Grand Quarrel

A Grand Quarrel investigates an extraordinary dispute between two of the most brilliant women of the 19th century: novelist Elizabeth Gaskell and nursing pioneer Florence Nightingale.Gaskell had four daughters and believed mothers had a vital role throughout their children’s lives. Nightingale was an iconoclast who thought all mothers should put their babies into crèches and go out to work. Only Gaskell recorded their quarrel. But Naomi Stadlen, an historian and psychotherapist specialising in motherhood, has pieced together, from the private writings of both women, the issues at stake. Her final chapter explores how these issues are relevant, painful and still unresolved for mothers today.

Through her work as a psychotherapist, teacher, and breastfeeding counsellor, and especially as the founder and host of Mothers Talking, Stadlen explored the profound transformation that women undergo when they become mothers. She emphasized the importance of each mother’s unique role in developing a loving relationship with her baby, and shone a light on the limitations of our existing language to describe it. Her bestselling books on family and motherhood include What Mothers Do – especially when it looks like nothing (2004), hailed as ‘the best book on parenting’ by The Guardian.