• The best books on Mary Seacole - Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands by Mary Seacole
  • The best books on Mary Seacole - Victorian Lady Travellers by Dorothy Middleton
  • The best books on Mary Seacole - Florence Nightingale: The Woman and Her Legend by Mark Bostridge
  • The best books on Mary Seacole - Mrs Duberly's War: Journal and Letters from the Crimea, 1854-6 by Fanny Duberly, edited by Christine Kelly
  • The best books on Mary Seacole - An American Diary by Barbara Bodichon

The best books on Mary Seacole, recommended by Jane Robinson

Mary Seacole looked after and provided support to British troops during the Crimean War (1853-1856), setting up a hotel for sick and recovering soldiers close to the fighting near Balaclava. In her day, she was as celebrated as Florence Nightingale, but it was not until the rediscovery and publication of her diary in the 1980s that she came to be widely known as a Victorian heroine in modern times. In 2016, a memorial statue of her was unveiled in London, the first in the UK in honour of a named Black woman. Here her biographer, Jane Robinson, tells us more about the remarkable life of Mary Seacole and the world she lived in.

  • The best books on Ada Lovelace - In Byron's Wake: The Turbulent Lives of Lord Byron's Wife and Daughter: Annabella Milbanke and Ada Lovelace by Miranda Seymour
  • The best books on Ada Lovelace - Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception and Secret Authorship of 'The Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' by James Secord
  • The best books on Ada Lovelace - Mathematics in Victorian Britain by Adrian Rice, Raymond Flood & Robin Wilson
  • The best books on Ada Lovelace - The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage by Sydney Padua
  • The best books on Ada Lovelace - Middlemarch by George Eliot

The best books on Ada Lovelace, recommended by Ursula Martin

Ada Lovelace has become an iconic figure for women in science and is often credited with the invention of modern computing. But, as Ursula Martin—mathematician, computer scientist and Lovelace biographer—explains, all of that is a bit overblown. The Lovelace myth obscures the truth about a woman who was certainly a very brilliant mathematician, but who was also often frustrated in her scientific ambitions, in poor health and unhappy.

  • David Russell on The Victorian Essay - Selected Prose by Charles Lamb
  • David Russell on The Victorian Essay - Culture and Anarchy and Other Writings by Matthew Arnold
  • David Russell on The Victorian Essay - Selected Essays, Poems, and Other Writings by George Eliot
  • David Russell on The Victorian Essay - Studies in the History of the Renaissance by Walter Pater
  • David Russell on The Victorian Essay - The Hands of the Living God: An Account of a Psychoanalytic Treatment by Marion Milner

David Russell on The Victorian Essay

With the advent of the Victorian age, polite maxims of eighteenth-century essays in the Spectator were replaced by a new generation of writers who thought deeply—and playfully—about social relationships, moral responsibility, education and culture. Here, Oxford literary critic David Russell explores the distinct qualities that define the Victorian essay and recommends five of its greatest practitioners.