Main Page

Welcome to Wikisource, the free library that anyone can improve. 389,747 texts in English

Site index Community portal News Sandbox

MAY’S FEATURED TEXT

Grab a download!

Una and the Lion is a commemoration by Florence Nightingale of the life of Agnes Elizabeth Jones, who was the first trained nursing superintendent of the Liverpool Workhouse infirmary. The work's title is a reference to the character of Una, in The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser. Jones began her training as a nurse in 1862 at Nightingale's nursing school, and went on to become an advocate for the plight of the sick and the poor. She died of typhus fever in 1868.

ONE woman has died—a woman attractive and rich, and young and witty; yet a veiled and silent woman, distinguished by no other genius but the divine genius—working hard to train herself, in order to train others to walk in the footsteps of Him who went about doing good. To follow Him, she spent herself in activity; she overworked because others underwork. Shall we let her have died in vain?

She died, as she had lived, at her post, in one of the largest work-house infirmaries in this kingdom—the first in which trained nursing has been introduced. She is the pioneer of work-house nursing. I do not give her name; were she alive, she would beg me not. Of all human beings I have ever known, she was (I was about to say) the most free from desire of the praise of men. But I cannot say most free; for she was perfectly free. She was absolutely without human vanity; she preferred being unknown to all but God; she did not let her right hand know what her left hand did.

(Read on...)

or see all featured texts.

CURRENT COLLABORATIONS

The current Community collaboration is collecting texts related to The Sikh Religion Recent collaborations: Eminent Women Series, Edward VII of the United Kingdom, Henry David Thoreau, WikiProject NARA, Tenth Anniversary Contest

The current Proofread of the Month is Siberia and the Exile System  (1891) by George Kennan. Recent collaborations: A Motor-Flight Through France, Modern Poets and Poetry of Spain, A Vindication of the Rights of Women, Cyclopedia of Painting, Cras credemus: A Treatise on the Cultivation of the Potato, The Sclavonic Provinces of the Ottoman Empire, The Milestones and the Old Post Road, The Language of the Eye, The Man Who Knew Too Much

The current Maintenance of the Month task is Work index revision Recent collaborations: Orphans, Proposed policies and guidelines, Author page connection with Wikidata items, Help page improvement, Undated works

NEW TEXTS

France and the Levant (1920)

by Great Britain. Foreign Office. Historical Section

The Marne (1918)

by Edith Wharton

Natural History (1938)

by Pliny the Elder, translated by Harris Rackham, W.H.S. Jones, and D.E. Eichholz

Stories of Bengalee Life (1912)

by Prabhat Kumar Mukhopadhyay, translated by Self and Miriam Singleton Knight

The Luck of Roaring Camp, (1870)

by Bret Harte

The Glimpses of the Moon (1922)

by Edith Wharton

Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts (1900)

by A. T. Quiller-Couch

HIGHLIGHTS

Poetry from ancient and romantic to modern, in love and war

Texts, laws, constitutions of many countries

Documents from US history, including Revolution and Civil War

US law: Supreme Court decisions, government documents, presidential addresses

General literature: modern novels and short stories, horror stories, children’s literature, science fiction, drama

Original, encyclopedic, popular articles on relativity, physics, biology, and other sciences

EXPLORE WIKISOURCE

Authors – Index

• By era
• By genre
• By nationality
• By type

Works – Index

• By era
• By genre
• By subject
• By type

Subject index

WIKIMEDIA FOUNDATION

Wikisource is hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization which also hosts other free-content projects:

Commons	Wikibooks	Wikidata	Wikinews	Wikipedia	Wikiquote	Wikispecies	Wikiversity	Wikivoyage	Wiktionary	Meta-Wiki

Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment. And we need your help: Contribute to our projects, or make a donation. Donations are primarily used for site maintenance and software improvements.