice and racial hatred.

It's a fantastic book and brings to life in its many pages a woman of courage and moral conviction that what she was doing with her life was the right thing to do. To me Mary Seacole optimises the Crimean War in a way that Nightingale never can. A book worthy to be read in schools in the way that Anne Frank is read even now in the 21st century.

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars NEVER GOT THE PRODUCT I PAID FOR, February 1, 2011

By 

Sharon Attaway (SPRING CREEK, NEVADA, US) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands (Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers) (Paperback)

SINCE I NEVER RECEIVED THE BOOK I PAID FOR, I WOULDN'T KNOW IF I LIKED THE BOOK OR NOT. SO HOW CAN YOU LEAVE A REVIEW FOR SOMEONE THAT TOOK YOUR MONEY BUT DIDN'T SENT YOU THE PRODUCT?