Florence Nightingale was born on 12 May 1820 into a rich, upper-class, well-connected British family at the Villa Colombaia, in Florence, Tuscany, Italy, and was named after the city of her birth. Florence's older sister Frances Parthenope had similarly been named after her place of birth, Parthenope, a Greek settlement now part of the city of Naples. The family moved back to England in 1821, with Nightingale being brought up in the family's homes at Embley, Hampshire and Lea Hurst, Derbyshire. Florence inherited a liberal-humanitarian outlook from both sides of her family.
Literature and the women's movement
Historian of science I. Bernard Cohen argues:  Lytton Strachey was famous for his book debunking 19th century heroes, Eminent Victorians (1918). Nightingale gets a full chapter, but instead of the debunking received praise that overall raised her national reputation and made her an icon for English feminists of the 1920s and 1930s.  While better known for her contributions in the nursing and mathematical fields, Nightingale is also an important link in the study of English feminism. She wrote some 200 books, pamphlets and articles throughout her life. During 1850 and 1852, she was struggling with her self-definition and the expectations of an upper-class marriage from her family. As she sorted out her thoughts, she wrote Suggestions for Thought to Searchers after Religious Truth. This was an 829-page, three-volume work, which Nightingale had printed privately in 1860, but which until recently was never published in its entirety. An effort to correct this was made with a 2008 publication by Wilfrid Laurier University, as volume 11 of a 16 volume project, the Collected Works of Florence Nightingale. The best known of these essays, called "Cassandra", was previously published by Ray Strachey in 1928. Strachey included it in The Cause, a history of the women's movement. Apparently, the writing served its original purpose of sorting out thoughts; Nightingale left soon after to train at the Institute for deaconesses at Kaiserswerth.  "Cassandra" protests the over-feminisation of women into near helplessness, such as Nightingale saw in her mother's and older sister's lethargic lifestyle, despite their education. She rejected their life of thoughtless comfort for the world of social service. The work also reflects her fear of her ideas being ineffective, as were Cassandra's. Cassandra was a princess of Troy who served as a priestess in the temple of Apollo during the Trojan War. The god gave her the gift of prophecy; when she refused his advances, he cursed her so that her prophetic warnings would go unheeded. Elaine Showalter called Nightingale's writing "a major text of English feminism, a link between Wollstonecraft and Woolf."  In 1972 the poet Eleanor Ross Taylor wrote "Welcome Eumenides," a poem written in Nightingale's voice and quoting frequently from Nightingale's writings. Adrienne Rich wrote that "...Eleanor Taylor has brought together the waste of women in society and the waste of men in wars and twisted them inseparably."

Q: What literature did she write?
A: she wrote Suggestions for Thought to Searchers after Religious Truth.

Q: What subjects did she write about?
A: a history of the women's movement.

Q: Was she well received by the public?
A: In 1972 the poet Eleanor Ross Taylor wrote "Welcome Eumenides," a poem written in Nightingale's voice and quoting frequently from Nightingale's writings.
What effect did she have on the Women's movement?
Elaine Showalter called Nightingale's writing "a major text of English feminism, a link between Wollstonecraft and Woolf."
Elaine Showalter called Nightingale's writing "a major text of English feminism, a link between Wollstonecraft and Woolf."