Jeanie: An `Army of One` – Mrs Nassau Senior -  The First Woman in Whitehall
Sussex Academic Press, Brighton, UK and Portland, USA, (2008/9)

A treasure trove of hitherto unpublished, very candid letters helps reveal the amazing life-story of an extraordinary human being – artist’s muse, singer, social worker, co-founder of the British Red Cross, champion of the workhouse girl and pioneer woman Civil Servant.

`The revelation of this wise, tender and engaging portrait of Jeanie Senior is not just that she was admired by the great and good of Victorian Britain, including her brother Thomas Hughes MP (author of Tom Brown’s Schooldays),  George Eliot, Florence Nightingale, G.F.Watts, James Stansfeld and Octavia Hill, but that now we must count her as one of them`. (Seth Koven, author of Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London).

`To read about someone so intelligently humane ... is like taking a mental holiday`.(Nicholas Tucker, The Tablet.).
       
`The best outcome of gender studies has been the uncovering of neglected women pioneers of the past ... [In] this meticulously researched and beautifully written book, Oldfield has brought one of these stalwarts back to life. ... Anyone interested in the Victorian period will find this account of[Jeanie Senior's] struggles informative, absorbing - and intensely moving.` (Jacqueline  Banerjee, The Victorian Web.)

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