First World War Nursing: New Perspectives

This book brings together a collection of works by scholars who have produced some of the most innovative and influential work on the topic of First World War nursing in the last ten years. The contributors employ an interdisciplinary collaborative approach that takes into account multiple facets of Allied wartime nursing: historical contexts (history of the profession, recruitment, teaching, different national socio-political contexts), popular cultural stereotypes (in propaganda, popular culture) and longstanding gender norms (woman-as-nurturer). They draw on a wide range of hitherto neglected historical sources, including diaries, novels, letters and material culture. The result is a fully-rounded new study of nurses’ unique and compelling perspectives on the unprecedented experiences of the First World War.

Alison S. Fell is Professor of French Cultural History at the University of Leeds. She has published widely on French and British women and the First World War, including two edited volumes: (with Ingrid Sharp) The Women’s Movement in Wartime: International Perspectives 1914-1919 (Palgrave, 2007) and Les Femmes face à la guerre (Peter Lang, 2009). She is currently completing a monograph, Back to the Front: Women as Veterans in France and Britain, 1916-33, and is leading an AHRC-funded research project entitled “Legacies of War 1914-18/2014-18.”

Christine E. Hallett is Professor of Nursing History at the University of Manchester, UK. She is Chair of the UK Association for the History of Nursing and was Founding Chair of the European Association for the History of Nursing. Professor Hallett holds Fellowships of the Royal Society of Medicine, UK and the Royal Society for the Arts, UK. Her publications include the critically-acclaimed monograph, Containing Trauma: Nursing Work in the First World War (Manchester University Press, 2009) and the popular Celebrating Nurses: A Visual History (Fil Rouge Press, 2010).