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[Poems and illustrations]
This lovely hand-bound manuscript was made by Mary B. Tuckey and others in Cork, Ireland, to be sold at the Boston Anti-Slavery Fair to raise money for the abolitionist cause. The beribboned floral page dedicated to Maria Weston Chapman was drawn by Mary Mannix, the secretary for the Anti-Slavery Societies of Cork. Chapman, organizer of the fair and a Garrisonian abolitionist, wrote Right and Wrong in Massachusetts and edited the annual the Liberty Bell. Frederick Douglass’ acclaimed visit to Cork is commemorated in the volume with a poem in his honor. The strong international bonds of the Abolitionist movement are made evident in this small book. -
[Portrait of Emily Faithfull]
English publisher and printer Emily Faithfull dedicated her career to fighting for women’s right to work. She wrote extensively on the issue and established the Victoria Press for the Employment of Women in 1860. The Press and its goal of women’s employment in the printing trade was a controversial labor and class issue at the time. The Press’s early business was contract printing for organizations aligned with its mission like the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women. Faithfull traveled extensively in America, publishing her book, Three Visits to America, documenting her observations of working women throughout the United States. -
[Portrait of Emma Goldman]
Russian immigrant and anarchist Emma Goldman dedicated her life to combatting inequality, repression, and the exploitation of workers. She believed in direct action to bring about revolutionary change. Following the failed attempt on the life of Henry Clay Frick by her partner, Alexander Berkman, she abandoned her support of violence, embracing the tactics of civil disobedience, strikes, and boycotts to achieve political and economic equality. This is the only known copy of this image. -
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[Portrait of Harriet Beecher Stowe]
Harriet Beecher Stowe rocketed to celebrity with the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), selling 300,000 copies during its first year in print. -
[Portrait of Lucretia Mott]
Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were delegates to the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in London. Female delegates were not allowed to participate in the convention and were relegated to the balcony. Some male delegates, including William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass, sat with them in solidarity. After the convention, Stanton and Mott began to lay the groundwork for the first women’s rights convention, which took place in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. -
[Portrait of Martha Maxwell from “Mrs. M.A. Maxwell’s Rocky Mountain Series”]
Naturalist Martha Maxwell brought Western fauna into public view through her skills at taxidermy. She defined the art of creating natural history dioramas with animals displayed in their natural habitats. An aspiring scientist, she left Oberlin College for lack of money and journeyed west to join the Gold Rush. Maxwell corresponded with the Secretary of the Smithsonian, Spencer Fullerton Baird, sending him bird specimens. Today a few of those specimens survive and are the only examples of her work and evidence of her two Rocky Mountain Museums in Denver and Boulder, Colorado. In 1877, a subspecies of the Eastern Screech Owl, Megascops asio maxwelliae, was named in her honor. To support her work and her family, Maxwell established a museum and charged admission. Her Rocky Mountain Museum first opened in Boulder in 1874 and moved to Denver the following year. Maxwell was invited to show her work in the Colorado Building at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876. Her display was one of the most popular at the internationally attended event. So many people asked whether the displays could have been done by a woman that she put up a sign reading “Woman’s Work.” Maxwell shot, trapped, and prepared all her own specimens, noting that “The world demands proof of woman’s capabilities.” -
[Portrait of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton]
Stanton and Anthony first met in 1851 at an anti-slavery meeting in Seneca Falls. Stanton was one of the leading philosophers of suffrage and human rights, while Anthony organized volunteers and directed the campaigns. When their efforts to have women’s suffrage included in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments failed, they established the National Woman Suffrage Association in 1869. In this portrait Stanton is wearing a dress with a pattern of chains, a powerful symbol that was adopted by both the anti-slavery and women’s suffrage movements. -
[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. -
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[Suite de quinze estampes représentant des oiseaux]
French engraver Marie Briot was the daughter of Isaac Briot, an engraver and draughtsman, and trained in his studio. In addition to this work, she also contributed numerous engravings to a book of emblems published in 1638 and 1639. This volume includes fifteen plates of birds in their natural environment. She signs her plates Marie Briot, Fecit identifying herself as the maker. -
[Tea cup and saucer, and bowl]
In 1889, reformer Jane Addams and bookbinder Ellen Gates Starr founded the Hull-House social settlement in an immigrant neighborhood in Chicago. Hull-House members provided English classes, art clubs, kindergarten, libraries, and activities for the neighborhood and worked for social reform. Hull-House Kilns was a commercial pottery associated with their art school. Many of the staff and potters were recent Mexican immigrants. The collection holds four tea cups with matching saucers and a small serving bowl. All are stamped “Hull House Kilns, Chicago.” The items are in the style of Myrtle Merritt French, one of the founders of the pottery. -
[Ticket for a lecture by Emma Goldman at Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, Holborn, 1933]
A charismatic speaker, Emma Goldman was a powerful advocate for controversial causes including free speech, gender equality, defense of sexual minorities, union organization, and birth control. The Lisa Unger Baskin collection includes a significant number of letters, documents, and printed material related to Goldman’s life, publishing, and activism. -
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[Virginia Woolf’s writing desk]
Writer, printer, and feminist Virginia Woolf was at the center of the Bloomsbury Group during the first half of the twentieth century and was one of the leading figures of modernist literature. Woolf commissioned this oak writing desk while she was in her teens and used it until she was around thirty years old. She specifically requested a standing desk. In 1929, Woolf gave the desk to her nephew, Quentin Bell, an artist and member of the Bloomsbury Group. His wife Anne Olivier Bell, the editor of Virginia Wool’s diaries, cut six inches off the legs to make it a sitting desk. Quentin Bell painted Cleo, the muse of history, on the sloped top in the style of the Omega Workshops. -
[Woman’s suffrage campaign realia]
The Lisa Unger Baskin Collection includes a wide selection of American and British suffrage pins. Activists were encouraged to “show your colors all day long” and have the “courage of their convictions.” The black on gold “Votes for Women” button was the most widely used design in the United States. Note the pins for Catholic, Welsh, and men’s organizations. Goods promoting the cause included badges, ribbons, jewelry, and even mechanical pencils. American and British activists borrowed designs from each other and adapted them as needed. -
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[WSPU tea service]
Commissioned by the Women’s Social and Political Union and designed by Sylvia Pankhurst, this tea service was originally made for use in the Tea Room of the first WSPU fundraising bazaar at the 1909 Women’s Exhibition in London. At the close of the exhibition, the remaining pieces were assembled into tea sets and sold. Pankhurst designed devices and symbols for the WSPU, as well as their membership card. Her “Angel of Freedom” design incorporates prison bars, thistles, shamrocks, roses, and chains. The collection includes eighteen pieces from this set, more than any other collection holds. -
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