The author "was a celebrated Englishwoman, noted for her beauty as a Pre-Raphaelite model and philanthropist. She was the wife of the biographer Leslie Stephen and mother of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell, members of the Bloomsbury Group."

Regarding this work the extraordinarily comprehensive Wikipedia article on Julia Stephen commented when I accessed it in 3-2020, "In addition to her tireless contributions to running the Stephen household, and attending to the needs of her relatives, she worked to support friends and supplicants. She had a strong sense of social justice, travelling around London by bus, nursing the sick in hospitals and workhouses. She would later write about her nursing experience in her Notes from Sick Rooms (1883).^[169] This is a discussion of good nursing practices, demonstrating fine attention to detail. A notable passage is her description of the misery caused by bread crumbs in the bed.^[170] "

Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.