Women's History

ON RESERVE A rare, sixteen-page album of artistically arrayed and scientifically labeled New Zealand ferns by the award-winning botanical artist and entrepreneur Mary Ann Armstrong, known commercially as “Mrs. C. C. Armstrong” (1838-1910). This is a nice example of Armstrong’s work, which is notable for its elegant presentation, including the use of symmetry and sweeping arcs, and the ingenious placement of moss to “ground” the specimens. Each page is an artwork unto itself, usually featuring between three and six large fronds accompanied by carefully chosen smaller samples, all given scientific labels in a large and neat hand. The ferns in this volume are generally in excellent condition, clearly professional prepared and maintaining their fine details and sense of vitality.

Historian Molly Duggins, of the National Art School, Sydney, has done important work on Armstrong, providing a deep understanding of her work within the contexts of the international fern trade and the economic and cultural landscape of colonialism. She explains that, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, a craze for ferns swept Britain and its colonies, providing “a form of popular rational amusement that was intimately linked to scientific progress and colonisation” and that “held special significance for the colonies where the plethora of local species became a symbol of proto-nationalistic pride” (Duggins, “Mary Ann Armstrong”, Design & Art Australia Online, 2011).

In New Zealand and Australia ferns became a major commercial industry encompassing both living plants and artistically arranged pressed specimens. “Few women, however, engaged in the New Zealand fern industry as a significant and sustained business venture. The fern work produced by Mary Ann Armstrong is distinctive in this regard” (Duggins, “The world’s fernery: New Zealand, fern albums, and nineteenth-century fern fever”, New Zealand’s Empire, p. 108).

Armstrong was born in Birmingham and emigrated to Australia in 1853. Five years later she married Charles Clark Armstrong and in the early 1860s the couple moved to Dunedin, but Charles’s business ventures fared poorly and it may be that Mary, who was developing a serious interest in ferns, began selling pressed specimens to supplement the family’s income (in total there would be eleven children to feed).

“Active from roughly the late 1870s to the 1890s, her body of work revolves around the artistic arrangement and scientific notation of ferns in albums and framed compositions, sometimes composed into decorative, collage-like landscapes”. (Dugins, “Mary Ann Armstrong”). Though they don’t feature in this particular album, she frequently incorporated photographs of the New Zealand landscape and the indigenous Maori, depicting an exoticised New Zealand “cloaked under the mantle of romantic botanical tourism” (Duggins, “The world’s fernery”, p. 113).

In addition to albums, Armstrong produced ferns mounted on postcards and paper goods with fern transfers, supplying them to local booksellers and fancy goods shops. Other family members were involved in this extensive enterprise; when Armstrong and her husband moved to Melbourne in 1887 her son Charles remained in Dunedin, where he worked as a “scenic photographer and fern artist”. He imported ferns and fern products to Australia, and also supplied them to his mother, whose business remained active until the mid 1890s (Duggins, “Mary Ann Armstrong”).

Though Armstrong’s work stemmed from the 19th-century culture of domestic botanical art, Duggins argues that it is, “distinct from this feminine tradition in that it was displayed alongside the work of men at a series of international and intercolonial exhibitions from 1879-89... Moreover, her work was unabashedly commercial: unlike the domestic arts which were largely created and displayed within the home, Mary Ann marketed and sold her fern compositions to the general public. As an entrepreneur, she relied upon the reputation she established through her commendable exhibition record”. And “rather than wholly succumbing to decoration, a majority of Mary Ann’s compositions retained a strong scientific element that was firmly grounded in the systematic notation of each specimen. The classificatory fluctuation of her entries from horticulture to fancy goods at international exhibitions reflects this duality, indicating that her compositions straddled the divide between art and science.” (Duggins, “Mary Ann Armstrong”)

Armstrong’s albums are rare in commerce, appearing at auction only three times in recent decades (Dominic Winter in 2011 and 2008, and Christies in 2008). Institutionally, they are mainly represented in Australasian institutions: the National Library of New Zealand, the Universities of Wellington and Waikato, the National Library of Australia, and the State Libraries of New South Wales and Victoria. Examples are also held at Harvard, the University of Georgia, and UCLA.

First edition. Author Constance de Salm (1767-1845) was a highly regarded French writer and moral philosopher, and an important member of a circle of leading intellectuals and scientists. Though forgotten for much of the 19th and 20th centuries, she is now the subject of renewed historical interest, providing a window onto the lives and intellectual networks of women in Revolutionary and Napoleonic France.

De Salm spent most of her life promoting the equality of women, and her most important work, the poem Épître aux femmes (1797), was a direct attack on the language and social structures that uphold patriarchy, as well as an exhortation to women to liberate themselves. During her career “she used a variety of genres to address issues of importance to women, such as equal access to educational opportunities and to family courts, recognition of intellectual achievement, the infantilization of women and the denigration of their abilities, the cost to women’s health of reproduction, and adequately renumerated work for poor, widowed, and single women. In many ways she can be usefully compared to Mary Wollstonecraft…” (Hine, Constance de Salm, Her Influence and Her Circle in the Aftermath of the French Revolution, p. 4).

De Salm’s friendships with scientists were an important part of her intellectual life. She was close to the astronomer Joseph-Jérome Lalande, who left her his unpublished manuscripts and asked her to write his eulogy. “Not only did she know Lalande well enough to have him entrust her with securing his legacy, but she was acquainted with renowned scientists like the natural philosopher Auguste de Candolle, the botany professor at the Jardin du Roi, Antoine de Jussieu, the naturalist Alexander von Humboldt… all of whom were among her circle of friends and frequented her salon… Her involvement can be used to illustrate the shift from earlier philosophical debates among scientists to the increasing interest on the part of women in scientific culture in the latter part of the eighteenth and the early part of the nineteenth centuries ” (Hine pp. 2-3).

The present text, Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Sensitive Woman, is an epistolary novel exploring the mindset of a woman whose lover may have abandoned her for another. It was praised by her friend, the author Stendhal and is now rare in the first edition. We can locate only one institutional copy, at the British Library.

Second edition, volume II only. An unusual educational text on Greek mythology for girls between ten and fourteen by the French literature professor Nicolas Eugène Géruzez (1799-1865) of the Sorbonne, attractively illustrated with six double-page plates of mythological figures. This volume begins with the seventh week of lessons and continues through the 12th, so presumably the first volume covers the first six weeks. Though the title page states that this is the second edition, the publishing history of these mythological texts by Geruzez is confused, with several appearing in WorldCat under slightly different titles during the late 1830s and early 40s, though all are rare on the market.

During the first half of the 19th century, hairwork was a popular way to both mourn the dead and to commemorate friendships and family connections with the living. A largely female workforce specialised in preparing hair for brooches, pendants, and bracelets. In some cases hair from two or more individuals was braided together, in others the hair was arranged decoratively or used to create elaborate sentimental images. This is a particularly nice example of the art, mounted in 14-18k gold and dating from the first decades of the 19th century. The hair clipping has been fanned and curled into an elegant wave shape with a tiny seed pearl “clasp” at the base, and the reverse is monogrammed “AB”.

First edition of this guide to miniature painting designed for the education of young ladies. The author, Andre Leon Larue was born in 1785 and known professionally as Mansion. The son of a portrait painter, he worked as a miniaturist and also achieved remarkable results as a tinter of photographs during the 1840s and 50s. This was his first book on painting; the second was The Principles and Practice of Harmonious Colouring in Oil, Water, and Photographic Colours on Paper, Glass and Silver Plate. The present volume was reviewed by The Gentleman's Magazine as "a pleasing and useful assistant to the young student, affording much instruction in all departments of the art; with a short sketch of the various merits of many of the Old Masters, and most of the eminent modern ones".

At the time this book was published miniature painting was considered an important accomplishment for young upper-class women, a demonstration of moral virtue and elevated aesthetic sensibility. Painting guides provided technical information but also "took pains to situate both the reader-cum-painter and the product within a social and cultural milieu of aestheticized gentility". In this case, Mansion has written the guide not solely as a technical manual, but as a story with a young female protagonist whose "adventures and relationships grounded the sentiments associated with miniatures in narrative and dialogue" and whose "progress as a painter, specifically as a miniaturist, unfolded apace with her progress as a young lady" (Kelly, Republic of Taste, p. 110).

 Cabinet card depicting a female cyclist. 

The cabinet card, essentially a larger version of the carte de visite, was a popular format for portraiture from the 1860s until the early years of the 20th century, when Brownies and other affordable cameras made it possible for people to take their own photographs. Meanwhile, the introduction of the safety bicycle in the 1890s had created a wave of interest in the sport, and women were especially keen on the freedom and power they offered. Some suffragettes argued that they could help upend traditional gender relations, and they contributed significantly to the reform of women’s dress. Suffragettes or not, cabinet cards photographs of women posing with their bicycles - usually dressed to the nines as in this example - became popular. The photographer who created this example, A. Mason, is not recorded, but his studio was in Herne Hill, and one wonders if he did a good trade with the cyclists using the velodrome. A charming record of women’s cycling history.

An evocative Second World War photo album and group of naval publications representing life on the American home front for Red Cross worker Elizabeth Ridley (1912-2004) and her sister Christine Ridley (b. 1920), a naval air mechanic. The sisters were originally from New Jersey, but moved throughout the US as part of their wartime work and would later settle in Washington D. C. Elizabeth’s pre-war career is unknown, but after the war she continued to work for the Red Cross in Riverton, New Jersey, and in later life was employed at the Library of Congress. Christine was originally a teacher before joining the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES - officially the Naval Women’s Reserve), which began operating in 1942. Her preliminary training as a naval aviation mechanic was undertaken at the Naval Air Technical Training Center in Memphis, Tennessee, followed by advanced training for Petty Officer Second Class in Atlanta Georgia.

Elizabeth’s album compiles several years worth of photographs beginning in 1941, presenting a wonderful cross-section of American life during the War. The pages are filled with both formal and informal snaps of friends and family, the many individuals in military uniform evoking the War’s long reach into ordinary Americans’ lives. Included are numerous pictures of Elizabeth and her colleagues in their Red Cross uniforms, two large and particularly nice shots of a Red Cross office with booster posters on the walls, and an image of Red Cross workers marching in a parade. There are also numerous photos of Christine in her naval uniform, two taken outside a Naval training office.

Despite the troubled times most of the images are light-hearted and depict family reunions, days out, and travel, including trips to Florida; Texas (with shots of the Alamo and one of a bomber approaching Kelly Field); Gulfport, Mississippi; the beach at Hampton Bays, New York (with a series of shots of the sisters and their friends in bathing costumes and also bicycling down a country road); the Rochester Yacht Club; Washington D.C., and other unnamed locations.

A charming series of photos taken during Christmas 1941 depicts John Knight and Bob Phelps, who appear in what may be police uniforms, posing with the girls, horse-playing, and making snowballs. Two pages include photos taken with four male friends, “Vic & Jock” in naval uniforms and “Ted & Chippy” in suits. Two pages are devoted to formal shots of Elizabeth’s wedding day on April 10th, 1942, and the single full colour photo, a small Kodachrome, shows Christine’s wedding day, with Elizabeth as the maid of honour in a red dress. Later images include Christine and her husband posing with their first baby, and the child, a little older now, playing with a puppy and various toys, followed by black & white shots of Christine’s wedding.

Also included are three Naval publications related to Christine’s training as a member of WAVES. The first, titled Navy Log, is the yearbook for her course in aviation mechanics at the Naval Air Technical Training Center in Memphis, Tennessee. We Keep ‘Em Flying is an entertaining and richly illustrated souvenir book on life at the same center, and Tattoo is a similar publication produced for the US Naval Air Station in Atlanta, Georgia, where Christine had her second round of training. Bot publications include information on life at the stations, including images of military personnel at work and pursuing leisure activities, and information on sites of interest in the surrounding areas.

Overall this collection is a compelling look at life for two American women participating in the mass mobilization of American society during the Second World War.

Third impression, published the year after the first. At its publication Contraception, by birth control advocate, palaeontologist, and eugenicist Marie Stopes, was “widely held to be the most comprehensive volume on the subject ever published” (Exploring Women in Science Through the Lisa Unger Baskin Collection, Duke University Libraries website).

A beautiful, 78 page chromolithographic catalogue for the American Products Company’s Zanol line of cosmetics, food products, and home goods, including 16 pages in full colour. A superb example of Art Deco marketing design.

The American Products Company was founded in 1907 by three brothers, Albert, Edgar and Clarence Mihalovitch (Albert later changed his surname to Mills), of Cincinnati, who hoped to capture the growing Midwestern consumer market (see “Cosmetics by the American products Company”, Collecting Vintage Compacts blog, January 2012). This catalogue promotes “Shopping in Your Own Home the Zanol Way”, and explains that “the Zanol plan affords you the opportunity of buying the finest products possible to produce, direct from the maker, delivered right to your home, absolutely fresh, unconditionally guaranteed... The complete Zanol line comprises more than 350 products... all of them made from the choicest ingredients in our sanitary, daylight Pure Food Kitchens and Laboratories, under the direction of skilled chemists, chefs, and dieticians”.

Advertised here are a wide array of consumables, with a focus on powders and syrups that could be shipped easily and would appeal to an emerging middle class who were time and money-conscious. For the kitchen there are food flavourings and colours, and numerous instant mixes for soft drinks, jams and jellies, icing, cakes, pies, and puddings. Among them are Ezemade pumpkin pie filling (”it is now possible to serve delicious pumpkin pie throughout the year”); Flakykrust instant pie crust; Mapelade instant maple syrup (”now you can afford delicious maple syrup whenever you want it”); and even Ezemade ice cream powder (”just add to a quart of milk and freeze”). The broad selection of home goods include medications and hygiene products, house cleaning and repair supplies, hot water bottles, paints, insecticide, and even a set of salt and pepper shakers. Perhaps the most appealing section is the beauty line, comprising soaps and toothpaste (”don’t envy pretty teeth - have them”); face and body powders; a variety of lotions including almond, lemon and witch hazel, cucumber and benzoine, and “dermaline of roses” (”keep the alluring charms of radiant youth”); shampoos, pomade, and hair tonics; cosmetics including powder compacts and tubes of lipstick; and perfumes, primarily their three main lines, La Bara (named after the silent film “vamp” Theda Bara, best known for playing Cleopatra), Fleur d’Orient, and Dream Girl. There are also a number of gift sets packaging perfumes, soaps and cosmetics, including a shaving kit for men, sets for new mothers, and an attractive La Barra manicure kit.

First edition of this important book on the use of “twilight sleep” anaesthesia during labour by the female surgeon who first advocated its use in the United States. Rare, with WorldCat listing only electronic copies, and only one copy appearing in auction records (Bonhams 2020).

Born into a Michigan farming family, Bertha van Hoosen (1863-1952) insisted on a medical education despite her parent’s active opposition, and put herself through school by working as a teacher, obstetrical nurse, and demonstrator in anatomy. After graduating she opened a private practice and also worked at the Woman’s Medical School of Northwestern University and as a professor of clinical gynaecology at the Illinois University Medical School. In 1918 Van Hoosen became the first woman to head a medical division at a coeducational university when she was appointed professor and head of obstetrics at Loyola. She was a founder and first president of the American Medical Women's Association, and advocated for women physicians to serve in the First World War.

“Throughout her career, Bertha van Hoosen’s major interest was in women’s health. She was an excellent general surgeon, but she was particularly concerned with women and children. She pioneered the use of scopolamine-morphine anaesthesia for childbirth. Although this method, known as twilight sleep, had become popular in Germany, it was not used in the United States. She produced a book and two articles on her research in this area” (Ogilvie, Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science p. 1320).

An original Second World War poster promoting women in the wartime workforce, produced in 1942 by the War Manpower Commission. At the time, “Women in the War” was one of the most widely distributed images of a woman labouring in war production, unlike the “We Can Do It” poster, which was produced only for Westinghouse plants during a few weeks in 1943 and did not become iconic until the 1980s.

“Among the many agencies President Roosevelt had created during the war was the War Manpower Commission, formed in April 1942 to oversee war labor issues in the military, industrial, and civilian sectors. And in June 1942, the Office of War Information was formed to manage the flows of news and propaganda about the war to the public. By 1943, when the labor shortage was most acute, the two agencies worked together in concerted campaigns, targeting employers to hire women and women to become ‘production soldiers’” (Yellin, Our Mothers’ War, p. 44). Women labouring in factories, even in the service of the war effort, was controversial, with only 30 percent of husbands giving unqualified support to the idea of their wives performing such jobs. “Despite the tide of public opinion against working wives, War Manpower Commission director Paul McNutt had a strategy for quelling opposition: ‘The money appeal will continue strong,’ he said in 1943, but we’ll concentrate on patriotism’. Sure enough, all across the country, the public was bombarded with spirited print and radio ads, magazine articles, and posters with slogans like ‘Do the Job He Left Behind’ or ‘Women in the War—We Can’t Win Without Them’ depicting noble, pretty but serious, female war workers on the job... The campaigns glamorized war work, always showing that women could maintain their femininity and still be useful” (Yellin, pp. 45-46).

Examples of this important poster are held at numerous institutions, including the Library of Congress, Imperial War Museum, MOMA, and the Pritzker Military Museum. Copies in such beautiful, unused condition are uncommon in commerce.

First and only edition of this uncommon and evocatively-illustrated publication on women’s contributions on the British home front during the First World War. This copy from the War Office Library, with its ink stamp on the title and upper cover.

Very quickly after the outbreak of the war it became clear that the mobilisation of the male workforce would create shortages of munitions, equipment, and food, and that large numbers of women would need to move into jobs from which they were previously restricted. Despite the hesitance of some officials, factory managers, and trade unions, “reports were conducted early on as to the suitability of women to meet the demands of such work. As early as 1915 the Ministry of Munitions Supply Committee made recommendations on the employment and remuneration of women on munitions work. This helped contribute to agreed suitable conditions by which a woman could be employed, and the War Office published several guides as to the employment of women” (”The Munitionettes and the Work of Women in the First World War”, National Records of Scotland).

Women’s War Work was one of these publications, appearing in 1916 and providing a very detailed list of roles in which women had been “successfully in the temporary replacement of men”, not only in munitions, but also the production of everyday goods such as chemicals and fertiliser, soap, candles, clothing and textiles, food and drink, and paper goods, including printing and book binding. The lists are accompanied by contact details of officials who can assist in the recruitment of women, and by an exceptional 72 large photographs of women at work. One woman is pictured modelling artificial teeth in wax for dentistry; brewery employees roll barrels and clean out vats; wagon washers pose with buckets and brushes in the middle of their messy shift; a smiling woman “stokes the furnaces of a large factory in South London”; an agricultural worker with the Women’s Volunteer Reserve sharpens the blade of a sickle, pianos are tuned, and women are photographed serving as butchers, bakers, window washers, porters, drivers, and posties. Numerous roles within heavy industry are photographed, from the manufacture of ammunition to the production of glass, radiators, tanned leather, and motorcycles. This is a fantastic record of women as home front workers, with most of the images so far having seen little to no reproduction in popular culture.

An early edition of this sumptuous chromolithographic beauty catalogue originally introduced at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition by the California Perfume Company. The firm was founded in 1886 by door-to-door book salesman David H. McConnell and would later become Avon. This catalogue includes 31 plates depicting perfumes and air fresheners, soaps, shampoo, skin creams, shaving kits, toothpaste, gift sets, food flavourings and colours, laundry powder, detergent, and household cleaning supplies. Of particular note are the attractive Art Deco packaging designs, a key aspect of the company’s success.

These catalogues were expensive to produce but extremely successful at promoting the company’s products. Between 1915 and 1917 they were bound with screw-back posts so that pages could be added and removed, but after 1924 the use of screw-back posts was discontinued, so that salesmen were required to buy new catalogues. Price lists were originally issued separately, but this was discontinued in 1919, and this catalogue includes product details and prices interleaved on a lighter paper stock.

An early edition of this sumptuous chromolithographic beauty catalogue originally introduced at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition by the California Perfume Company. The firm was founded in 1886 by door-to-door book salesman David H. McConnell and would later become Avon. This catalogue includes 35 plates depicting perfumes and air fresheners, soaps, shampoo, skin creams, shaving kits, toothpaste, gift sets, food flavourings and colours, laundry powder, detergent, and household cleaning supplies. Of particular note are the attractive Art Deco packaging designs, a key aspect of the company’s success. There are a number of items from the Avon line, which by 1930 had become the dominant products.

These catalogues were expensive to produce but extremely successful at promoting the company’s products. Between 1915 and 1917 they were bound with screw-back posts so that pages could be added and removed, but after 1924 the use of screw-back posts was discontinued, so that salesmen were required to buy new catalogues. Price lists were originally issued separately, but this was discontinued in 1919, and this catalogue includes product details and prices interleaved on a lighter paper stock.

A rare poster advertising Embrace the Base, one of the key mass actions at the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp. We have been able to locate only two copies in institutional collections, at the LSE Women’s Library and the Glasgow Women’s Library.

The Greenham Common protest was established in September of 1981 by the Welsh group Women for Life on Earth, who were opposed to the deployment of nuclear tipped cruise missiles at the site. What was initially planned as a single march became a permanent protest camp, one of the most significant and longest lasting women’s protests of the 20th century. In February 1982, for political reasons, the camp was made women only, and the following month they engaged in their first blockade of the base. Embrace the Base was their next major action. Taking place on December 12th & 13th, 1982, it saw 30,000 women from across from across the UK—drawn by chain letter, word of mouth, and posters such as this one—join hands to surround the nine mile perimeter fence. This copy of the poster seems to have been used in Birmingham, and includes instructions for obtaining coach tickets at the “Peace Centre (opp New Street Station)”, as well as local activist contact details, in marker pen.

As well as being an early and rare example of Greenham Common ephemera, this poster is particularly interesting in that is features a spider web, “a frequently reoccurring symbol in Greenham women’s cultural imaginary” because of its mythological and symbolic associations. “The metaphor of ‘building a web’ and being connected to each other in a ‘web-like structure’ populated Greenham women’s speech and writing. Alison Young describes Greenham women’s reclamation of the spider as revolving primarily around the notion of the spider’s web. She writes that the web ‘shows connections between women or between ideas; it can be begun at any point or at any time; each single strand is weak and fragile, yet when interwoven it is strong, beautiful and efficient’ (1990, 38). In line with Young’s reading, Roseneil writes that, ‘the web was a symbol of women's collective power, seemingly fragile, but actually very strong’” (1999, 179, ft39)” (Feigenbaum, Tactics and Technology: Cultural Resistance at the Greenham Women’s Peace Camp, PhD thesis, McGill University, April 2008).

The Greenham Common camp had no hierarchy, and its nature was defined by the thousands of individual women who visited when they could or lived permanently onsite for years. The activists engaged in non-violent resistance by disrupting movement in and out of the gates, cutting down portions of the fence, and trespassing on military property, and they endured frequent police raids, arrests, and evictions. A large number of the protesters were middle aged and older; they considered themselves ordinary mothers and working women, and made a point of the fact were opposed to nuclear weapons for deeply personal reasons. Their gender was crucial to their message: “a woman’s place was not in the home, but at a protest. Women could use their identity as carers and mothers to say, this is about the future safety of our children. We weaponised traditional notions of femininity” (Suzanne Moore, “How the Greenham Common Protest Changed Lives, The Guardian, March 20th, 2017).

“Greenham was powerful. It taught my generation about collective action, about protest as spectacle, a way of life, incredibly hard but sometimes joyous. Still the image of resistance for me is not the famous photograph of a striking miner confronting a policeman at Orgreave, it is the picture of Greenham women dancing in 1982: witchy, unarmed women dancing on a missile silo. This magical, powerful image shows how the peace camp both played on traditional images of the feminine and then subverted them. Greenham created an alternative world of unstoppable women. It changed lives.” (Moore, 2017).