In Search of Mary Seacole, Helen Rappaport
In Search of Mary Seacole, Helen Rappaport
List: $22.95 | Sale: $16.07
Club: $11.47

In Search of Mary Seacole
The Making of a Black Cultural Icon and Humanitarian

Author: Helen Rappaport

Narrator: Helen Rappaport

Unabridged: 13 hr 1 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/04/2023

Synopsis

From New York Times bestselling author Helen Rappaport comes a superb and revealing biography of Mary Seacole that is testament to her remarkable achievements and corrective to the myths that have grown around her.Raised in Jamaica, Mary Seacole first came to England in the 1850s after working in Panama. She wanted to volunteer as a nurse and aide during the Crimean War. When her services were rejected, she financed her own expedition to Balaclava, where her reputation for her nursing—and for her compassion—became almost legendary.Popularly known as “Mother Seacole,” she was the most famous Black celebrity of her generation—an extraordinary achievement in Victorian Britain. She regularly mixed with illustrious royal and military patrons, and they, along with grateful war veterans, helped her recover financially when she faced bankruptcy. However, after her death in 1881, she was largely forgotten.More recently, her profile has been revived and her reputation lionized, with a statue of her standing outside St. Thomas’s Hospital in London and her portrait—rediscovered by the author—now on display in the National Portrait Gallery.This book is the fruit of almost twenty years of research and reveals the truth about Seacole’s personal life, her “rivalry” with Florence Nightingale, and other misconceptions.Vivid and moving, In Search of Mary Seacole shows that reality is often more remarkable and more dramatic than the legend.

About Helen Rappaport

Helen Rappaport is the author of The Romanov Sisters, The Last Days of the  Romanovs, and many other critically acclaimed titles. She has been a full-time writer for more than twenty-three years, and in 2003 discovered and purchased an 1869 portrait of Mary Seacole that now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery, sparking a long investigation into Seacole’s life and career.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Katie.dorny on August 30, 2022

Mary Seacole is an ICON - what a wonderful book detailing this woman’s life from Jamaica, then Panama, England to the Crimean War and and back again. Without this author’s work at discovering Mary and her life (plus her social celebrity in Victorian times) I would never have heard of her. Which cons......more

Goodreads review by Adaeze on October 25, 2024

Fantastic fantastic book. It was almost like watching a documentary- fascinating history with pictures. I learnt so much more about Mary Seacole and it has lead me to read more about mixed race people in the Victorian times and earlier, and feels good to know people like me existed hundreds of years......more

Goodreads review by Sammy on March 16, 2023

All I knew about Mary Seacole before now was that she was a nurse and she wasn’t Florence Nightingale. Well it turns out she wasn’t even a nurse - or was she? What’s clever about this book is that it isn’t just a straight biography of Mary Seacole. It also deals a lot in truth and interpretation - i......more

Goodreads review by Susan on August 30, 2023

I was really interested to read this biography of Mary Seacole a nurse in the Crimean war. I had heard of her only in recent years when the school I worked at began teaching the year two children about her rather than Florence Nightingale. So a definitive biography giving an insight into the life of......more

Goodreads review by Bookreporter.com on September 10, 2022

Biographer Helen Rappaport has brought to new life the dynamic, daring, caregiving Mary Seacole, whose memory was for many years forgotten, in this remarkable look at history, racial issues, medical treatment and women’s liberation. Seacole was born in Jamaica in 1805 to a local woman, Rebecca Grant,......more

Quotes

“Readers will be swept away.” People

“A multifaceted account. Grippingly and thoroughly researched.” Harper’s Bazaar

“Sheds light on the life of a woman who, in her own day, was as famous as Florence Nightingale.” New York Times Book Review

“A truly remarkable medical pioneer.” Literary Review

“An astonishingly rich story. This wonderfully informative book presents Seacole in all her roundness: a ministering angel who was no angel; a driven woman who basked in adulation, and was forgotten for ninety years after her death.” The Times (London)

“Riveting…A strong-willed woman revived by an indefatigable biographer.” Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“A fascinating reclamation of the story of a remarkable woman.” Booklist

“Lively and entertaining…Seacole has become such an iconic figure that many legends have grown up around her, but Rappaport’s book is a more valuable monument to Seacole’s legacy than that painting [she discovered], or many of the other books and poems celebrating her life. Myth is important; but not as important as history.” The Sunday Times (London)

“Impressive. The Seacole we meet in these pages is enterprising, intrepid, and, really, rather shrewd.” The Daily Telegraph (London)

“Richly detailed. What leaps from these pages, as well as Seacole’s remarkable deeds and character, is the great esteem, indeed love, in which she was held. In this wonderful book, Dr. Rappaport has created a fitting tribute.” Country Life

Add to Cart
Add to Wish List