Reed Autograph Letters Album A, no. 25: Florence Nightingale.
One of A.H. Reed’s favourite pastimes was identifying, sorting, and mounting for display his autograph letter collection. In the 1920s he offered to the City Librarian the opportunity to create a different display of his letters each week, and a special display case was constructed for this purpose.
Around the same time, Reed began work on this magnificent album of mounted letters for the Dunedin celebrations of New Zealand’s centennial in 1940. Arranged chronologically, it contains sixty letters by historical figures, all supplemented with portraits, biographical notes, and quotations in his calligraphic hand. The album was eventually deposited in the Library and Reed subsequently completed a further five albums for Dunedin, and one each for the other main centres.
Album A is open at Florence Nightingale (1820-1910), the British heroine of the Crimean War. Nightingale was a figure of immense reverence for Reed, who in 1960 wrote and published a short biography of ‘The lady with the lamp’ for children. As a child in the 1880s, Reed had spent more than a year in hospital, with a leg ailment so severe that amputation was considered. He viewed his recovery as miraculous, an experience that no doubt influenced his later interest in volunteering at Dunedin Hospital’s children’s ward.
