Baskin -- 1800s
Title:
Baskin -- 1800s
Collection Items
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Progress of Female Virtue: Engraved by A. Cardon from the Original Drawings by Mrs. Cosway
Maria Hadfield grew up in Florence, where she studied art, copying paintings at the Uffizi under Johan Zoffany. She was elected to the Florentine Accademia delle Arti del Disegno at eighteen. Influenced by Henry Fuseli and Angelica Kauffman, Cosway continued to paint after her marriage, but her husband, the miniaturist Richard Cosway, would not permit her to sell her work. A pioneer in liberal education, she established a number of girls schools in Italy. The aquatints in Progress of Female Virtue are from her drawings. -
[Creamer with an image of the Ladies of Llangollen]; [Ladies of Llangollen figurine]
In the late eighteenth century, aristocrat Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, the young orphaned daughter of Chambre Brabazon Ponsonby, abandoned their lives in Ireland and made a home for themselves in Llangollen, Wales, to the disapproval of both their families. Known as the Ladies of Llangollen, they appeared to have understood their relationship as a marriage. They were part of an emerging culture of relationships between same-sex couples. In the nineteenth century there was a thriving industry producing and selling objects commemorating the Ladies of Llangollen. Their images graced Staffordshire transfer-ware pottery, popular prints, and multitudes of ephemera. -
Letter to Mrs. Sarah Tighe
In the late eighteenth century, aristocrat Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, the young orphaned daughter of Chambre Brabazon Ponsonby, abandoned their lives in Ireland and made a home for themselves in Llangollen, Wales, to the disapproval of both their families. Known as the Ladies of Llangollen, they appeared to have understood their relationship as a marriage. They were part of an emerging culture of relationships between same-sex couples. When the women eloped, Butler’s annuity was cut off by her disapproving sister-in-law. The women now depended on income supplements from the Butlers and from Ponsonby’s cousin Sarah Tighe, as well as gifts from friends. Ponsonby and Tighe corresponded regularly. In this letter Ponsonby approves Tighe’s decision not to sell the house on Dominick Street in Dublin, where Ponsonby once lived with her sexually predatory guardian Sir William Fownes. In it she refers to Butler as “my Betterhalf.” The Lisa Unger Baskin Collection includes over 350 letters to and from the Ladies. -
Deed of emancipation, Court held for Norfolk County, Virginia
This deed attests that Thomas Smith used Susannah Mallory’s own money to purchase her freedom from attorney Charles King Mallory of Elizabeth City County, Virginia. Susannah Mallory paid sixty dollars to emancipate herself. Some enslaved persons in Virginia were permitted by their masters to earn money from work done on their personal time, including hiring out their labor. Smith notes he acted only as her “Friendly agent,” and he resigns any legal right to her service. Susannah was then about fifty-five years old. -
Sabbath lessons, or, An abstract of sacred history: to which is annexed, a geographical sketch of the principal places mentioned in sacred history
Eliza Palmer Peabody was a writer and educator. After her marriage, she started a household school that abandoned the rote recitation used in boys’ schools and instead encouraged a conversational model. She instilled in her pupils a belief in women and men’s equal capability as learners and in “the paramount importance of women to American civilization.” The class materials she developed were subsequently published. Her three daughters—Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Sophia Hawthorne, and Mary Peabody Mann—were each notable in their own right. -
Census directory for 1811: containing the names, occupations, & residence of the inhabitants of the city, Southwark & Northern Liberties, a separate division being allotted to persons of colour: to which is annexed an appendix containing much useful information, and a perpetual calendar
The most significant woman bookbinder of the early American Republic, Jane Aitken ran the bindery at her father’s printing office. Her first imprint appears in 1796. In 1808 she printed and bound Thomson’s Bible (also in the collection), the first English translation of the Septuagint, the earliest Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures. Aitken was the first American woman to print a Bible (Thomson's Bible, also in the collection.) Upon her father’s death in 1802, Aitken inherited the printing works and bookshop along with significant debt that had been incurred not by the shop but by her late brother-in-law. In 1813, all her equipment was sold, and Jane Aitken was imprisoned for debt. After her release, she continued to work as a bookbinder, but by 1815 her career as a printer was over. The Census Directory for 1811 is the first published census to include African Americans. It lists names, home addresses, and occupations for all Philadelphia inhabitants, as well as for local businesses, organizations, and professions, such as the Anti-Slavery Society, Mr. Peale’s Museum, churches, midwives, and “layers out of the dead.” -
A portraiture of domestic slavery, in the United States: with reflections on the practicability of restoring the moral rights of the slave, without impairing the legal privileges of the possessor; and, a project of a colonial asylum for free persons of colour, including memoirs of facts on the interior traffic in slaves, and, on kidnapping: illustrated with engravings
In November 1815, Ann Williams and her daughters were torn from their family and sold to Georgia slave traders. In desperation, Williams jumped out a third-story window. Jesse Torrey, a physician visiting Washington, hearing her story, sought to interview her. He found her in bed with a broken back and broken arm. Her daughters had been taken south to be sold. Torrey subsequently published this account along with other narratives that he chronicled. In 1816 Williams’ suicide attempt prompted a Congressional inquiry into interstate slave trade. Williams later successfully petitioned for her freedom and for that of her children. -
Cosmographie
Bound in a lovely pink, gilt-edged and stamped glazed paper binding, schoolgirl Emma Lascal’s beautifully observed and sensitively drawn cosmography report summarizes the astronomical knowledge of her day. Nineteenth-century advances in the telescope resulted in a heightened popular interest in astronomy across Europe. Lascal, a student at the Convent of Notre Dame in Paris, created this manuscript for her “2eme classe.” She illustrates the phases of the moon, the heavenly constellations, and a comparison of the Ptolemaic and Copernican systems. -
[Anti-slavery dessert service]
In Great Britain and the United States, women organized anti-slavery bazaars throughout the North to raise money and awareness for the cause. Members of female anti-slavery societies sold tokens, pottery, quilts, books, prints, and needlework. Some items were commercially produced, others made by hand. This dessert service is likely Staffordshire pottery transfer-ware. The images of two iconic elements of the visual vocabulary of the abolitionist movement—a black man kneeling in chains, and a black woman cradling a child—as well as the surrounding biblical passages were meant to evoke sympathy for the cause. The collection holds ten pieces, including a footed compote. -
Manuscript receipt for “printing certificates of spirits, wines & teas imported in the first quarter of 1823”
Sister of two printers and married to another, Lydia Bailey was an experienced printer when she inherited a struggling shop upon the death of her husband in 1808. Industrious and enterprising, she printed for the Presbyterian church and numerous charitable organizations, including the Female Tract Society. From 1813 she was Printer to the City of Philadelphia, and master printer at one of the busiest printing shops in the city, employing over forty workers. The business printed almanacs, annual reports, bookseller catalogues, broadsides, and chapbooks. She was a printer for fifty-three years. -
Murder: Whereas Robert Smith, Late of Deptford, Shoe-maker, Stands Charged with the Murder of his Uncle, Mr. James Smith, of Lewisham [. . .]
Elizabeth Delahoy was a printer, binder, and stationer in Greenwich. Sadly, in 1808, a fire destroyed the shop she owned with her husband, taking his life. She carried on their business at least through 1824, while simultaneously running a boarding house and raising children. She printed typographically complex books alongside bread-and-butter job printing, such as this broadside. Delahoy advertises the speed with which she can print notices regarding crime or loss at her press. -
[Reward of merit for neatness and order given to Mary Morgan]
Following her husband’s financial losses, historian, educator, and writer Emma Willard established a boarding school in her home in Middlebury, Vermont. In 1821 she opened the Troy Female Seminary, offering women a college preparatory education on par with that available to men. The curriculum included science, mathematics, geography, and philosophy. The school was funded by the Common Council of Troy, New York. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was educated at the Troy Female Seminary, although Willard did not support the suffrage movement. The school remains open today as The Emma Willard School. -
Memorial de l'art des accouchemens, ou, Principes fondés sur la pratique de l'Hospice de la maternité de Paris et sur celle des plus célèbres praticiens nationaux et étrangers : suivis, 1° des aphorismes de Mauriceau; 2° d'une série de 140 gravures représtant le mécanisme de toutes les espèces d'accouchemens : ouvrage placé, par décision ministérielle, au rang des livres classiques à l'usage des élèves de l'Ecole d'accouchemens de Paris...
French midwife Marie Boivin is considered one of the first great modern practitioners of obstetrics and gynecology. Boivin began her studies at a nunnery in Étampes and later worked under accomplished midwife Marie-Louise Lachapelle. She invented a new speculum and wrote numerous treatises, including Memorial de l’art des accouchemens, first published in 1812. This manual was published in many editions and translated into several European languages. Boivin also translated medical works from English and directed numerous hospitals throughout her career. -
Appeal of one half the human race, women, against the pretensions of the other half, men: to retain them in political, and hence in civil and domestic, slavery; in reply to a paragraph of Mr. Mill's celebrated "Article on government"
Philosopher Anna Wheeler was self-educated, reading Diderot, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Mary Hays. Known as the "Goddess of Reason," she was ideologically aligned with French utopian socialist Charles Fourier. After leaving an abusive marriage with an alcoholic husband, she was critical of marriage and proposed cooperative community living as an alternative. In 1825 she collaborated with William Thompson on the socialist feminist Appeal. Thompson considered the text their joint property. Wheeler was among the first women to lecture publicly on the “Rights of Women.” She wrote using the pseudonym Vlasta, publishing articles on subjects such as the enslavement of women for men’s sensual pleasure and advocating the use of contraception. Wheeler's great-granddaughter was Lady Constance Lytton, the comrade of Emmeline Pankhurst. -
Geography for beginners, or, The instructer's assistant in giving first lessons from maps in the style of familiar conversation, accompanied with an atlas: being intended as the first, or introductory book, to a series of geographical works, by William C. Woodbridge, and Emma Willard, of which, the second book is entitled "The rudiments of geography," the third book, "Universal geography"
Following her husband’s financial losses, historian, educator, and writer Emma Willard established a boarding school in her home in Middlebury, Vermont. In 1821 she opened the Troy Female Seminary, offering women a college preparatory education on par with that available to men. The curriculum included science, mathematics, geography and philosophy. The school remains open today as The Emma Willard School. -
The Rt. Honble. Lady Eleanor Butler & Miss Ponsonby
In the late eighteenth century, aristocrat Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, the young orphaned daughter of Chambre Brabazon Ponsonby, abandoned their lives in Ireland and made a home for themselves in Llangollen, Wales, to the disapproval of both their families. Known as the Ladies of Llangollen, they appeared to have understood their relationship as a marriage. They were part of an emerging culture of relationships between same-sex couples. Their friend Lady Mary Parker Leighton painted a series of watercolors of their home Plas Newydd in the 1820s and 1830s. She drew the Ladies in their library. This engraving by James Henry Lynch is based on one of Lady Leighton's drawings. -
The Rt. Honble. Lady Eleanor Butler & Miss Ponsonby
In the late eighteenth century, aristocrat Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, the young orphaned daughter of Chambre Brabazon Ponsonby, abandoned their lives in Ireland and made a home for themselves in Llangollen, Wales, to the disapproval of both their families. Known as the Ladies of Llangollen, they appeared to have understood their relationship as a marriage. They were part of an emerging culture of relationships between same-sex couples. Their friend Lady Mary Parker Leighton painted a series of watercolors of their home Plas Newydd in the 1820s and 1830s. She drew the Ladies in their library, their favored place, both seated at a table, with bookshelves lining the walls. This engraving by Richard James Lane is based on one of Lady Leighton's drawings. Several of Lady Leighton's works are in the National Library of Wales. -
Floriana or the Method of Constructing Artificial Flowers
This carefully written and illustrated manuscript teaches in minute detail the methods taught to Matilda St. Clair, now Madame de Rhinfeld, for constructing artificial flowers. Growing up in a convent in France, she was instructed by the nuns in each aspect of creating the flowers: dyeing silks, cutting muslin, and forming each individual petal and leaf. She used this skill to earn her living in England. Her watercolors individually dissect twenty-four different artificial flowers; included is a drawn foldout plate of her tools. The pages of delicately embellished instructions, in floral borders, are accompanied by poetry and commentary related to each flower. -
Manuscript medical certificate
In this fragment of a certificate, Dr. J. H. Fairfax notes that he has examined an enslaved woman named “Alsy, belonging to the estate of R[. . . ?] in the employment of Mr. Charles Mothershead and find her to be labouring under a ‘procidentia uteri, or falling down of the womb,’” a prolapsed uterus. This condition sometimes occurs after childbirth and can be caused by severe beatings. Fairfax determined that Alsy “may be made usefull by the application of an instrument properly adjusted, to keep the part from coming down.” -
Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus
Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin's mother Mary Wollstonecraft died following her birth. She was largely educated by her father William Godwin. She was not quite seventeen when she eloped with Percy Bysshe Shelley. Frankenstein is considered to be the first work of science fiction. In this third edition, she recounts for the first time the story of its origin during a ghost story writing contest in a villa on Lake Geneva. The novel explores what it means to be human and the ethical implications of scientific research. This edition is the first with a preface by Mary Shelley and the first with illustrations.
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