Books are mirrors of many worlds: worlds here and distant, past and present, real and imagined. Through text and image, books are conduits of ideas, of knowledge and of stories.

This exhibition showcases many of the rare, beautiful and historically significant books held by this library on behalf of the Victorian community. It celebrates the unique place of books in our hearts and minds as it journeys through the history of book production, design and illustration – from the ancient past to the present day.

This year we highlight the library’s pioneering Women Writers Fund, including through works by Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, Agatha Christie, Octavia Butler and many more extraordinary women.

World of the Book tour

This one-hour exhibition tour introduces the rare, remarkable, and historically significant items from the State Collection. https://www.slv.vic.gov.au/whats-on/world-of-the-book-tour

BOOKS AND IDEAS

The history of ideas is mirrored in the history of the book. Books have altered the course of history itself, disseminating ideas that have changed how we think about the world and ourselves. Across cultures and eras, books have played a highly symbolic and iconic role.

Once, it was thought that the world’s knowledge could be collected between the covers of a book. The information explosion of recent times makes it impossible to contain the world’s knowledge within one library, let alone in one book. Yet books continue to be a powerful means of informing and inspiring new generations.

Wallpaper made using hand-illuminated marginal decoration from a book of hours (Besancon, c. 1430–40, RARES 096 R66HM). You can download this file in high resolution via the library catalogue record.

Before the Romans developed the codex (folded sheets sewn together, bound between boards) in the 1st century CE, texts were inscribed on clay tablets and papyrus scrolls. The Romans began using vellum (prepared animal skin) as a writing surface, and their invention of the codex revolutionised the way information was recorded and accessed.

Until the 12th century, most Western books were copied by hand in the scriptoria (writing rooms) of monasteries for use by those communities. The rise of universities in towns such as Paris and Bologna in the 13th century created wider demand for book ownership, and so the commercial book industry was born.

The 14th and 15th centuries were the high point of manuscript book production in Western Europe. Personal prayer books in particular were often lavishly illustrated with miniatures

(miniare, ‘to colour with red’) and gold-leaf illumination. They were prized as much for their beauty as for their spiritual purpose.

showing verso of the calendar for January

France, c. 1488

Workshop sketch for an ornate capital letter (likely ‘A’ or ‘N’), with red, blue and gold tessellation and four figures

France, 14th century

Leaf from a book of hours

Northern France, c. 1390

The Barry Jones Collection, Rare Books Collection

Making books has always been a pragmatic industry. In the age of the manuscript, expensive materials such as vellum from old or out-of-date books were often reused to subsidise the cost of producing new ones. Recycling accelerated with the beginning of printing in Europe in the 15th century, with bookbinders using fragments of durable vellum to line and strengthen the bindings of printed books. In the modern era, collectors have sometimes cut out the beautiful illuminations from medieval manuscripts

to keep as independent artworks, for aesthetic rather than practical reasons.

Bruges, late 15th century

RARESF 096 R66HB

Books of hours were personal prayer books for the laity. They contained prayers to be said at the eight canonical hours of the day. This manuscript was produced in the city of Bruges, Belgium, for a family in York, England. Its calendar features 12 miniatures depicting the various activities engaged in over the course of a year. A modern collector has cut out the miniature for the month of May; such dissection was common practice

in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The art critic John Ruskin (1819–1900) infamously recorded in his diary: ‘Gave Sophy a walk . . . Cut missal up in evening – hard work’.

(c. 1070–1130)

Epitome Historiarum (Extracts of History)

Paris, [Robert Stephanus/Estienne], 1551

RARES 937.070922 C2739E

This is the first printed edition of a history of Rome by the

11th-century Byzantine scholar John (Joannes) Xiphilinus. The binder has used a vellum leaf that was probably taken from a lectionary (Gospel readings used in the Mass); it contains 100 lines of a 13th-century English or French Latin manuscript that relates to the feast of St Peter. The binder has deliberately placed it upside down to discourage any attempt to read it, as it was intended purely as a durable surface for the book. The arms of William Feilding, 1st Earl of Denbigh, are embossed in gold on front and back boards.

Bound volume of seven pamphlets

Various locations and publishers, c. 1490–1511

RARES 094.1 D11V

The early 16th-century binder of this volume used a ‘waste’ leaf from an older manuscript to line the binding. Interestingly, the manuscript leaf is a fragment of the 13th-century translation by Roman philosopher Boethius of the Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, and one of the bound pamphlets is a 1505 Paris printing of Aristotle’s Problems. The volume was given to A.B. Foxcroft, the deputy chief librarian of this library, by Cambridge scholar Sir Stephen Gaselee in 1938. Foxcroft posted it back to Melbourne but never returned himself, dying at sea on the homeward voyage.

LUCAN

(39–65 CE)

De bello civili (The Roman Civil War, often known as Pharsalia)

Venice, Nicolao Battibove Alexandrino, 13 May 1486

RARESF 093 L96P

A leaf from a much older manuscript has rested on this printed book at some point (possibly in the damp), leaving a mirror print of its text on the 15th-century binding. The Carolingian miniscule script indicates it was written between about 800 and 1200 ce, but the text has not yet been deciphered.

books

Italy, 14th century

RARESF 096 IL1

This volume comprises illuminated initials on vellum cut from several manuscripts and pasted into a modern scrapbook by a collector. Stylistically they can be traced to different parts of northern Italy in the 14th century. The musical notations

associated with some of them suggest the original manuscript sources were choir books. The fragment displayed depicts the Ascension of Christ. The volume was owned by engineer and collector Robert Sticht in the early 20th century and acquired by the library in 1923.

Chinese scholars pioneered printing from woodblocks around 200 ce, and then from moveable ceramic and metal type in the 11th century. This print technology spread throughout Korea and Japan from the 8th century.

German metalworker Johannes Gutenberg (c. 1400–68), who, like all Europeans of his age, knew nothing of these inventions, is considered the founder of European printing. Within a decade of his famous 42-line Bible, German printers operated around Europe, including in Rome, Venice and Paris. The earliest printed books reflected the black-letter style of German Gothic script. In the 1470s, Venetian printers such as Nicolas Jenson (1420–1480) developed typefaces based on Italian humanist scripts (themselves based on Roman scripts). This led to the ‘roman’ typeface still used today.

Books printed before 1501 are known as incunabula, from the Latin for ‘cradle’, referring to printing’s infancy. Manuscript production continued in Europe into the 16th century, but its

high cost ensured printing became the pre-eminent technology of the book.

(c. 125–180 CE)

Leaf from The Dialogues, and Other Works

Florence, Laurentius de Alopa, 1496

RARESEF 093 H11G

ST JEROME

(c. 342–420 CE)

Leaf from Epistolae (Letters)

Ferrara, Laurentius Ruebeus, 1497

RARESEF 093 H11G

Pagodas and Darani Prayers)

Nara, Japan, printer unknown, 764–770 CE

RARESEF 294.30242 H991

This extraordinary artefact is one of the oldest surviving texts printed in Japan and is among the oldest in the world. Known as the Hyakumantō Darani, it is one of a million darani (prayers or charms) printed at the order of the Empress Shōtoku on

her ascension to the throne in 764 ce. Printed using a carved woodblock or metal plate, each darani was housed in a miniature wooden pagoda painted with gesso (much of which is lost). This example came from the Horyuji Temple in Nara, as stated on the storage box. It is the only darani in an Australian public collection.

(One Million Pagodas and Darani Prayers)

Nara, Japan, printer unknown, 764–770 CE

RARESEF 294.30242 H991

Four texts from the Mahayana Buddhist Sanskrit Vimalasuddhaprabhasa mahadharani sutra (Sutra of the Great Incantations of the Undefiled Pure Light) were distributed as part of Empress Shōtoku’s project. They were the Konpon, Sōrin, Jinshin’in and Rokudō texts. This Sōrin text is printed phonetically in the Middle Chinese characters used in Japan in this period. The original has been rolled up for almost 1300 years, so cannot be safely flattened for display. This facsimile allows you to see the text.

The Sanskrit original of the Vimalasuddhaprabhasa mahadharani sutra survives only in Tibetan and Chinese translations. The sutra contains a prayer to be recited when building or repairing a Buddhist pagoda (tiered tower). This unpublished translation from Chinese was made by Eric Ceadel, the university librarian at Cambridge University, with the help of scholar Sir Harold Bailey:

Hail! In my purification from impurity by all the Supreme Beings,

restore my impeded strength.

Container of the nature of the Supreme Being, contain it, contain it.

Maintain it, all you Supreme Beings. Blessed in your blessing. Amen.

State Library Victoria thanks Professor Peter Kornicki, Cambridge University, for access to this translation.

Mainz, Germany, Johann Gutenberg, c. 1450–55

RARES 093 C54

Hand-printing text from carved wooden blocks and engraved metal plates and using moveable type existed in China, Korea and Japan from the 8th century. This, however, was not known to Europeans. Johannes Gutenberg’s 42-line Bible was the first European book printed by means of movable type. Gutenberg’s innovation was in combining the flexibility of moveable type with the speed of using the hand press, an invention he based on the wine press. Within a decade of Gutenberg’s invention of the hand press, printing had spread to every major city in Europe.

BERGAMO

(1434–1520)

De plurimis claris selectisq[ue] mulieribus (On Many Famous and Selected Women)

Ferrara, Lorenzo Rossi, 29 April 1497

Acquired with the generous support of Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and family, as part of the Women Writers Fund, RARESF 093 J1593 (1497)

European books printed before 1501 are called incunables, from the Latin word for cradle, referring to the ‘infancy’

of printing. As printing technology developed, woodblock illustrations were introduced. This incunable contains a reworking of Italian poet Giovanni Boccaccio’s 1361–62 text on praiseworthy and ‘bad’ women (the first ever work solely about women), updated by Augustinian monk Giacomo Filippo Foresti for his own time. It includes 172 portraits created from 56 woodblocks, along with the women’s biographies. The frontispiece shows Foresti presenting the work to Beatrice of Aragon, Queen of Hungary and Bohemia.

Interior of Chinese Mission Church, Little Bourke Street

Published in the Illustrated Australian News for Home Readers, 13 August 1872

Digital print

PCINF IAN 13-08-72 P.169

Chinese Mission Little Bourke Street Victoria 1937

Digital print

H2016.405/14

The discovery of gold in Victoria – known to Chinese migrants as Hsin Chin Shan (New Gold Mountain) – triggered a significant influx of Chinese immigration from 1854.

Predominantly from southern China, migrants brought with them a range of religious and philosophical traditions, including Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism and Christianity. At the

same time, Western expansion into regions such as Canton (Guangzhou) and Hong Kong (Xianggang) established a strong Christian missionary presence in China, which shaped religious encounters there and abroad.

In Victoria, Protestant efforts to evangelise Chinese migrants were often framed as a means of ‘civilising’ and assimilation. Reflecting these attitudes, Victorian Anglican Archdeacon John McCullough remarked, ‘They [the Chinese] are our neighbours, but not our countrymen’.

(Active 1900–1930)

Memoir of a Chinese Christian in Melbourne

MANUSCRIPT

Manuscripts Collection, MS 16234

Born in a village eight miles from Quanzhou (泉州), the author of this memoir offers an insight into Melbourne’s Chinese diaspora and the history of Chinese Christianity in both China and Australia. Leaving his wife and family behind, he began his life in Melbourne working in a small cafe in Little Bourke Street. He later found employment as a compositor (setting type for printing) at the Chinese Times, where he reflects

on the temptations of gambling, tobacco and alcohol.

Shanghai, Mohai Bookstore, [1894]

RARESF 225.5951

Xianggang (Hong Kong), St Pauls Academy, 1854

RARES 225.5951 L4

舊約全書 (All of the Old Testament), part 1

Shanghai, Mohai Bookstore, 1854

RARES 225.5951 L4

These Bibles were either sold by missionaries or brought to Australia by Chinese migrants. Chinese Victorians donated them to the library in the 19th century. The examples on display reveal the difficulties faced by library staff in translating and cataloguing Chinese-language texts. The example directly above shows how in-house bookbinders, unfamiliar with traditional Chinese book formats, removed the title page from its original position and inserted it at the front of the volume in a Western style.

Xianggang (Hong Kong), Ying Wa College, [1854]

RARES 225.5951 K5

This example of the New Testament has been stamped upside down by the library and includes a phonetic translation added by the cataloguer. Although cataloguing and preservation practices have improved since the mid-19th century, the retention of the original box in which this work was issued reflects the importance librarians placed on preserving the object’s original cultural form.

John BUNYAN, author

(1628–1688)

William C. BURNS, translator

(1815–1868)

天路歷程 (The Pilgrim’s Progress)

Xianggang (Hong Kong), Ying hua shu yuan, [Xianfeng] yi mao [1855]

RARES 823.42PC

The Pilgrim’s Progress is a bestselling book of all time, and one of the most widely translated. This unique illustrated Chinese edition of Bunyan’s allegorical tale was printed at Hong Kong’s Ying Wa College. Founded by Scottish missionary James Legge, the college produced numerous Christian translations into Chinese. The book was originally published in Manila,

but Legge later took his Chinese type with him to Hong Kong, where it was used for subsequent printings.

The illustrations are fully sinicised—Chinese in character and form—and feature recognisable local clothing and architecture. Such sinicisation was a common strategy for adapting Western Christian texts to Chinese cultural contexts and facilitating

their acceptance by Chinese readers.

新約全書 (The New Testament)

Xianggang (Hong Kong), Ying Wa College, [1854]

RARES 225.5951 K5

新約全書 (The New Testament)

Xianggang (Hong Kong), Ying Wa College, [1868]

RARES 225.5951 M8

Although Victoria was home to more than 24,000 Chinese people by 1861, the Melbourne Public Library (now State Library Victoria) held only a small collection of Chinese-language books. Of these, translations of Christian texts were the most widely represented. The heavily worn examples on display suggest that demand exceeded the library’s collection development practices at the time.

Southern Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq), c. 2050 BCE

RARES 099 C89

The earliest examples of cuneiform script date to c. 3400 bce and record economic transactions. This clay tablet, written in Sumerian language in cuneiform script, records taxes paid in sheep and goats in the tenth month of the 46th year of Shulgi, second king of the Third Dynasty of Ur. Cuneiform was also used to record the oldest surviving epic poem in the word, The Epic of Gilgamesh, written c. 2100–1200 bce in Akkadian language.

Many religions are founded on books. The oldest, Hinduism, draws on the Vedas, texts dating back to 1400–1200 bce. Judaism, Christianity and Islam are often referred to as the ‘religions of the book’, as each has a religious text at its centre: the Torah, the Bible and the Qur’an, respectively. The word Bible derives from biblia, the Greek word for ‘books’. Torah is translated as ‘teaching’ or ‘word’, while Qur’an means ‘to read’ or ‘to recite’.

The rise of new religions has coincided with key moments in the history of the book, such as the development of the codex around the time of the birth of Christianity. Its form assisted the early Church to distinguish itself from Judaism, which used the scroll form for its sacred texts.

fratru[m] [et] sororu[m] tercii ordinis beati Fra[n]cisci . . . (The Way of life of the Friars and Sisters of the Third Order of St Francis . . . )

Paris, Jean Petit, François Regnault, Jean Frellon,

c. 1512

RARESEF Sticht Coll. (France) 423(1)

the Virgin and Child

Belgium, late 18th to early 19th century

Rare Books Collection

From the medieval period onwards, devotional prints have been hugely popular in Christian communities, used as the focus for personal prayer. These religious images also acted as talismans (protective good-luck charms) and amulets (objects that ward off evil). The iconography of the Virgin and Child is central in Christianity, emphasising the humanity of Christ’s dual nature and the loving relationship between mother and child. These printed textiles could be stitched onto clothing, so worn close to the body of a faithful Christian.

Breverl or amulet against sorcery, plague and natural disasters

South-eastern Germany or Austria, c. 1800

Rare Books Collection

Eighteen prints make up this fascinating item. It is a form of amulet known in German as a Breverl, produced by, or on behalf of, nuns in Bavaria and Austria to sell to passing pilgrims. The prints were contained in a small scapular, or pouch, worn on a string around the neck. This paper pouch contains remnants of the cloth that once covered it. A Breverl would often also contain a small tin or wax medal of saints, a wooden crucifix, seeds and dried flowers. The Franciscan nature of many of the prints in this Breverl suggests the origin of the convent that sold it.

It was believed that opening the pouch reduced its efficacy, so these prints were not made to be read or viewed. This Breverl contains:

A folding letterpress prayer sheet: a prayer against demons and a blessing from St Anthony of Padua on the verso

A folding engraved Pestkreuz (plague cross), with saints and short magico-religious texts

Nine small engravings of patron saints: two copies of the severed head of St Anastasius, St James of the March, St John Nepomuk, St Ignatius of Loyola, St Francis of Assisi, St Francis receiving the stigmata, St Francis, the biblical figure Daniel and St Anthony of Padua

Three small engravings of the Immaculate Conception, the crucifixion and a Christogram (IHS, with a heart)

A folding engraving with an image and a prayer to the Three Wise Men

A small engraved Pestkreuz

A small double-sided letterpress Gospel text of St John 1: ‘In Amfang was das Wort . . .’ (‘In the beginning was the Word . .

.’)

A small rectangle of bitumenised paper with fragments of two fabrics (one red), an engraved text (to the Virgin), the seed head of a plant and impressions of several more objects (probably small metal medals) now missing.

Unknown artist

Devotional engraving of the Tongue of St John of Nepomuk

Place of production unknown, 18th century

Rare Books Collection

The priest John of Nepomuk was tortured, killed and thrown into the Vltava River in what is today the Czech Republic. Carried out at the order of King Wenceslaus IV, the murder was political, but a legend later grew that the priest was executed because

he had heard the Queen’s confession and would not reveal her secrets. In 1719, his tomb was opened and his tongue was

found undecayed. John became a patron saint, invoked against false speech. This devotional print includes a biblical quotation: Attende, ne forte labaris in lingua (Be careful lest you make a slip of the tongue).

The Fivefold Method of Appeasing Transgressions Against One’s Tantric Vows

Mongolia, 18th century

RARESF 091 V72SD

Talismans and amulets are concepts existing in many cultures around the world, particularly in relation to sacred texts that need not be read in a literal way to exert a protective power over the believer. This palm-leaf Buddhist manuscript is one such text. Composed in the 8th century by the Indian abbot Vimalamitra, it describes the rituals around the confession of sins and broken tantric vows; both hinder the passage of a deceased person’s consciousness towards rebirth. The text was translated from Sanskrit to Tibetan by Nyags Jñānakumara, and this copy was made in Mongolia.

Times of Crisis: Works from the John Emmerson Collection

Explore the tumultuous 17th century in this display from the John Emmerson Collection. Use the QR code to dive into this and other stories in Beyond the Book: A Digital Journey through the John Emmerson Collection.

In 2015, the library received one of the most generous gifts in its history: The John Emmerson Collection. Born in Melbourne in 1938, John Emmerson completed a PhD in

nuclear physics at Oxford University in 1964. It was in Oxford that he began collecting 17th-century English printed works. Returning to Melbourne in 1971, he studied law and became a leading intellectual-property lawyer. Over the next 40 years, Emmerson amassed 5000 rare titles.

An Account of the Digging Up of the Quarters of William Stayley, Lately Executed for High Treason, for that His Relations Abused the Kings Mercy.

Imprimatur Novemb. 30th. 1678. William Scroggs

London, printed for Robert Pawlet at the sign of the Bible in Chancery-Lance [sic], 1678

John Emmerson Collection, RAREEMM 837/2 No. 24 (1678)

Even death did not always protect one from further punishment. William Stayley was an early victim of the so-called ‘Popish Plot’, a fictious Catholic conspiracy against Charles II. Stayley apparently behaved well at his execution for high treason on

27 November 1678, as, most unusually, his dismembered corpse was given back to his family for burial instead of being displayed on the city gates. On hearing of his ‘great and pompous funeral’, however, Charles II ordered Stayley’s exhumation and display three days later.

Britain’s Remembrancer Containing a Narration of the Plague Lately Past; A Declaration of the Mischiefs Present; and a Prediction of Iudgments to Come; (if Repentance Prevent Not) . . .

London, imprinted for Great Britaine, and are to be sold by Iohn Grismond in Ivie-Lane, 1628

John Emmerson Collection, RAREEMM 332/3

The 17th century in England was a period of great political and social turmoil. Wars raged, disease ravaged, a monarchy was overthrown and a king was killed. The books produced during this time offer a glimpse into the uncertainty and anxiety that prevailed due to these events. George Wither was a vocal critic of James I, which led to his imprisonment. In this long poem, he writes of England as ‘the Land much troubled we may see’.

Deaths Duell, or, A Consolation to the Soule Against the Dying Life and Liuing Death of the Body . . .

London, printed by Thomas Harper for Richard Redmer and Beniamin Fisher, 1632

John Emmerson Collection, RAREEMM 321/21

John Donne’s sermons as Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral were published posthumously. This sermon, reflecting on the preparations required for a ‘good death’, was preached to King Charles I and others on 25 February 1631; it was just one month before Donne’s death and when he was in visible ill health. Donne’s biographer, Izaac Walton, relates how he

posed for a sketch in his funeral shroud, which he then kept by his bedside. Martin Droeshout, who was famous for his portrait of William Shakespeare, engraved this frontispiece from the sketch.

A Damnable Treason, by a Contagious Plaster of a Plague-sore: Wrapt Up

in a Letter, and Sent to Mr. Pym: Wherein Is Discovered a Divellish, and Unchristian Plot Against the High Court of Parliament, October 25 1641

London, printed for W.B., 1641

John Emmerson Collection, RAREEMM 837/8

The plague, spread by the Yersinia pestis bacterium, was endemic in England in the 17th century, as it was in other European cities. John Pym (1584–1643) was a prominent member of the English Parliament and a key player in its defeat of Charles I. Naturally, he was despised by royalists. In 1641, during a debate in the House of Commons, he received a letter containing a used bandage from a plague patient. The sender wrote: ‘I have sent a Paper-Messenger to you, and if this does not touch your heart, a dagger shall, so soon as I am recovered of my Plague-Sore . . . Repent Traytor.’

Le miroir qui ne flate point. Dédié à leurs majestez de la Grande Bretaign (The Unflattering Mirror. Dedicated to their Majesties of Great Britain)

Brussels, Chez Godefroy Schoeuaerts, à l’enseigne du Liure-blanc, 1632

John Emmerson Collection, RAREEMM 424/37

The spiritual and artistic culture around the medieval maxim memento mori (or, remember that you will die) remained popular in both Catholic and Protestant regions of Europe after the Reformation, despite Protestantism’s denial of Purgatory.

Historian Jean Puget de La Serre’s Le miroir qui ne flate point was written for Henrietta Maria’s parents, Marie de’ Medici and Henri of France. But this edition was re-dedicated to Charles I and his French Catholic bride. It is printed on vellum and has been coloured by hand.

Thomas CARY, translator

(c. 1605–unknown)

The Mirrour Which Flatters Not: Dedicated to their Maiesties of Great Britaine . . .

London, printed by E[lizabeth] P[urslowe] for R. Thrale, and are to be sold at his shop at the signe of the Crosse-Keyes, at Pauls Gate, 1639

John Emmerson Collection, RAREEMM 423/39

The Anatomy of Melancholy . . .

London, printed [by R.W.] for H. Cripps [and Lodowick Lloyd] and are to be sold at his shop in Popes-head Allie [by Andrew Crook in Pauls church-yard] and by E. Wallis at the Hors shoo in the Old Baley, 1660

John Emmerson Collection, RAREEMM 251/6

English scholar Robert Burton’s encyclopaedic analysis of melancholy was first published in 1621. Melancholia is an ancient concept, similar to but more expansive than modern definitions of depression. Its origins lie in the theory of the four biological liquids, known as ‘humours’, that govern human health: black bile, yellow bile, phlegm and blood. Disease was understood as an imbalance of the humours, with an excess of black bile causing melancholy. Burton, who had personal

experience of melancholy, quoted from a wide array of scientific, philosophical and theological sources.

A Double Ephemeris, for the Year of Our Lord, 1700 . . .

London, printed for the author, at the Ball and Star in Salisbury-Court, and sold by W. Hunt at the Ball in Paul’s Ally

in St Paul’s Church-Yard, 1700

John Emmerson Collection, RAREEMM 325/24

Almanacs were the most popular printed item sold in the 17th century; around 350,000 were printed each year. Most almanacs were a combination of yearly planner, diary and encyclopedia. As well as astrological information, they often contained predictions of natural and political events, and

medical advice. This almanac includes an intriguing handwritten recipe for a ‘Merry Pill’: the pill contains ‘soapbark, hellebore seeds, nigella seeds, marjoram, rue and salvia’. Hellebore

was also one of Robert Burton’s suggested treatments for melancholy.

Angelus Britannicus: An Ephemeris for the Year of Our Redemption, 1699 . . .

London, printed by W. Horton, for the Company of Stationers, 1699

John Emmerson Collection, RAREEMM 325/23

Like some amulets and talismans, almanacs were designed to be carried around, held close to the body. The worn condition of this almanac’s sheepskin pocket-book binding indicates many years of use.

(Bomberg’s Hebrew Bible)

Venice, Daniel Bomberg, 1521

RARESEF Sticht Coll. (Italy) 303(4a), (4b)

Morocco, c. 1800 Ink on paper, leather

Acquired with funds from the Copland Foundation as part of the Dr Harry Buckstein Haggadot Collection, Jewish Museum of Australia Collection 13879 On loan from the Jewish Museum of Australia, Melbourne

The Haggadah is a key Jewish text that sets out the ritual of the Passover Seder. This is the feast that commences Passover, the commemoration of the divine protection granted to the Jews in Egypt when plague decimated the rest of the population. This Haggadah is typical of the Sephardic style, which originated with the Jews of the Iberian Peninsula. Jewish communities have lived in Morocco since Roman times and continue to be a presence in the North African country. Morocco saw its largest wave of migration following the 15th-century expulsion of Jews from Spain.

Three silver yadim (Torah pointers)

North Africa, possibly Morocco, 19th century Silver

Donated by the Gandel family, Jewish Museum of Australia Collection 5006 On loan from the Jewish Museum of Australia, Melbourne

Readers of the Torah use a yad (Torah pointer) to follow the text being recited. The yad protects the Torah from human touch, which would eventually rub out the text through repeated contact.

Arabic manuscript, possibly from East or West Africa,

c. mid-19th century

RARESEF 297.8 AR

‘Read in the name of thy Lord . . .’ The first words of the Qur’an symbolise its central role in Islam. Muslims regard the Qur’an as the sacred word of God (Allah), dictated to the Prophet Muhammad by the Archangel Gabriel in the 7th century.

Calligraphic art venerated the sacred text and, as a result, printed Qur’ans did not appear until the 18th century. This 19th-century manuscript copy was housed in a protective portable leather satchel, which would be hung from a peg when the text was not in use.

When I had hardly yet learned to walk . . .

the productions of Nature that lay spread all around, were constantly pointed out to me.

– John James Audubon

The book has always accompanied the science of natural history. Illustration in particular has often proved the most effective means for communicating new information to diverse audiences, from professional scientists to interested

amateurs. Wildlife art has become increasingly specialised, with ornithological illustration a major area of expertise.

The leaders in this field during the 18th and 19th centuries, the high point of natural history illustration, include Thomas Bewick, John James Audubon, John and Elizabeth Gould and Edward Lear. They are recognised for their achievements in meeting the greatest challenge: creating an image that is detailed and scientifically accurate and that captures the character or life of the creature.

‘The Cameleopardalus, or Giraffe’

‘1.2. The Arctic Chimera – 3. The Chermes’

‘The Great Crowned Indian Pigeon’

From Encyclopaedia Londinensis

Printed for the proprietor, by J. Adlard, Duke-Street; sold by J. White, 1796–1829

RARESEF 508 En192

The Birds of America, vol. 4

London, the author, 1827–38

RARESEF 598.2973 Au2

John Audubon was born in Haiti, raised in France and immigrated to America at the age of 18. After a failed business venture, he devoted himself to a survey of North American birds. From then on, he was constantly at work observing, collecting and painting specimens. For this publication, his

life-size paintings were transferred to copper plates, printed and then coloured by hand. A complete set comprises 435 ‘double-elephant’ folio plates, issued in 87 parts over 11 years. Audubon funded this publication in part through buying and selling enslaved people. This racist legacy has recently been acknowledged by the American ornithological organisation bearing his name.

Throughout the 18th century, European royalty, aristocracy, gentry, scholars and the curious sought cultural and educational enlightenment through travel – the ‘Grand Tour’. For some, the journey lasted a year; for others, half a decade. Italy, France, the German states and the Low Countries were commonly included. Sites in Ottoman-ruled Greece and the eastern Mediterranean attracted the more adventurous tourists.

Tourists visited major cultural centres, where they viewed collections and attended theatre and musical performances in courts and aristocratic homes. Many studied history and languages with either their own tutors or local guides and scholars. Rome’s reputation for classical Roman monuments

and its market in both ancient and contemporary art guaranteed its place in the Grand Tour.

Increasing levels of travel supported a flourishing market in publications devoted to collections and documenting ruins and archaeological sites. Works such as Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s Vedute di Roma provided tourists with visually arresting souvenir images of the sites they had visited.

Veduta dell’Anfiteatro Flavio, detto il Colosseo (View of the Colosseum, or Flavian Amphitheatre)

Etching and engraving, 1765–78 impression

Veduta interna del Panteon (View Inside the Pantheon)

Etching and engraving, 1765–78 impression

From Vedute di Roma (Views of Rome)

Rome, the artist, 1748–78

RARESEF 769 P66P V. 1

Spaccato interno della Basilica di S. Paolo fuori delle Mura (Cut-away View of the Interior of the Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls

Etching and engraving, 1765–78 impression

Vedute di Roma (Views of Rome)

Rome, the artist, c. 1748 – c. 1778

RARESEF 769 P66P V. 1

Venetian-born engraver Giovanni Battista Piranesi documented the ruins of classical architecture at a time when many ruins lay half-buried in otherwise deserted pasture lands. Piranesi’s spectacular large plates became indispensable souvenirs for the educated European travellers who were beginning to flock to Rome in the 18th century as part of a Grand Tour. These engravings also served as patterns for the architecture and

design of the Enlightenment.

Carceri d’invenzione (Imaginary Prisons)

Etching

Rome, Bouchard and Gravier, c. 1750

RARESEF 769 P66P V. 2

Piranesi’s ‘imaginary prisons’ are some of the most experimental and influential prints he produced.

These unsettling interiors are made by using ambiguous architecture in cavernous spaces, and there is a theatricality to the uncanny sense of unease they evoke. Piranesi uses multiple light sources and vanishing points to confuse the eye, playing with light and shade in painterly etched lines. The Carceri prints have influenced artists over the centuries, from

M.C. Escher to Melbourne’s own Rick Amor.

This wonderful example of early printing comes from the Hypernotomachia Polyphii (The Strife of Love in a Dream), by Italian poet Francesco Colonna (raresf 093 c995a). It was

printed by Aldus Manutius (Aldo Manuzio) in Venice in 1499 and is renowned as one of the most beautiful books ever produced. You can download this file in high resolution via the catalogue record.

BOOKS AND IMAGINATION

Books hold the world’s stories, from the earliest known myths and legends to postmodern fictions. They are also keys that unlock inner worlds. The greatest authors and texts act as literary milestones, signposts marking the collective journeys of the imagination.

Imagination begins in childhood. Our earliest experience of reading allows us to travel to new worlds, to inhabit the voices and lives of characters. As adults, we never lose this sense of discovery, this capacity to journey to other places and times through books. At a fundamental level, books allow us to imagine ourselves as other than who we are.

Melbourne’s Most Popular Murder Mystery

Born in England and raised in New Zealand, Fergus Hume (1859–1932) moved to Melbourne in the early 1880s. His interest in Melbourne’s theatre scene and criminal underworld informed his 1886 self-published work, The Mystery of a Hansom Cab.

Set against the backdrop of Melbourne’s streets and lanes, Hume’s bestselling work depicts a city consumed by opulence and abject poverty. His gritty portrayal not only surpassed the sales of Sherlock Holmes books but also solidified crime fiction as a legitimate and significant literary genre.

Fergus Hume died in 1932, at Thundersley, in county of Essex, England.

M. STRETCH, artist

(Dates unknown)

Poster of ‘Kilsip the Detective’

London, H. Blacklock & Co., [1887]

Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales. Purchased from Douglas Stewart Fine Books, 2024.

The Mystery of a Hansom Cab

London, The Hansom Cab Publishing Co., [1887]

RARELT A823.1 H882MY (1887:75TH)

Shortly after publishing the first edition of The Mystery of a Hansom Cab in 1886, Fergus Hume sold the rights to the book for £50. The Hansom Cab Publishing Co. in London was the chief beneficiary of this sale, and Hume never received another penny from his bestseller.

When he died, Hume was living in near poverty in a rented single room. He is buried in an unmarked grave in the Thundersley churchyard in England.

The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, 4th edn

Melbourne, Kemp & Boyce, [1887]

MC A832.1 H882MY (1887)

Due to a lack of publisher interest, Fergus Hume self-published 5000 copies of his novel through Melbourne’s Kemp & Boyce in 1886. According to Hume, it sold out in three weeks, prompting a second print run. Despite conflicting reports about total sales, it is likely that more than 500,000 copies were sold in the first three years. In 1887, The Mystery of a Hansom Cab even outsold Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes novel, A Study in Scarlet.

The Mystery of a Hansom Cab: A Startling and Realistic Story of Melbourne Social Life

London, C. Arthur Pearson, [1908]

MC A823.1 H882MY (1908)

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, readers voraciously consumed inexpensive books sold through bookstalls and newsagents. Known as ‘railway literature’, these cheap editions were especially popular among the newly literate working class. This example of a Pearson ‘sixpenny novel’ has been reissued by local bookseller and publisher E.W. Cole.

p. 16

Pictures Collection, H29247

The Mystery of a Hansom Cab

Cleveland, Ohio, The Arthur Westbrook Company, [1910]

RARELT A823.1 H882MY (1910?:WEST)

The Mystery of a Wheel-barrow: Gaboriau Gaborooed: An Idealistic Story of a Great and Rising Colony

London, Walter Scott, 1888

MC A823.1 F381M

Written under the pseudonym W. Humer Ferguson,

The Mystery of a Wheel-barrow is a parody of Fergus Hume’s bestseller – the iconic hansom cab switched with a confiscated wheelbarrow. Early in his writing career and after quizzing a local bookseller on which author sold the most books, Hume wished to emulate French writer, Emile Gaboriau.

The Mystery of a Hansom Cab

London, Leisure Library, [1935]

RARELT A823.1 H882MY (1935)

The Mystery of a Hansom Cab

New York, Rand, McNally, [190?]

RARELT A823.1 H882MY (190-?:RAND)

Dramat i Droskan: en brottmålshistoria

(The Drama in the Cab: A Crime Story)

Stockholm, Åhlén & Åkerlund, 1919

RARELT A823.1 H882MYA (1919)

Hansomcab-mordet (The Hansom Cab Murder)

Stockholm, B. Wahlströms Bokförlag, 1936

RARELT A823.1 H882MYN

Following its initial publication, The Mystery of a Hansom Cab was soon translated into 11 languages, and it was a success outside of the English-speaking world. In particular, the detective novel was well received in Sweden and Denmark, where multiple editions were published.

Fergus HUME

(1859–1932)

En Hansom-cabs Hemmelighed

(A Hansom Cab’s Secret)

Copenhagen, Gyldendalske, 1917

RARELT A823.1 H882MYG

En Hansom-cabs Hemmelighed

(A Hansom Cab’s Secret)

Copenhagen, B. Frederiksberg Biblioteks Forlag, 1911

RARELT A823.1 H882MYG (1911)

The Mystery of a Hansom Cab

London, Jarrolds, [1925]

RARELTP A823.1 H882MY (1925)

The first film adaptation of The Mystery of a Hansom Cab was released in 1911, in a fledgling Australian film industry. It was followed by a feature-length adaptation in 1925. Like many early Australian productions, both these adaptations are considered ‘lost films’; today, we can only visualise them through surviving promotional material and books such as the one on display here.

In 2012, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation produced a new television movie of Hume’s novel.

The Mystery of a Hansom Cab

London, Jarrolds, [1922]

RARELTP A823.1 H882MY (1922)

During their short but remarkable lives, Charlotte (1816–1855), Emily (1818–1848) and Anne (1820–

1849) Brontë wrote some of the best-loved novels in English literature. Growing up in Haworth, Yorkshire, with their siblings Maria (1814–1825), Elizabeth (1815–1825) and Patrick Branwell (1817–1848), the literary sisters were surrounded and inspired by the bleak, gothic splendour of the moors.

Their mother, Maria, died in 1821, and their clergyman father, Patrick, left home for extended periods to minister to his parishioners. Maria and Elizabeth died in 1825 of typhus, and the surviving children – Charlotte, Emily, Anne and

Patrick Branwell – turned to storytelling to sustain themselves.

As adults, the three sisters began publishing poetry and novels under the male pseudonyms of Currer (Charlotte), Ellis (Emily) and Acton (Anne) Bell. Though none would reach 40, the sisters live on through their literary creations.

The Brontë Sisters (Anne Brontë; Emily Brontë; Charlotte Brontë) 1834

Exhibition print from original oil painting 1725

National Portrait Gallery, London, NPG 1725

This now famous portrait of the three Brontë sisters was painted by their brother, Patrick Branwell, in oil on canvas. He originally included himself but later painted over the figure. The canvas was later folded and stored on top of a wardrobe, where it was found by the second wife of Charlotte’s widower in 1914. This accounts for the creases and areas of paint loss. Branwell died in 1848, at just 31, most likely of tuberculosis compounded by alcohol and opium addiction.

The Life of Charlotte Brontë: Author of ‘Jane Eyre’, ‘Shirley’, ‘Villette’, &c.

London, printed by Smith, Elder & Co., Little Green Arbour Court, E.C, 1857

RARES 823.8 G212L (1857)

Charlotte Brontë’s most famous novel, Jane Eyre, was published in 1847 under the pseudonym Currer Bell; her identity as author of the hugely popular tale was revealed in 1848. For the rest of her short life, she was a literary celebrity, her novel entertaining and scandalising in equal measure.

She married Arthur Bell, her father’s curate, in 1854, and died the following year during pregnancy, either of tuberculosis or complications from her pregnancy. Two years later, Elizabeth Gaskell cemented Charlotte’s fame in this biography.

The Professor, by Currer Bell; To Which Are Added the Poems of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, Now First Collected

London, Smith, Elder, 1860

RARES 823.8 B78P (1860)

This is the earliest edition that the library holds of a work by any of the Brontë sisters. Although their books were affordable when the library opened in 1856, literature was not a focus of the library’s collection. Written in 1846, before Jane Eyre, this novel was initially rejected by many publishers and did not appear in print until 1857, after Charlotte’s death, aged 38, from tuberculosis. Charlotte drew on her own experience as a student and teacher in Brussels to explore the life and love of a young male teacher.

Fritz EICHENBERG, artist

(1901–1990)

Jane Eyre

New York, Random House, 1943

RARES 823.8 B78J (1943)

Jane Eyre has continued to attract interpretation for almost

180 years, since its first publication. Artist Fritz Eichenberg was born in Germany and trained in Berlin in the 1920s. In the early 1930s, he fled the Nazi regime and lived out his life in New York, where he became a leading literary illustrator, particularly in the medium of wood engraving. His moody illustrations for Jane Eyre capture the wild, windswept and gothic atmosphere of Brontë’s Yorkshire.

Jane Eyre: An Autobiography

London, Ward, Lock, 1847

RARES 823.81 J

This is a third edition of Charlotte’s second, final and most famous novel. As hinted in the title, the fictional tale was deeply influenced by her own experiences as a governess and teacher, a woman who needed a livelihood. The title character falls

in love with her moody employer, Mr Rochester, whose dark secret she eventually discovers. Jane Eyre was an immediate success, though its first-person female narrator led some critics to suspect a female author and to judge its language and themes ‘coarse’.

Wide Sargasso Sea

New York, W.W. Norton & Company, 1966

Acquired by the Women Writers Fund. RARES 823.914 R349W

Written as a prequel to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Wide Sargasso Sea by British-Caribbean author Jean Rhys received critical acclaim, winning Rhys the W.H. Smith Literary Award.

The novel subverts Brontë’s work by taking as its main character creole heiress Antoinette Cosway, the future ‘mad woman in the attic’, Mrs Rochester. Set in Jamaica in 1830s and 1840s, Rhys’s postcolonial feminist work relates how, motivated by Antoinette’s inheritance, Mr Rochester marries her renames her Bertha, declares her mad and isolates her in the attic of his remote Yorkshire mansion.

Clare LEIGHTON, artist

(1898–1989)

Wuthering Heights

New York, Random House, 1931

Acquisition supported by the Women Writers Fund, RARES 823.89 B78W (1931)

Emily Brontë was Charlotte Brontë’s younger sister. Wuthering Heights was her only novel, published in 1847 under the pseudonym Ellis Bell, by a publisher keen to capitalise on the success of ‘Currer Bell’s’ Jane Eyre. Emily did not live to see its extraordinary popularity, dying of tuberculosis aged just 30, in 1848. Her real name did not appear on an edition until 1850. The gothic novel was both lauded and excoriated for its dark themes of obsession and revenge, its labyrinthine narrative structure and its use of Yorkshire dialect.

Fritz EICHENBERG, artist

(1901–1990)

Wuthering Heights

New York, Random House, 1943

RARES 823.8 B78J (1943)

At the heart of Wuthering Heights is the toxic and mutually obsessive relationship between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, a young boy adopted by Catherine’s father on a visit to Liverpool, the British centre of the trade in enslaved people. Raised as siblings, their dynamic is far more complex and it plays out across generations of tortured characters on the windswept moors (‘wuthering’ means ‘windy’ in Yorkshire dialect). Heathcliff’s ambiguous racial identity continues to invite debate among readers.

AP 791.4372 W969B

From a 1920 silent film, of which no known prints exist, to Emerald Fennell’s controversial 2026 film starring Australians Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, Emily Brontë’s novel has been adapted for the big and small screen dozens of times.

This booklet accompanied the 1970 British film directed by Robert Fuest, which featured Anna Calder-Marshall as Cathy and Timothy Dalton as Heathcliff. Like most film adaptations, it presents only the first 16 chapters of the novel, concluding with Cathy’s death; the tribulations of the next generation of Cathy, Heathcliff and Earnshaws seem to be considered unfilmable.

Theatre, November 1969. Hanji, a Fire-fighter / Wuthering Heights

Takarazuka, Japan, Takarazuka, 1969

AP 792.60952 T1395T

While the Yorkshire moors are a quintessentially English setting, the archetypal angst that drives Emily Brontë’s novel lends

itself to adaptations in many different cultural settings. This Japanese production was staged by the all-female Takarazuka Revue, founded in 1913 and continuing to produce opulent, melodramatic Broadway-style shows today.

(1838–1906)

Two etchings from Trente-sept caux-fortes pour illustre Don Quichots

Edinburgh, W. Paterson, 1884

RARESEF 863.32 L15

(pseudonym)

(Active 1600s)

Nouvelles avantures de l’admirable Don Quichotte de la Manche (New Adventures of the Admirable Don Quixote of La Mancha), vol. 1

Paris, Par la Compagnie des libraires, 1716

Wallace Kirsop Collection, RAREWK 863.3 C3374F (1716)

Don Quixote was originally published in two volumes: one in 1605, the other in 1615. Before Cervantes could complete and publish his own second volume, a spurious continuation of the tale emerged in 1614. Pirated editions of popular works were common in early modern trade, and Don Quixote engendered numerous unauthorised editions. Although Avellaneda’s version is generally regarded as a poor example of 17th-century literature, its publication prompted Cervantes to complete his authentic second part. The true identify of ‘Avellaneda’ is a mystery still debated today.

The History of Don Quixote, vol. 1

London, printed for Edward Blount, 1620

John Emmerson Collection, RAREEMM 155/13

Cervantes’ tale of the delusional ‘man of La Mancha’ is a seminal work in the canon of Western literature. Obsessed with chivalric romance, a Spanish nobleman believes himself to be a knight errant and sets out on numerous quests with his

simple, good-hearted servant Sancho Panza. The tragi-comedic narrative laments the demise of chivalry, as Don Quixote tilts

at windmills, falls in love with a peasant girl he mistakes for a princess and, ultimately, perishes from fever. This edition is the first full English translation.

Mary SMIRKE, translator

(1779–1853)

Robert SMIRKE, engraver

(1753–1854)

Don Quixote de la Mancha: Translated from the Spanish of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, vol. 1

London, T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1818

Wallace Kirsop Collection, RAREWKF 863.3 C3374D (1818)

Mary Smirke’s name is noticeably absent from the title page of all known editions of her translation. The work draws

extensively on early English translations, but Smirke intervenes with her own interpretation where she feels can improve the translation. Between 1818 and 1890, her translation was printed more than 34 times.

Gustave DORÉ, illustrator

(1832–1883)

The History of Don Quixote

London, Cassell, Petter, and Galpin, [1864?]

SF 863.32 DM4

Gustave Doré’s exuberant, surreal illustrations for the 1863 Paris Hachette edition are some of the most iconic renderings of Cervantes’ characters. Doré used new technical processes to develop layers of dark and light tone, making his engravings the most common illustrations for the book, as in this London edition.

(Miguel de CERVANTES)

(1547–1616)

The Wonderful Adventures of Don Quixote de la Mancha, and Sancho Panza, His Esquire

London, Dean & Son, [1872]

RAREJ 863.32 DD

(1547–1616)

John OZELL, translator

(Dates unknown)

Edward McKnight KAUFFER, illustrator

(1890–1954)

Don Quixote de la Mancha

London, Nonesuch Press [1930]

RARES 863.32DT

This edition reprints a popular 18th-century translation by John Ozell. It is illustrated by American designer and painter Edward McKnight Kauffer.

Carroll

On a boating trip down the river Isis on

4 July 1862, Oxford scholar Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832–1898) told a now-world-famous story to Lorina, Alice and Edith, the three daughters of Henry Liddell, the dean of Christ Church. He described Alice’s surreal dream-journey ‘underground’ to a land where the rigid, proper Victorian world she knew was humorously subverted. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was published in 1865 under Dodgson’s pseudonym, Lewis Carroll, with illustrations by renowned Punch artist John Tenniel. Further adventures followed in 1872, in Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There.

Now meet the man behind these stories, a shy mathematician with a love of puzzles, absurdity and wordplay, whose humour peeps through even in his academic texts.

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson

Exhibition print from original albumen print, c. 1856

National Portrait Gallery, London, NPG P38

Dodgson was an enthusiastic early adopter of photography, a technology that became more widely available with the

invention of the collodion glass-plate process in the 1850s. This portrait of him with an open book can be dated to about six years before his famous boating trip with the Liddell sisters.

Useful and Instructive Poetry

London, Geoffrey Bles, 1954

Private collection

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was born on 27 January 1832, the third of 11 children and eldest son of a very conservative Anglican clergyman. The young Charles was deaf in one ear,

had weak lungs and spoke with a stammer, all of which affected his confidence at school. Among his siblings, however, he was a confident leader, entertaining the others from a young age with his witty stories and verse. Some of these were published in this volume from 1954, including a poem that prefigures the visual poetry and humour of ‘The Mouse’s Tale’ in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865).

The Game of Logic

London, Macmillan, 1887

RARES 162 D66

Charles Dodgson, like his father, was a gifted mathematician. In January 1851, he entered the University of Oxford at his father’s alma mater, Christ Church college, going on to obtain a lectureship in mathematics. He remained at Christ Church until his death in 1898, aged 66. To distract himself during

bouts of insomnia, Dodgson would invent mathematical puzzles and games. After the success of the Alice books, he published several such puzzle books. This copy retains its original game card and the homemade counters that someone made from cigarette cartons.

Euclid and His Modern Rivals

London, Macmillan, 1885

RARES 513 D66

The line between Charles Lutwidge Dodgson and Lewis Carroll was always thin, and his humour can be often detected in his serious mathematical writing. This discussion of the merits

of the Ancient Greek geometrician Euclid is presented as a whimsical theatrical dialogue between a mathematician named Minos (one of the judges of the Underworld in Greek mythology) and the naysaying Professor Niemand (‘no one’ in German).

Euclid’s ghost makes an appearance to defend his work against all modern rivals.

An Elementary Treatise on Determinants with Their Application to Simultaneous Linear Equations and Algebraical Geometry

London, Macmillan, 1867

RARES 512.83 D66

Mathematics was Charles Dodgson’s professional career, yet today he is best known as Lewis Carroll, author of the beloved Alice books. Redmond Barry founded this library in 1856 to be ‘useful’ for working people aged over 14, so perhaps it should come as no surprise that he acquired this mathematical text by Dodgson as a new book in 1867. The library did not acquire a first edition Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland until 2015. The multiple stamps on this book attest to its presence on open-access shelves, where the stamps were intended to deter theft.

Alice’s Adventures Under Ground

London, Macmillan, 1886

RARE J 823.89 D66AL

In November 1864, mathematician Charles Dodgson gave Alice Liddell his handwritten, personally illustrated manuscript of the story first told during their rowing trip on the river Isis in the summer of 1862. He considered several titles, including ‘Alice’s Hour in Elfland’, and later changed the title for formal publication. Some 20 years later, Dodgson requested that Alice (by then Mrs Hargreaves) consent to a facsimile reproduction of the original manuscript.

Five-thousand copies, produced using the photo-etching process, were published on 22 December 1886, with profits donated to children’s homes and hospitals.

Arthur B. FROST, illustrator

(1851–1928)

A Tangled Tale

London, Rex Collins, 1969

RAREJ 823.89 D56TA

This volume collects 10 humorous mathematical puzzles that Lewis Carroll published in a magazine called The Monthly Packet between 1880 and 1885. Each story is called a ‘knot’, and Carroll would supply the solutions to untangling the knots in later issues of the magazine. Even his pseudonym was a linguistic puzzle: ‘Lewis’ comes from Latinising his middle name (Lutwidge) to Ludovicus, then translating it back into English, while Carroll comes from the Latin ‘Carolus’, Charles.

John TENNIEL, artist

(1820–1914)

Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There

London, Macmillan, 1872

RAREJ 823.8 C23T

This sequel is set some six months after the original story and exudes a wintery, melancholic tone. Alice ventures through the mirror in her sitting room and discovers a land that is a giant chess game. Carroll originally intended Tenniel’s illustration of the Jabberwock to be the book’s frontispiece. Deciding it was too frightening, he chose the character he based upon himself – the gentle, foolish inventor, the White Knight.

The Hunting of the Snark: An Agony in Eight Fits

London, Macmillan, 1928

S 821.89 C23H (1928)

He had bought a large map representing the sea, Without the least vestige of land:

And the crew were much pleased when they found it to be A map they could all understand.

‘What’s the good of Mercator’s North Poles and Equators Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines?’

So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply ‘They are merely conventional signs!’

‘Other maps are such shapes, with their islands and capes! But we’ve got our brave Captain to thank’

(So the crew would protest) ‘that he’s bought its the best — A perfect and absolute blank!’

The Hunting of the Snark: An Agony in Eight Fits

London, Macmillan, 1876

RAREJ 821.89 D66H

Lewis Carroll’s most popular work after the Alice books is the nonsense poem The Hunting of the Snark. It tells the story of an ill-assorted crew: a Bellman, a Boots, a maker of Bonnets and Hoods, a Barrister, a Broker, a Billiard-maker, a Banker, a Beaver, a Baker who can only make cakes and a Butcher who can only kill beavers. They set off on a voyage to find a dangerous creature known as a Snark. Carroll later remarked that the final lines came to him first, and he wrote the poem in response: ‘For the Snark was a Boojum, you see’.

Scottish author, editor, critic, playwright and poet Dame Muriel Spark (1918–2006) is best known today for her dark and acerbic coming-of-age novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961). But her prolific 40-year career warrants wider and deeper reading.

Born in Edinburgh to a Jewish father of Lithuanian heritage and an Anglican English mother, she was educated at a Presbyterian school for girls and she converted to Catholicism as an adult. A complex and at times difficult character, she

left an abusive marriage and lived for much of her later life with sculptor Penelope Jardine, though not, she insisted, in a lesbian relationship.

Much of her fiction has elements of autobiography, bringing to life the literary scene of mid-century London as experienced by one its first female editors. In 2026 it is the 20th anniversary of Spark’s death, and this has generated renewed appraisal of her oeuvre.

‘. . . as the imagination sees them . . . Muriel Spark’

Exhibition print from Searle in the Sixties

London, Penguin, 1964

Private collection

The Comforters

London and New York, Macmillan, 1957

Acquired with the support of the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust for the Women Writers Fund, RARES 823.914 SP2C

Muriel Spark began her writing career as a literary critic and poet. She became the editor of Poetry Review in 1947, one of few female editors in publishing at the time. In 1954, she converted from the Church of England to Roman Catholicism, and her first novel, The Comforters, explores themes of faith

and conversion. It was published to acclaim in 1957. The main character of this experimental novel gradually becomes aware that she is in a novel.

Out of a Book

Leith, United Kingdom, Millar & Burden, 1933

Acquired with the support of the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust for the Women Writers Fund, Rare Books Collection

Muriel Spark’s work first appeared in print when she was 15 years old, with this poem published under her family name, Camberg. It was the winning entry in a fundraising competition marking the centenary of the death of Sir Walter Scott. The young Muriel was a prolific and talented writer, and she often had her poetry published in the school magazine. Christina Kay, one of the teachers who encouraged her to write, was the inspiration for the charismatic teacher in her best-known work, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. This copy of the poem was owned by Spark’s estranged son, Robin.

Memento Mori

London, Macmillan, 1959

Acquisition supported by the Women Writers Fund, RARES 823.914 SP2M

After the success of The Comforters, Spark’s second novel was a darkly comic tale about a group of elderly friends who begin to receive ominous phone calls informing them of their imminent deaths. Its title is a Latin phrase meaning ‘remember you will die’, a medieval Christian devotional practice to inspire one to live a godly life. The work was praised by Evelyn Waugh as ‘gruesome’ and Graham Greene as ‘funny and macabre’.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

London, Macmillan, 1961

Acquisition supported by the Women Writers Fund, RARES 823.914 SP2P (1961)

Set at an exclusive school for girls in Edinburgh in the 1930s, Spark’s most iconic work introduced Miss Jean Brodie, schoolmistress, spinster, manipulator and narcissist. Told through the eyes of one of the ‘Brodie set’ – a group of schoolgirls that Miss Brodie singles out for special mentorship – it is a characteristically dark, humorous, sinister and tragic story of female adolescence. Played in a film adaptation by an acid-tongued Maggie Smith, Miss Jean Brodie remains one

of Spark’s most memorable creations.

The Bachelors

London, Macmillan, 1960

Acquisition supported by the Women Writers Fund, RARES 823.914 S7365B (1960)

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1965

Kilvington Collection, RARES KIL 00 2235

Robinson

Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1964

Kilvington Collection, RARES KIL 00 2157

Edward GOREY, illustrator

(1925–2000)

The Very Fine Clock

New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1968

Private collection

Although Muriel Spark was primarily an author for adults, she collaborated with a kindred spirit in Edward Gorey to

produce this melancholy, whimsical tale for children about Ticky the Clock.

The Girls of Slender Means

New York, Knopf, 1963

Acquired with the support of the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust for the Women Writers Fund, RARES 823.914 SP2G

The Girls of Slender Means

London, Macmillan, 1963

Acquired with the support of the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust for the Women Writers Fund, RARES 823.914 SP2G

This novel, seen here in its first British and American editions, explores the lives of a group of young women living in a boarding house in Kensington in the immediate aftermath of World War II.

Doctors of Philosophy

London, Toby Rowland Ltd, 1962

Acquired with the support of the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust for the Women Writers Fund, RARES 822.91 SP2DT

Doctors of Philosophy: A Play

London, Macmillan, 1963

Acquired with the support of the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust for the Women Writers Fund, RARES 822.91 SP2D

This play by Muriel Spark was initially savaged by critics, but it has subsequently been more positively received. It explores the conflicts and tensions experienced by women wishing to pursue both an academic and a family life. Here we show an original script from the 1962 performance in London and its publication the following year.

Voices at Play

London, Macmillan, 1961

Acquisition supported by the Women Writers Fund, RARES 820.809287 S7365V (1961)

Spark wrote in many genres. This volume collects some of her short stories and radio plays. In a foreword, she writes:

The excuse for both sorts being put together is that all were written on the same creative wavelength. The plays were written for the outward, the stories for the inward, ear. But one form of writing was very much affected by the other, and so I hope they show a consistent mood.

One of Australia’s most important literary voices of the 20th century, Thea Astley (1925–2004) was a revered writer from Queensland. An exponent of literary realism, Astley explored, in her novels and short stories, geographical isolation, power and

social injustice. Her incisive portraits of small-town Queensland characters remain a touchstone for generations of Australian rural and regional writers.

At the time of her death, Astley was the most decorated recipient of the Miles Franklin Award, winning four times, for The Well Dressed Explorer (1962), The Slow Natives (1965), The Acolyte (1972) and Drylands (1999).

Girl with a Monkey

Sydney, Angus and Robertson, c. 1958

Graham and Anita Anderson Collection, RAREGAA A823.3 AS85G

Thea ASTLEY

(1925–2004)

A Descant for Gossips

[London], Angus and Robertson, 1960

Graham and Anita Anderson Collection, RAREGAA A823.3 AS85D

The Well Dressed Explorer

Sydney, Angus and Robertson, c. 1962

Graham and Anita Anderson Collection, RAREGAA A823.3 AS85W

Thea ASTLEY

(1925–2004)

The Slow Natives

Sydney, Angus and Robertson, 1965

Graham and Anita Anderson Collection, RAREGAA A823.3 AS85S

It’s Raining in Mango

New York, Putnam, c. 1987

Graham and Anita Anderson Collection, RAREGAA A823.3 AS85I (1987/US)

Thea ASTLEY

(1925–2004)

The Acolyte

Sydney, Angus and Robertson, 1972

Graham and Anita Anderson Collection, RAREGAA A823.3 AS85A

Coast to Coast: Australian stories 1969–1970

Sydney, Angus and Robertson, 1970

Graham and Anita Anderson Collection, RAREGAA A823.3 AS85CO

A Boat Load of Home Folk

Sydney, Angus and Robertson, 1968

Graham and Anita Anderson Collection, RAREGAA A823.3 AS85B

Thea ASTLEY

(1925–2004)

A Kindness Cup

Melbourne, Thomas Nelson, 1974

Graham and Anita Anderson Collection, RAREGAA A823.3 AS85K

Hunting the Wild Pineapple

West Melbourne, Thomas Nelson, 1979

Graham and Anita Anderson Collection, RAREGAA A823.3 AS85H

Thea ASTLEY

(1925–2004)

An Item from the Late News

St Lucia, University of Queensland Press, 1982

Graham and Anita Anderson Collection, RAREGAA A823.3 AS85IT

Beachmasters

Ringwood, Vic., Penguin, 1985

Graham and Anita Anderson Collection, RAREGAA A823.3 AS85BE

Thea ASTLEY

(1925–2004)

Drylands

Ringwood, Vic., Viking, 1999

Graham and Anita Anderson Collection, RAREGAA A823.3 AS85DR

Printed in formats small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, the miniature book proved a popular novelty of the 19th century. Condensed miniature Bibles, Qur’ans, dictionaries, almanacs, poems and novels were most common. Then new advancements in print technology, such as stereotype plates

and photolithography, produced books that were tiny yet legible.

The 1950s was a golden era for Australian pulp fiction. Import restrictions on American books and magazines in the 1940s and 1950s created an

opportunity for local publishers to meet the growing demand for American-style commercial novels.

Sydney publishers such as Horwitz and Cleveland led the way, developing stables of writers capable of producing books to order, with strikingly designed covers. The ever-popular Larry Kent series ran to more than 400 titles, while Alan Yates, writing under the pseudonym Carter Brown, penned some

300 crime novels in the 30 years between 1954 and 1984. The stories were predominantly set on the mean streets of America.

With the arrival of television and the lifting of import restrictions, in 1959, the demand for locally produced pulp fiction declined. The next generation of ‘gumshoes’ – characters such as Cliff Hardy and Phryne Fisher – plied their trade in distinctly local settings, a sign of Australia’s growing cultural confidence.

Literature Co-operative and Rae Dale

This case features books published by the Women’s Movement Children’s Literature

Co-operative, later known as Sugar and Snails Press. The group was formed by members of Box Hill’s Women’s Liberation branch in 1974 to directly address the lack of non-sexist children’s literature available.

During its 17 years, the press produced more than 50 books and other items, including posters and non-sexist reading lists. It closed in 1991, in the belief that the need for non-sexist literature had now been accepted by mainstream publishers.

Also featured here are items created by Rae Dale. An active member of the Women’s Movement Children’s Literature

Co-operative, Dale has gone on to illustrate many children’s books, and to create other items reinforcing the message of the press: that people’s interests and careers need not be defined by their biological sex.

(Born 1945)

Busy Children

Fitzroy, Vic., Sugar and Snails Press, [1970s]

ECPO Children

Rae DALE, creator

(Born 1945)

Parents

Fitzroy, Vic., Sugar and Snails Press, [1970s]

ECPO Family

Isabel WICCA, illustrator

(Dates unknown)

The Witch of Grange Grove

Box Hill North, Vic., Women’s Movement Children’s Literature

Co-operative, [1974]

JLT 819.93 B32W

This is the first book released by the Women’s Movement Children’s Literature Co-operative. A witch named Miriam, who has myriad skills, helps demonstrate to a group of children that they should pursue things that interest them, rather than those typically considered ‘appropriate’ for their sex.

Carol PAVEY, illustrator

(Dates unknown)

Alison and the Bear

Box Hill North, Vic., Women’s Movement Children’s Literature

Co-operative, 1975

JLT 819.93 B32A

Alison and the Bear has been described as ‘a kind of feminist Peter and the Wolf’. It was turned down by many publishers, with one questioning why Alison could not be kinder to the bear in the story.

Margaret HAINES, illustrator

(Dates unknown)

The Go-cart Money

Box Hill North, Vic., Women’s Movement Children’s Literature

Co-operative, 1977

JLT 819.93 P289G

Jan HARPER, author

(Born 1934)

Isabel WICCA, illustrator

(Dates unknown)

Girls Can Do Anything

Melbourne, Vic., Women’s Movement Children’s Literature

Co-operative, 1975

JLT 819.93 H232G

The Other Tansy

Fitzroy, Vic., Sugar and Snails Press, c. 1985

JLT 819.93 Si1O

Marysia MURRAY, author

(Dates unknown)

Lin TOBIAS, illustrator

(Born 1958)

Balancing Act

Fitzroy, Vic., Sugar and Snails Press, 1985

JLT 819.93 M96B

Rae DALE, illustrator

(Born 1945)

Nicky

Box Hill North, Vic., Women’s Movement Children’s Literature

Co-operative, 1975

JLT 823.3 P287N

‘Scarecrow’ card game

Waterloo, NSW., Reed Paper Products Ltd, 1975

H2025.105/4

This card game, based on ‘Old Maid’, was created for International Women’s Year in 1975. The aim is to pair the cards of women and men doing the same jobs. A selection of the 25 pairs is displayed here.

Girl Guides Australia embroidered badges

[2000?]

H2022.176/1-37

These embroidered badges were designed by Rae Dale and awarded to Girl Guides for completing various challenges under the categories of ‘create’, ‘explore’ and ‘achieve’.

The 1950s were the halcyon days for Australian comic books. Import restrictions on American books and magazines during the 1940s and 1950s created an opportunity for local publishers and artists to meet the growing demand for American-style comic book heroes.

Paul Wheelahan (1930–2018) was the creator of Australia’s most iconic and beloved masked avengers, The Panther and The Raven. Commencing his career at Young’s Merchandising in Sydney, inking illustrations for popular titles Yarmak Comics and Captain Power, Wheelahan went on to become a full-time artist.

Wheelahan was a prolific writer and artist, publishing more than 500 pulp fiction titles and 120 comic books during his career. He was awarded the Ledger of Honour in 2017 for his contribution to Australian popular culture and literature.

The Raven, nos 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10

Sydney, Young’s Merchandising Co., [1962–63]

RARELTP 741.5994 R19

The Raven ran for 10 issues across 1962 and 1963, following the adventures of Dartmoor Gaol escapee, the Seventh Earl of Ravenscourt. Concealed beneath his dark tunic, the protagonist is joined by an equally mysterious raven. The earl seeks revenge and justice not only for his false imprisonment but also for the innocent victims he encounters on his adventures.

The Panther, nos 8, 45, 51, 52, 54, 67, 69

Sydney, Young’s Merchandising Co., [1957–63]

RARELTP 741.5994 R19

One of the last regularly published Australian comics of its era, Paul Wheelahan’s The Panther ran to 73 issues, published between 1957 and 1965. The Panther follows an adventure hero who had been left an orphan in the jungle, much like

the protagonists of The Phantom and Tarzan. Adopted by an indigenous group, the protagonist of this series wears a dark body-hugging suit that disguises his pale skin and provides camouflage in the jungle.

Books reflect our desire to know the world: to see it, classify it and make sense of it. They have always both documented the past and recorded the new. From scientific discoveries to journeys to new lands, books enable the sharing of novel ideas and information.

Before the age of air travel and mass media, books were crucial in making the world accessible to many. Books now share this space with the internet. Because of their physicality – their ability to be held and owned, and to bring together word and image – books continue to be central to our lives.

The graphics on the walls in this part of the exhibition are inspired by Vanessa Bell’s designs for her sister Virginia Woolf’s books, as well as the decorative interior of Bell’s home Charleston, in Sussex, England. Bell was an important post-Impressionist painter.

The Women Writers Fund: Exploring the World through Women’s Eyes

‘Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.’

Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own, 1929

In 2021, State Library Victoria launched its pioneering philanthropic Women Writers Fund, supported by founding donors Krystyna Campbell-Pretty am and Helen Sykes.

They were soon joined by the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust and many generous individuals. The purpose of the fund is

to redress the gender imbalance in the library’s collection, especially its Rare Books Collection. To date, the fund has acquired more than 250 notable works by women.

In this special display you will meet old friends and new, famous women and those who should be, writing in a variety of genres: academic disciplines, travel and exploration, politics including suffrage, poetry and literature. Three cases celebrate iconic authors for whom the library held no first editions until now: Jane Austen, Agatha Christie and Octavia Butler.

The Women Writers Fund is dedicated to unlocking women’s voices in the archive – in spirit of Woolf’s moving words. As she stated in that powerful feminist essay, which was the first book acquired by the Women Writers Fund and which sits at the heart of this display, freedom to create comes only with true equality: ‘a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is going to write’.

Donate to support this important work: https://donations.slv.vic. gov.au/?program_id=12

Instituzioni analitiche ad uso della gioventu’ Italiana (Analytical Institutions for the Use of Italian Youth), vol. 1

Milan, nella Regia-ducal corte, 1748

Acquired with the support of the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust for the Women Writers Fund, RARES 510.92 F9177E (1748)

Maria Gaetana Agnesi, one of 21 children from a wealthy Milanese merchant family, was a child prodigy in natural philosophy and mathematics. Despite her intellectual gifts, her real desire was to join a convent. Her father offered a compromise: she was not permitted to enter a convent but did

not have to marry, so long as she continued her scholarly work. Agnesi accepted. The work displayed here is believed to be the first book of advanced mathematics published by a woman. It was written as an aid in teaching children.

Elogio storico di Da. Maria Gaetana Agnesi Milanese dell’ Accademia del’ instituto delle scienze, e lettrice onoraria di matematiche nella Università di Bologna

Milan, Presso Giuseppe Galeazzi, 1799

Acquired by the Women Writers Fund, RARES 510.92 Ag62F

In 1750, Pope Benedict XIV awarded Agnesi the chair of mathematics and analytical geometry at the University of Bologna. This made her the first woman to hold the chair of mathematics and the second woman, after Laura Bassi (1711–1778), to be made a professor by a university. She never took up the position in an active way, preferring to devote herself to works of charity. Agnesi died in 1799 in poverty, according to a biography published that year by her childhood friend Antonio Frisi.

‘De aeris compressione’, in De Bononiensi scientiarum et artium instituto atque academia: commentarii. Tomus quartus (‘On the Compression of Air’, in Commentaries on the Institution and Academy of Sciences and Arts of Bologna)

Bologna, Typis Lælii a Vule Instituti Scientarum Typographi, 1757

Acquired by the Women Writers Fund, RARES 505 B63C (1757)

Laura Bassi enjoyed great fame as a teacher and experimentalist. Like Émilie du Châtelet, Bassi was widely known throughout Europe, and as far away as America, as the ‘woman who understood Newton’. A university graduate and the first female salaried professor and academician, she published five scientific papers in her lifetime, not all of which have her name on them; the library now holds three of these papers.

Institutions de Physique (Foundations of Physics)

Paris, 1740 RARES 530 D856I (1740)

Acquired with support from Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM for the Women Writers Fund, RARES 530 D856I (1740)

The French natural philosopher and mathematician Émilie du Châtelet was active during the early 1730s until her death from childbirth complications in 1749. She published only a

few works, including this introduction to physics based on her lessons to her 13-year-old son. Recognition of du Châtelet’s contribution to science waned outside France at the end of the 18th century, and her reputation as a philosopher was overshadowed by her relationship with Voltaire. Her French translation of and commentary on Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica (1687) is still used today.

Explication de la Carte, qui représente le Passage de l Ombre de la Lune au travers de l Europe dans l Eclipse de Soleil Centrale & Annulaire, du premier Avril 1764 (Explanation of the Map, which Represents the Passage of the Moon’s Shadow Across Europe During the Central & Annular Solar Eclipse of 1 April 1764)

Paris, 1762

Acquired with the support of the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust for the Women Writers Fund, Rare Books Collection

French astronomer Nicole-Reine Lepaute was one of the first female astronomers. Lepaute published these calculations for the annular eclipse of the sun in 1764, some 20 years before Caroline Herschel first recorded her observations. On publication, this pamphlet was accompanied by a large map, but few have survived.

Lectures on Natural Philosophy: The Result of Many Years’ Practical

Experience of the Facts Elucidated . . .

London, Printed by Thomas Davison, and sold for the authoress by John Murray, and Archibald Constable and Co., 1806

Acquired with the support of the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust for the Women Writers Fund, RARESF 510 B84L

Englishwoman Margaret Bryan ran schools for girls from 1791 until 1816, assisted by her daughters, Anne Marian and Sarah Maria. As an educator, Bryan maintained the importance of a balanced and thorough curriculum for girls. Her schools offered a remarkably comprehensive scientific education at a time when young women were often not taught science at all. Based on her lessons, this work includes 36 engravings showing women conducting experiments and using laboratory apparatus, taken from drawings by Bryan.

Opuscula Hebraea, Graeca, Latina, Gallica. Prosaica & Metrica (Works in Hebrew, Greek, Latin and French. Prose and Verse)

Leiden, Elzevir Press, 1648

Acquired with the support of Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM for the Women Writers Fund, RARES 839.313 SCH868N (1648)

As the first woman to attend (unofficially) a university, Dutch scholar Anna Maria van Schurman was also the first to advocate that women should be admitted into universities.

A brilliant linguist, she mastered at least 14 languages and studied and wrote across many interests: theology, philosophy, medicine, education, literature, painting, sculpture, embroidery and instrumental music. This volume publishes her letters, written in several languages, to the leading intellectual men and women of her time.

婦人と子供の権利; Fujin to kodomo no kenri (Women’s and Children’s Rights)

Tōkyō, Ten’yūsha, Taishō 8 [1919]

Acquired by the Women Writers Fund, RARES 305.420952 H6683F (1919)

青鞜; Seitō (Bluestocking), vol. 3, no. 1

Tōkyō, Seitōsha, Taishō 2 [1913]

Acquired by the Women Writers Fund, RARES 305.420952 SE455

NANKATEI Muhitsu

(Dates unknown)

文明之花; Bunmei no hana (Flower of Civilisation)

Tōkyō, Kin’ōdō, Meiji 20 [1887]

Acquired by the Women Writers Fund, RARES 895.642 N155F (1887)

The fight for women’s equality was and remains a global struggle. In Japan in the early 20th century, Hiratsuka Raichō was a pioneering voice for women’s and children’s rights and for the creative and intellectual freedoms of women. She was an editor of the feminist literary journal Seitō. Its title, ‘Bluestocking’ in English, refers to an educated woman and dates to the informal dress worn by 18th-century women and men who met in European salons to discuss intellectual matters.

Also shown here is a utopian novel written in the period anticipating Japan’s first parliament, scheduled for 1890; it depicts the creation of two equal parliaments, one for women and one for men. Radical as the author was, there is a sting in the tail: the author is clear that women should be equal to men in all things until they get married. Equality for men and women does not mean equality for husband and wife.

Almanach féministe 1900

(Feminist Almanac 1900)

Paris, Édouard Cornély, 1900

Acquired with the support of Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and family for the Women Writers Fund, RARES 305.4209 A445 (1900)

Zoé Charlotte GATTI DE GAMOND

(1806–1854)

De la condition sociale des femmes au dix-neuvième siecle: et de leur éducation publique et privé (On the Social Condition of Women in the Nineteenth Century: and Their Public and Private Education)

Brussels, Berthot, 1834

Acquired with the support of the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust for the Women Writers Fund, Rare Books Collection

A Vindication of the Rights of Women

London, printed for J. Johnson, 1792

Acquired with the support of Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM for the Women Writers Fund, RARES 305.4 W83V (1792)

This groundbreaking feminist manifesto caused a great stir when it was published in 1792. Displayed here is the second edition, which was printed the same year. Its passionate arguments for social and political reform shocked even some of Wollstonecraft’s radical friends. One prominent critic called her ‘a hyena in petticoats’, but the book was an immediate bestseller. During the 19th century, disapproval of Wollstonecraft’s unorthodox personal life caused many

feminists to reject this book. From the 1890s, its ideas inspired the suffragette movement for women’s political equality, and it is now recognised as a key text in European intellectual history.

An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution and the Effect It Has Produced in Europe

London, J. Johnson, 1794

Acquired with the support of the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust for the Women Writers Fund, RARES 944.04 W83H (1794)

Mary Wollstonecraft’s treatise on the origins of the French Revolution was written in 1794, while she was living in Le Havre. She was largely sympathetic to the revolutionaries, arguing the violent nature of the upheaval was a direct and inevitable consequence of the excesses of the ancien régime. Although further volumes were intended, this was the only one published. The advertisement of her other works affirms her conviction that education was the path to equality for women and girls.

Gay Bar

San Francisco, Pan-Graphic Press, 1957

Acquired with the support of the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust for the Women Writers Fund, RARES 647.9508664 B7355G

Helen Branson ran a gay bar in Los Angeles in the 1950s, at a time the California statutes prohibited homosexuals (as they were called) from gathering in bars. A heterosexual divorced grandmother, Branson describes herself as looking like ‘your sixth-grade teacher or the librarian in the Maple Street branch

library’. She provided a haven for her ‘boys’, and her book tells of ‘the humor, the heartbreak, the piercing reality’ of their lives. The introduction is by Dr Blanche Baker, a psychologist notable for her then-controversial belief that homosexuality was not an abnormality, but a normal variation in human love and sexuality.

S.C.U.M., Society for Cutting Up Men, Manifesto

New York, Olympia Press, 1968

Acquired by the Women Writers Fund, RARES 305.42 SO41S

The radical feminist artist Valerie Solanas published this call for the execution of men in 1967:

which will eliminate through sabotage all aspects of society not relevant to women (everything), bring about a complete

female take-over, eliminate the male sex and begin to create a swinging, groovy, out-of-sight female world.

Some argued it was satire or parody, but at least one man experienced it as a serious threat: in 1968, Solanas infamously attempted to murder artist Andy Warhol. Olympia Press published this edition in the aftermath. Following treatment for mental ill health, she was found guilty and served three years.

Tearing Down the Dictatorship, Rebuilding Democracy

Manila, Friends and Admirers of Ninoy Aquino, 1986

Acquired by the Women Writers Fund, Rare Books Collection

Angela DAVIS

(Born 1944)

Frame Up: The Opening Defense Statement Made by Angela Y Davis March 29, 1972

San Francisco, National United Committee to Free Angela Davis, 1972

Acquired by the Women Writers Fund, Rare Books Collection

Red Flag

New York, The Viking Press, 1927

Acquired by the Women Writers Fund, RARES 811.52 R435R

Voltairine DE CLEYRE

(1866–1912)

Anarchism and American Traditions

Chicago, Free Society Group, 1932

Acquired by the Women Writers Fund, RAREP 335.830973 D3579

Plan pour faire servir les voyages à la culture des jeunes gens qui se vouent au service de l’état dans la carrière politique (Plan to Use Travel for the Cultural Enrichment of Young People Who Are Dedicated to Serving the State in a Political Career)

Vienna, de l’Imprimerie de la veuve Alberti, 1797

Acquired by the Women Writers Fund, RARES 914.04 G439P (1797)

German writer Juliane Giovane married Duke Nicola Giovene di Girasolea and became a lady-in-waiting for Queen Maria Caroline of Naples (1752–1814). She separated from her husband in 1790 and moved to Vienna, where she became an important academic. Her son, Carlo, remained in Naples, and it was for him that she wrote this travel manual for young people.

Memorie sull’Egitto e specialmente sui costumi delle donne orientali e gli Harem scritte durante il suo soggiorno in quel paese (1819–1828) (Memories of Egypt; and Particularly Regarding the Customs of Oriental Women and Harems, Written during the Author’s Stay in that Country, 1819–1828)

Milan, Tipografia e libreria Pirotta & Co., 1841

Acquired by the Women Writers Fund, Rare Books Collection

Chronicling a decade spent in Egypt as the wife of a diplomat, Nizzoli’s memoir, which was her sole published work, vividly describes her experience in Egypt and, in particular, her access to female-only spaces. Nizzoli notes how her gender and her knowledge of Arabic enable her to access feminine experiences and domestic spaces forbidden to foreign men.

Mrs J. Gomeldon c. 1740

Engraving

Acquired by the Women Writers Fund, Rare Books Collection

The extraordinary Jane Middleton (c. 1720–1779) was born into a prominent Quaker family in Newcastle, England. She married Captain Francis Gomeldon, but she fled soon afterwards to France where she dressed as a man and almost persuaded

a nun to elope with her. She returned to Newcastle after her husband’s death, in 1751. Jane was eager to accompany her cousin Sydney Parkinson on Captain James Cook’s first voyage to the Pacific. Though she was prevented from doing so, her letters to Parkinson and a poem about the voyage are included in some copies of Parkinson’s published account of the voyage, while they were suppressed from others.

Jane Gomeldon assumed an anonymous male persona for most of her literary career. A collection of 31 essays

appeared under the title The Medley (1766), the proceeds of which went to the lying-in hospital, which was a local charity for poor women. Among other things, her wide-ranging essays discussed cross-dressing, women’s education and female adultery. Also published anonymously was her poem ‘Happiness’. It was an ode to romance between women and was dedicated to ‘Dear, Faithful Ann’. In 1779, the year of her death, she published a collection of moral proverbs, Maxims, under her own name.

The Letters of Gertrude Bell of Arabia, vols 1 and 2

New York, Boni and Liveright, 1927

Acquired by the Women Writers Fund, RARES 920.72 B4134L

English traveller and writer Gertrude Bell was an archaeologist specialising in Mesopotamia. She also exerted significant political influence in the founding of modern Iraq after World War I. She brought to bear her extensive cultural immersion

in the region and her personal friendships with the man who would become King Faisal I and with the British diplomat T.E. Lawrence (known as Lawrence of Arabia). Her letters – here in a first edition with an attractive Art Deco dustjacket – were published posthumously by her mother. They reveal the depth and extent of Bell’s intellectual and political life.

North to the Rime-ringed Sun: Being the Record of an Alaska–Canadian Journey Made in 1933–34

London, Glasgow, Blackie & Son, 1934

Acquired by the Women Writers Fund, RARES 917.98 H97N (1934)

The Scottish author of this travel account was a poet, explorer, botanist and filmmaker. Isobel Wylie Hutchison carved out

a unique career as an explorer of remote regions at a time when few women were involved in exploration, especially not as solo travellers. While today overshadowed by her male contemporaries, she was, in 1934, the first woman awarded the Mungo Park Medal by the Royal Scottish Geographical Society. Hutchison’s journeys included walking solo around Iceland and travelling through Greenland. As young woman she wrote in her diary, ‘I feel as if I belonged to neither sex – a sort of onlooker’.

Jane DEGRAS, translator

(1905–1973)

A Woman in the Polar Night

London, George Allen & Unwin, 1954

Acquired by the Women Writers Fund, RARES 919.81 R51W (1954)

Austrian writer and painter Christiane Ritter is best known for this memoir, published in 1938 (the English translation in 1954). It details her experiences on Svalbarg, a remote Norwegian archipelago midway between Norway and the North Pole, which was primarily a mining settlement by the 20th century. Ritter’s naval officer husband, Hermann, decided to live there as a hunter, and she joined him for one winter. Her memoir blends lyrical descriptions of the wilderness with the bleak humour of a woman tasked with a household in an extreme environment.

Questions of Travel

New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1965

Acquired by the Women Writers Fund, RARES 811.54 B54Q

One of America’s key postwar poets, Elizabeth Bishop won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

in 1956 and the National Book Award in 1970. Born in Massachusetts, she experienced a childhood disrupted by parental death, trauma and her own chronic ill health. While studying at Vassar College she met the modernist poet Marianne Moore (1887–1972), who became her mentor in life and poetry. Independently wealthy due to an inheritance,

Bishop travelled widely and wrote about it frequently, including in this collection.

Madeleine BOYD, translator

(Died 1972)

Mademoiselle Against the World

New York, Horace Liveright, 1931

Acquired by the Women Writers Fund, RARES 910.91092 T53M (1931)

French journalist Élisabeth Sauvy, who wrote under the pseudonym Titaÿna, was famous in her day as an adventurous solo traveller. She documented her experiences in columns

for various outlets. In this memoir, she recounts her journeys through Japan, Morocco, Poland, Australia, the Philippines, China and many other places, and includes photographs of the people she met along the way. Her reputation suffered

in France due to her collaboration with the invading German forces in World War II.

A Room of One’s Own

London, Hogarth Press, 1929

Acquired by the Women Writers Fund, RARES 823.912 W883R

Published in 1929 by Virginia Woolf’s own Hogarth Press and with a striking dustjacket designed by her sister, artist Vanessa Bell, this extended essay is based on two lectures she delivered at a women’s college at Cambridge University in 1928. In it, she addresses her thoughts on ‘the question of women and fiction’. It has become one of the most iconic works of feminist thought and it was the very first acquisition made by the Women Writers Fund, in 2021.

Woolf ponders whether a woman can produce, or in fact is free to produce, art that is the quality of Shakespeare’s. In doing so, she examines women’s historical experience and the distinctive struggle of the woman artist, concluding with her rallying cry:

‘a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is going to write’. Without equality in political, social and economic structures, she argues, women will never achieve equal opportunity to contribute to art and literature.

Emma, vols 1 and 3

London, John Murray, 1816

Acquired with the support of Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM, Helen Sykes, Professor Emeritus Chris Browne and Dr Vivien Santer, the Brenda Shanahan Foundation and Peter Griffin AM & Terry Swann for the Women Writers Fund, RARES 823.7 AU74E (1816)

Though her name is now one of the most famous in English literature, Jane Austen (1775–1817) published anonymously during her lifetime. This was due to the peculiarly British censure on women writers in the Regency and Victorian eras. Her hugely popular novel Emma appeared in three volumes after the successes of Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813) and Mansfield Park (1814). As the

advertisement at the end of Emma indicates, these novels were already in their second editions by 1816. This set has very special provenance; it was owned by Austen’s grand-nephew Edward Knatchbull-Huggesen.

Emma, vol. 2

London, John Murray, 1816

Acquired with the support of Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM, Helen Sykes, Professor Emeritus Chris Browne and Dr Vivien Santer, the Brenda Shanahan Foundation and Peter Griffin AM & Terry Swann for the Women Writers Fund, RARES 823.7 AU74E (1816)

Emma is a classic of Austen’s genre, a gentle and witty exploration of women’s experiences of love and matrimony in the rigid class structure of Regency England. The eponymous heroine seeks to make matches for all her friends but is blind to her own love for Mr Knightley. Adapted many times for screen, Emma was reinterpreted for the modern era in the 1995 film Clueless, starring Alicia Silverstone as the well-meaning but entitled teenage main character.

Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, vols 1 and 2

London, John Murray, 1818

Acquired with the support of the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust for the Women Writers Fund, RARES 823.7 AU74N (1818)

Austen died on 18 July 1817, aged 41, possibly of an undiagnosed endocrine disorder or Hodgkin’s lymphoma. She was buried at Winchester Cathedral. Austen had completed her final two novels, which were to be released in a four-volume set. Her brother Henry and sister, Cassandra, oversaw the publication; in a foreword, Henry named Jane for the very first time as the author of all her works.

Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, vols 3 and 4

London, John Murray, 1818

Acquired with the support of the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust for the Women Writers Fund, RARES 823.7 AU74N (1818)

Austen is an emblematic author for the Women Writers Fund. Her works were affordable in early or even first editions in the mid-19th century, when this library opened. But because literature was not deemed useful by the library’s founder,

Sir Redmond Barry, these novels were not acquired. In the decades since, and as Austen’s reputation has skyrocketed, first editions have become unaffordable without the generous philanthropic support that underpins the Women Writers Fund. The library now holds three first-edition Austen novels, all on display here.

Hugh THOMSON, illustrator

(1860–1920)

Pride and Prejudice

London, George Allen, 1894

Acquired with the support of Graham and Anita Anderson in honour of their friends Rob and Sue Taylor for the Women Writers Fund, RARES 823.7 AU7P (1894)

Perhaps Austen’s most popular novel, Pride and Prejudice follows the lives and loves of the Bennett sisters, with the fiercely intelligent Lizzie at its heart. This beautiful edition was the first of all Austen’s novels to be fully illustrated. Irish artist Hugh Thomson also created its beautiful and famous gilt cloth cover design; it is usually referred to as ‘the Peacock Pride & Prejudice’.

C.E. (Charles Edmund) and H.M. (Henry Matthew) BROCK, illustrators

(1870–1938) and (1875–1960)

The Novels of Jane Austen, Edited by Reginald Brimley Johnson

London, J.M. Dent, 1897

RARESF 823.7 AU73A (1898)

This set, complete with travelling case, is the first to publish Austen’s novels with full-colour illustrations. It remains the work for which the Brock brothers are best known. The choice of frontispiece in Pride and Prejudice may surprise us, as it

seems unthinkable that the romantic leads, Lizzie and Mr Darcy, are not depicted but rather Mr Collins and his future bride Charlotte Lucas. It is telling, however, that the edition features an image of Austen herself, finally emerged from the shadows of anonymity.

The Secret Adversary

London, John Lane the Bodley Head Ltd, 1933

Acquired with the support of the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust for the Women Writers Fund, RARES 823.91 C46S

They Came to Baghdad

London, The Crime Club by Collins, 1951

Acquired with the support of the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust for the Women Writers Fund, RARES 823.91 C46T

The Man in the Brown Suit

London, John Lane the Bodley Head Ltd, 1936

Acquired with the support of the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust for the Women Writers Fund, RARES 823.91 C46M

Agatha Christie had a life-long passion for travel. Her first thriller is dedicated to those seeking adventure and was published

at the same time as she and her first husband, Archie, embarked on a year-long voyage as part of a trade mission to promote the British Empire Exhibition. Her travels took her to South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii and Canada. Her time in South Africa inspired her thriller The Man in the Brown Suit. In later life, she travelled frequently to the Middle East, accompanying her second husband, Max Mallowan, on archaeological digs.

A Daughter’s a Daughter

London, William Heinemann, 1952

RARES 823.91 W5281D

Dead Man’s Folly

London, The Crime Club by Collins, 1956

Acquired with the support of the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust for the Women Writers Fund, RARES 823.91 C46D

Christie wrote six novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott, which include autobiographical details.

A Daughter’s Daughter explores the strained relationship between a mother and daughter when the mother wishes to remarry, something Christie experienced with her own daughter. Dead Man’s Folly is set at the fictional ‘Nasse House’, modelled on Christie’s home ‘Greenway’, in Devon, which she described

as ‘the ideal house, a dream house’.

Sleeping Murder, 1976 Hickory Dickory Dock, 1955 Hallowe’en Party, 1969

Endless Night, 1967

Destination Unknown, 1954 A Caribbean Mystery, 1964 After the Funeral, 1953

Cat Among the Pigeons, 1959

The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side, 1962

By the Pricking of My Thumbs, 1968

N or M?, 1941

Agatha Christie’s Murder at the Vicarage, 1950

Ordeal by Innocence, 1958

Death Comes as the End, 1945

Acquired with the support of the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust for the Women Writers Fund, Rare Books Collection

A Kitchen Goes to War: A Ration Time Cookery Book with 150 Recipes

London, John Miles, 1940

Acquired with the support of the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust for the Women Writers Fund, RARES 641.5941 K647

World War II was a period of intense creativity for Christie, who continued to write while working in a hospital dispensary. Anxious about the future, she wrote the final Miss Marple,

Sleeping Murder, and the final Poirot, Curtain, during the war and locked them in a bank vault for safekeeping. She also wrote short stories and two plays, and she contributed to publications such as this ration cookbook, in which she describes her recipe for ‘mystery potatoes’.

The Seven Dials Mystery

New York, Dodd, Mead and Company, 1929

Acquired with the support of the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust for the Women Writers Fund, RARES 823.91 C46S

La mort dans les nuages (Death in the Clouds)

Paris, Éditions du Masque, 1978

Acquired with the support of the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust for the Women Writers Fund, Rare Books Collection

Christie enjoyed international popularity for much of her career, and the global reach of her books continues today. She holds the Guinness World Record as the most translated author in history. This French paperback edition of Death in the Clouds features the iconic artwork of Tom Adams. The large wasp on the cover inspired an episode of the popular TV show Dr Who in 2008.

4.50 from Paddington

London, The Crime Club by Collins, 1957

Acquired with the support of the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust for the Women Writers Fund, RARES 823.91 C46F

Murder on the Orient Express

Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1948

Acquired with the support of the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust for the Women Writers Fund, RARES KIL 00 689

Christie became synonymous with luxury train travel after the publication of Murder on the Orient Express in 1934. The title is an example of a ‘locked room’ mystery, a plot device that was a defining feature of the golden age of detective fiction.

Sometimes called an ‘impossible crime’, it relies on the idea that it would appear that none of the suspects could have committed the crime.

The Pale Horse

London, The Crime Club by Collins, 1961

Acquired with the support of the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust for the Women Writers Fund, RARES 823.91 C46P

Sparkling Cyanide

London, The Crime Club by Collins, 1945

Acquired with the support of the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust for the Women Writers Fund, RARES 823.91 C46S

Christie’s flair for poisons came from working in hospital dispensaries during the two World Wars. Poisoning features in almost half of Christie’s mysteries, and her accurate

descriptions of their symptoms and effects attracted admiration from medical professionals and they helped save lives.

Christie’s portrayal of thallium poisoning in The Pale Horse, helped catch a serial killer in 1971, saved a husband from his murderous wife in 1975 and assisted a nurse to treat a sick child in 1977.

When I began writing science fiction, when I began reading, heck, I wasn’t in any of this stuff I read. The only black people you found were occasional characters or characters who were so feeble-witted that they couldn’t manage anything, anyway. I wrote myself in, since I’m me and I’m here and I’m writing.

Octavia Butler, 2000

Octavia Butler (1947–2006) is one of the most influential speculative- and science-fiction writers of the late 20th-century, so the acquisition of her works is significant for the library. A habitual winner of the Hugo, Locus and Nebula awards, Butler was also the first science-fiction writer and first African American woman to receive the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship, in 1995.

Damian DUFFY, author and illustrator

(Birth date unknown)

Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation

New York, Abrams ComicArts, 2017

Acquired with the support of the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust for the Women Writers Fund, RARES 741.5973 D8743K

Kindred

Garden City, New York, Doubleday & Company Inc., 1979

Acquired with the support of the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust for the Women Writers Fund, RARES 813.54 B9778K

Octavia Butler’s most celebrated and critically acclaimed work, Kindred, is considered a cornerstone of the Afrofuturist movement. Here, she reframes the genre trope of time-travel

writing, overlaying it with intergenerational trauma experienced through slavery and oppression. The genesis for the novel appeared to her as a young student at Pasadena City College in the 1960s, when a peer expressed anger at the complicity of their forebears in accepting slavery. Kindred responds to this, shifting the narrative of acceptance and shame to one of survival.

This copy is signed by Octavia Butler.

Comprising Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, the series considers a future characterised by catastrophic environmental, economic and social failure. With families forced into fragmented clusters of fortified, gated communities, the series is a tale of survival.

It commences in 2024 and is written through the journals of Lauren Olamina, a young ‘hyper-empath’ living in a small gated community in Los Angeles. Lauren’s ability to feel the emotional and physical feelings of others is a side effect of Paracetco, a smart pill designed to improve mental productivity.

The destruction of her community sends Lauren north, where she develops Earthseed, a new belief system centred by

the concept that ‘God is Change’. Earthseed is practical and forward-looking, urging people to adapt, survive and take responsibility for shaping the future – on Earth and beyond it.

Damian DUFFY, author and illustrator

(Birth date unknown)

Parable of the Sower: A Graphic Novel Adaptation

New York, Abrams ComicArts, 2020

Acquired with the support of the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust for the Women Writers Fund, RARES 741.5973 D8743P

Octavia E. BUTLER, author

(1947–2006)

Mary KASS, designer

(Birth date unknown)

Parable of the Sower

New York, Four Walls Eight Windows, 1993

Acquired with the support of the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust for the Women Writers Fund, RARES 813.54 B9778P

Damian DUFFY, author and illustrator

(Birth date unknown)

Parable of the Talents: A Graphic Novel Adaptation

New York, Abrams ComicArts, 2025

Acquired with the support of the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust for the Women Writers Fund, RARES 741.5973 D8743P

Octavia E. BUTLER, author

(1947–2006)

Annette FLASTER, designer

(Birth date unknown)

Parable of the Talents: A Novel

New York, Seven Stories Press, 1998

Acquired with the support of the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust for the Women Writers Fund, RARES 813.54 B9778P

At a young age, Octavia Butler showed an intense passion for creative writing. Described as a shy and introverted child,

Butler spent many hours reading science-fiction magazines at the Pasadena Central Library. After watching the 1954 science-fiction film Devil Girl from Mars, Butler was convinced that

she could write a better, more representative story. Aged 12, she drafted what would become the genesis for the Patternist series.

In 1976, her Patternmaster was published, soon followed by Mind of My Mind (1977), Survivor (1978), Wild Seed (1980) and, finally, Clay’s Ark (1984). The narrative traces a long historical arc, but the published works are not in chronological sequence, allowing them to be read in publishing or internal chronological order.

Patternmaster

Garden City, New York, Doubleday & Company Inc., 1976

Acquired with the support of the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust for the Women Writers Fund, RARES 813.54 B9778P

Although it is the first published work in the series, Patternmaster is the final book chronologically. Written in the far future, the world is divided into Patternists, Clayarks and Mutes. Through a telepathic network controlled by the Patternmaster, the dominant society is Patternist, and they wield power

over the Mutes (the non-telepathic humans) and diseased anthropomorphic Clayarks.

Mind of my Mind

Garden City, New York, Doubleday & Company Inc., 1977

Acquired with the support of the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust for the Women Writers Fund, RARES 813.54 B9778M

Wild Seed

Garden City, New York, Doubleday & Company Inc., 1980

Acquired with the support of the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust for the Women Writers Fund, RARES 813.54 B9778W

Survivor

Garden City, New York, Doubleday & Company Inc., 1978

Acquired with the support of the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust for the Women Writers Fund, RARES 813.54 B9778S

Survivor is the only book in the Patternist series that is out of print; Butler repudiated the novel’s simplicity, describing it as her ‘Star Trek novel’. Survivor is one of the first science-fiction novels to have a human of mixed race as its protagonist.

Clay’s Ark

New York, St Martin’s Press, 1984

Acquired with the support of the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust for the Women Writers Fund, RARES 813.54 B9778C

My Own Story

London, Eveleigh Nash, 1914

Acquired with the support of Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and family for the Women Writers Fund, RARES 324.623092 P1942M (1914)

Order of service for Emmeline Pankhurst’s funeral, St John the Evangelist, Westminster, 18 June 1928

Acquired with the support of Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM for the Women Writers Fund, Rare Books Collection

Emmeline Pankhurst, with her daughters Christabel, Sylvia and Adeline, led the British suffrage movement. Their goal to gain the vote for all women was partially achieved in 1918 when property-owning women over the age of 30 were granted the right to vote. Pankhurst died just weeks before royal assent granted full voting rights to all women over the age of 21, on 2 July 1928.

Unshackled: The Story of How We Won the Vote

London, Hutchinson, 1959

Acquired by the Women Writers Fund, RARES 324.309 P19U

Christabel Pankhurst was her mother’s most loyal supporter in the Women’s Social and Political Union, which the family founded. Her sister Sylvia’s hard left politics created distance

between her and her family, while Adeline’s membership of the Communist Party saw her banished to Australia, where she

co-founded the Australian Communist Party before swerving to the right and favouring Nazism and eugenics. Emmeline Pankhurst’s funeral was the first time in years that Christabel and Sylvia were together – and the last time. Christabel immigrated to the United States where she became a religious evangelist.

Australia’s Advice

London, The Woman’s Press, 1911

Acquired with the support of Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM for the Women Writers Fund, Rare Books Collection

Australia granted all settler women voting rights after Federation, in 1902. But it was not until 1967 that Indigenous women were granted this right. On 17 November 1910, the Australian Senate held a debate that discussed the legitimacy of advising other countries to enfranchise women, especially Britain. The debate passed the ‘Votes for Women Resolution’, which declared that ‘all nations enjoying representative government would be well advised in granting votes to women’. This recommendation was cabled to the British prime minister, Herbert Asquith, who acknowledged receipt but concealed it from the British Parliament for six months.

(1872–1970)

Anti-suffragist Anxieties

London, The People’s Suffrage Federation, 1910

Acquired with the support of Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM for the Women Writers Fund, Rare Books Collection

One of the 20th century’s leading philosophers, Bertrand Russell was staunchly pro-suffrage. He was acutely aware of the many and varied reasons that people viewed granting

women the vote with scepticism and even alarm. He wrote this essay to counter the anti-suffrage arguments presented by other prominent men. He concludes: ‘To substitute cooperation for subjection is everywhere the effort of democracy, and it is one of the strongest arguments in favour of the enfranchisement of women that it will further this substitution in all that concerns the relations of men and women’.

suffrage perspectives

United Kingdom, various publishers, 1905–15

Acquired with the support of Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM for the Women Writers Fund, RAREP 324.623 P8459/2

Both sides of the debate over women’s right to vote recognised the power of propaganda. In an era in which the mail was delivered multiple times a day, the picture postcard was a powerful medium. This selection includes photographs of suffragettes being arrested, including Emmeline Pankhurst; it also includes clearly anti-suffrage images ridiculing women, the Pankhursts in particular (for example, ‘Christabear’ for Christabel).

(1882–1960)

Votes for Women (suffragette sash)

Birmingham, Toyes & Co., c. 1908

Donated by The Wave Church Op Shop, Ocean Grove, 2026, as part of the Women Writers Fund

Pictures Collection, H2026.47

The ‘Votes for Women’ sash is one of the suffragette movement’s most iconic objects. Worn by women at rallies and protests during the long campaign for women’s enfranchisement in Britain, it uses the famous tricolour devised by Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, also seen on the teacup and saucer in this display. It is not known how this sash came to be in Australia;

it may have been brought by an immigrant or inherited from a British ancestor. Discovered in an op shop, the sash is now preserved as part of the state collection.

‘1981’

Printed silk scarf

United Kingdom, Carslaw & Henderson, 1881

Acquired with the support of Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM for the Women Writers Fund, Realia Collection, H2023.126

This Victorian anti-suffrage scarf, or handkerchief, envisions the societal repercussions of granting women equal rights. Looking 100 years ahead, to 1981, the illustrations depict the laughable role reversal of women serving in traditionally male-dominated careers, while men are relegated to the domestic sphere. The vote would allow the women of 1981 to serve in the army,

navy and police, to appear in court, to run for political office, to pursue academic careers, to become footmen, mechanics,

telegraph deliverers and athletes. Men, in contrast, either have nothing to do or are sidelined into the drudgery of housekeeping and childcare.

https://find.slv.vic.gov.au/permalink/61SLV_INST/crkpie/ alma9940771062407636

(1882–1960)

Women’s Social and Political Union teacup and saucer

United Kingdom, Henry M. Williamson & Sons, 1909

Acquired with the support of Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM for the Women Writers Fund, Realia Collection, H2024.130

The suffragette movement used both militancy and soft power in its campaign for the vote. Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence devised the colours of the movement: ‘Purple . . . for the royal blood that flows in the veins of every suffragette . . . white stands for purity in private and public life . . . green is the colour of hope and the emblem of spring’. A talented artist, Sylvia Pankhurst used these colours in the crockery she designed for use in the Women’s Social and Political Union tearooms, which raised funds for the cause.

Mrs L.O. KLEBER, compiler

(Dates unknown)

The Suffrage Cook Book

Pittsburgh, Equal Franchise Federation of Western Pennsylvania, 1915

Acquired with the support of Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and Helen Sykes for the Women Writers Fund, RARES 641.563 SU29K

This famous suffrage publication, with contributions from both women and men, blended domestic acumen with feminist activism to demonstrate how women were well-informed to vote on civil political matters. This genre of suffrage publication was particularly popular in the United States, where the right to vote was granted in stages across different states until it became federal law in 1920.

Memories of a Militant

Frome and London, Butler & Tanner Ltd, 1924

Acquired with the support of Krystyna Campbell-Pretty and family for the Women Writers Fund, RARES 324.623092 K366M (1924)

Katherine ROBERTS (possible pseudonym)

(Dates unknown)

Pages from the Diary of a Militant Suffragette

Letchworth and London, Garden City Press Ltd, 1910

Acquired by the Women Writers Fund, RARES 324.623 R6431P (1910)

The Suffragette: The History of the Women’s Militant Suffrage Movement, 1905–1910

London, Gay & Hancock, 1911

Acquired by the Women Writers Fund, RARES 324.623 P19S (1911)

Holloway Prison pin, issued to Jessie Cumberland by the Women’s Social and Political Union, c. 1909

Acquired with the support of Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and family for the Women Writers Fund, Realia Collection, H2023.112

Many militant women were imprisoned and tortured for campaigning to achieve the vote in Britain. The Women’s Social and Political Union awarded medals and pins, including the Holloway pin, on which is depicted a suffragette arrow piercing the portcullis of the Houses of Parliament.

Life as We have Known It, by Co-operative Working Women

London, Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, 1931

Acquired by the Women Writers Fund, RARES 334.0942 D28L

The leading activists of the Women’s Social and Political Union were affluent women, which can skew our view of life for women in Britain in the early 20th century. Margaret Llewelyn Davies was secretary of the Women’s Co-operative Guild

from 1889 to 1921. It had been founded in 1882 to advance the education of and, therefore, the opportunities for working women. Virginia Woolf was a regular speaker at guild events and wrote the foreword to this volume.

Erna REISS (1888–1974)

Ray STRACHEY (1887–1940)

Alison NEILANS (1884–1942)

Mary Agnes HAMILTON (1882–1966)

Our Freedom and Its Results, by Five Women

London, Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, 1936

Acquired by the Women Writers Fund, RARES 323.34 OU73 (1936)

Men who read this book will get an insight into a section of contemporary thought which is normally outside their experience; women who grew up before the war will be

reminded of the atmosphere and outlook of their youth, and women of a later generation will find that part of the picture almost incredible. People may disagree with the description of the present and the forecasts of the future, but that is all the more reason for reading it.

Efuru

London, William Heinemann, 1966

Acquired by the Women Writers Fund, RARES 823.914 N979 (1966)

Florence Nwanzuruahu Nkiru Nwapa, who published as Flora Nwapa, was Nigeria’s first female novelist published in English at a time when African writing was dominated by men. This

is her first novel. She was the forerunner to a generation of African women writers who started speaking for themselves. Recognising the constraints on publishing as a ‘third world woman’, she founded, in 1977, Tata Press, and in doing she so became the first African woman to establish a publishing house. It continues today.

Fireworks: Nine Profane Pieces

London, Quartet Books, 1974

Acquired by the Women Writers Fund, RARES 823.914 C24F

Toni MORRISON

(1931–2019)

Jazz

New York, Knopf, 1992

Acquired by the Women Writers Fund, RARES 813.54 M83J (1992)

Ancient Melodies

London, Hogarth Press, 1953

Acquired by the Women Writers Fund, RARES 915.1044092 L6464A

Ling Shuhua was an artist and accomplished short-story writer, and has been called ‘China’s Katherine Mansfield’. She met Virginia Woolf’s nephew Julian Bell in 1935 while he was teaching English in China. It was through this connection that Ling made contact with Woolf. Ling and Bell’s illicit relationship (she was married at the time) is fictionalised in Hong Ying’s banned novel K: The Art of Love (1999), later

reworked as The English Lover (2003). Woolf’s Hogarth Press published Ling’s memoir, introduced by Woolf’s intimate friend, Vita Sackville-West.

Poèmas de la unica poetisa americana

(Poems by the Only American Poetess)

Valencia, por Antonio Bordazar, a costa de Joseph Cardona, Mercader de Libros, 1709

Acquired with the support of Christine Bell for the Women Writers Fund, RARES 861.3 J87P (1709)

Philosopher, poet and nun Juana Inés de la Cruz is a major figure in the history of Spanish-language literature and women’s experience of the Spanish colonial period. Born in Mexico to Spanish parents, she was fluent in Spanish, Latin and Nahuatl. After self-educating through a personal library inherited from her grandfather, she joined a convent at 19 and spent the rest of her life writing prose and poetry on the themes of women’s rights, the environment, love and God.

Unknown translator

A Collection of Novels and Tales of the Fairies Written by that Celebrated Wit of France, the Countess D’Anois, 3 vols

London, printed for J. Brotherton and others, 1743–66

Acquired with the support of the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust for the Women Writers Fund, Rare Books Collection

Countess D’Aulnoy is an important figure in the history of folk-and fairytales, predating the Grimm brothers by more than 100 years. Even the term ‘fairytale’ came from her work: she published Les Contes des Fées (Fairy Tales) in 1697. Her own

life was a dramatic one: she survived the political disgrace and imprisonment of her husband, fled a warrant for her own arrest and worked as a spy for France in Holland, Spain and England before being allowed to return to Paris.

We Have Been Warned: A Novel

London, Constable, 1935

Acquired by the Women Writers Fund, RARES 823.91 M69W (1935)

While in Vienna observing the rise of Nazism, Mitchison undertook to write ‘a historical novel of my own times’. The result caused controversy on publication, not because it outraged taste but because it issued a moral challenge. Her views on birth control and multiple-partner relationships and her sympathetic portrayal of a rape victim drew a great deal of criticism. Mitchison saw the dangers of complacency, and her vision of a fascist Britain is a terrifying one that remains regrettably relevant in our own time.

The Book of Repulsive Women: 8 Rhythms and 5 Drawings

New York, Guido Bruno, 1915

Acquired by the Women Writers Fund, RAREP 811.52 B2611B (1915)

American artist, writer and journalist Djuna Barnes is one of the most interesting figures in modernist writing. Her lesbian novel Nightwood (1936) became a cult classic and is now recognised in the canon of modernist literature. The Book of Repulsive Women, the first of what she considered her serious work, entwines text and imagery in a manner reminiscent of Aubrey Beardsley’s Art Nouveau aesthetic. Barnes later came to despise the work and forbade its republication, making the work scarce today.

Ariel

London, Faber and Faber, 1965

Acquired by the Women Writers Fund, RARES 811.54 P69A

Charlotte H. BRUNER, editor

(1917–1999)

Reverberations: Black Poets, There and Here

Ames, Iowa, Iowa State University Research Foundation, 1977

Acquired by the Women Writers Fund, RARES 896.1 R323I

Harper LEE

(1926–2016)

To Kill a Mockingbird

London, Heinemann, 1960

Acquired by the Women Writers Fund, RARES 813.54 L5125T

Plays, Never Before Printed . . .

London, Anna Maxwell, 1668

Acquired with the support of Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and family, as part of the Women Writers Fund, RARESF 822.4 C3156P (1668)

Margaret Cavendish was a playwright, philosopher, poet and scientist. She published under her own name at a time

when many women could not. As a maid of honour for Queen Henrietta Maria, she followed the queen into exile in Paris after the execution of Charles I, in 1649. There she met and married another royalist, William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle. An extraordinary, groundbreaking figure, Cavendish published works to acclaim, including one of the earliest works of science fiction. This is a first edition of her Plays, printed in London by another fascinating woman, Anna Maxwell (died 1684).

A Wizard of Earthsea (1971), The Tombs of Atuan (1972) and The Farthest Shore (1973)

London, Victor Gollancz, 1971–73

Acquired with the support of the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust for the Women Writers Fund, RAREJ 813.54 L52W (1971), RAREJ 813.54 L52W (1972),

RAREJ 813.54 L52W (1973)

Ursula Le Guin is one of the most important 20th-century female science-fiction writers. The Earthsea books have become one of the most influential series in post-Tolkien fantasy despite, or perhaps because of, their consciously non-Western world-building. Earthsea is an archipelago inhabited by characters who are not white and have no relation to a vaguely disguised Europe. Le Guin’s profound study of Taoism is also a major feature of the Earthsea trilogy. Above all, the beauty and depth of these books have established a lasting legacy.

RADCLYFFE-HALL)

(1880–1943)

The Well of Loneliness, vol. 1

New York, Covici-Friede Publishers, 1929

Acquired by the Women Writers Fund, RARES 823.912 H14W (1929)

Marguerite Antonia Radclyffe-Hall wrote as Radclyffe Hall, dressed in male clothing and often referred to herself as John, while using female pronouns. Her iconic lesbian novel, The Well of Loneliness, was famously banned in America on a charge of obscenity, despite public support from many authors, including Virginia Woolf. This ‘Victory Edition’ was published in 225 numbered copies after the New York Court of Special Sessions overturned the ban. It includes a foreword by Morris Ernst, a prominent attorney in the American Civil Liberties Union and is signed by Radclyffe Hall.

(1908–1986)

Leonard M. FRIEDMAN, translator

(1930–1994)

The Mandarins

Cleveland and New York, World Publishing Company, 1956

Acquired by the Women Writers Fund, RARES 843.91 B38M

Ai (born Florence ANTHONY)

(1947–2010)

Cruelty: Poems

Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1973

Acquired by the Women Writers Fund, RARES 811 Ai1

Botanical and natural history illustration unites the scientific and mythical with the artistic. Since ancient times, text and image have been used to record observations of nature. Greek physician Dioscorides’ De materia medica (c. 50–70 CE) was the first ‘herbal’, or manual of medicinal information relating to plants, and was a key botanical reference for more than 1500 years.

Knowledge about plants and animals has always been preserved in books, starting in the manuscript era. The Renaissance produced the first printed herbals and bestiaries. The Age of Discovery and the global expansion of colonial interests were rich sources of new and ‘exotic’ flora and fauna. The process for capturing, documenting and illustrating natural history was difficult. Specimens were often dried or preserved to maintain their integrity and were often in less-than-ideal condition when the ship returned to its port of origin.

These graphics reproduce two of the beautiful illustrations in Robert Thornton’s Temple of Flora (London, printed for the author, 1799–1807, RARESEF 581.1 T39). You can download these files in high resolution via the catalogue record.

Georg Christian OEDER

(1728–1791)

Leaf from Flora Danica (Danish Flowers)

Copenhagen, Nic Moller, 1761–71

RARESEF 016.58163 N63

Jakob DIETHER

(1522–1590)

Leaf from Neuw vollkommentlich Kreuterbuch (A New Complete Herbal)

Basel, Johann Ludwig Kōnig, 1731

RARESEF 016.58163 N63

Nürnbergische Hesperides

(Nuremberg Hesperides)

Nuremberg, the author, 1708–14

RARESF 634.3 V88

By the 17th century, it was highly fashionable among the aristocracy in Europe to grow citrus fruit. During winter, the plants were housed in specially built glasshouses, or

‘orangeries’, and then moved outdoors during summer. The term ‘Hesperides’ was often used to refer to citrus at this time. Drawn from Greek mythology, it alluded to the golden apples guarded by the Nymphs of the Sunset Hesperides. Volkamer’s detailed depictions of prize fruits float rather incongruously above the formal European estates and houses where they were grown.

Britannia Illustrata, or Views of Several of the Queen’s Palaces, as also of the Principal Seats of the Nobility and Gentry of Great Britain

London, David Mortier, 1707–09

RARESF 728.8K62

Dutch draughtsman Johannes Kip is renowned for his detailed engravings of English palaces and country mansions. He worked in collaboration with fellow countryman and artist Leonard Knyff (1650–1722), and they created some of the most important English topographical and architectural publications of the 18th century. Their bird’s-eye views delineate entire estates, including buildings, gardens, orchards and water features, as well as the surrounding countryside. Kip’s enormous body of work provides a record of baroque architecture and the formal English garden, very few of which survive today.

The Experimental Husbandman and Gardener: Containing a New Method of Improving Estates and Gardens

London, printed for W. Mears and F. Clay, 1726

RARESF 631 Ag8E

Georg Andreas Agricola was a physician from Regensburg, Germany, where he graduated as a medical doctor. He was also a keen botanist and particularly interested in plant cutting and grafting. The process of grafting involves inserting a section of stem with leaf buds into the cut shoot of another tree. Agricola experimented with fruit trees to discover a way to combine species of a particular fruit into one plant. His publications were well received by horticulturalists and botanists, with his works being translated into French, Dutch and English.

Japanese woman in a garden [c. 1880–1930]

Exhibition print from glass negative

H82.166/165

Japanese woman in a garden [c. 1880–1930]

Exhibition print from glass negative

H82.166/158

Japanese garden with a bridge [c. 1880–1930]

Exhibition print from glass negative

H82.166/161

Guided by the principles of simplicity, impermanence and imperfection, the aesthetic and spiritual philosophy of wabi-sabi (わびさび) is commonly practised in Japanese gardening. Garden composition is characterised by carefully blending plants, water and stones in a series of layers.

Traditionally, the craft of gardening was transmitted from master to apprentice through complex and often secretive methods.

Apprentices learned the art of landscape design through both verbal teachings (口伝 kuden) and experiential instruction (

相伝 sōden). Masters frequently recorded their specialised knowledge in secret manuals, or hidensho (秘伝書).

Akisato RITŌ, author

(Active 1780–1814)

築山庭造傳 (Tsukiyama Garden Construction), vol. 1, part 1

Edo (Tōkyō), Suharaya Mohē; Ōsaka, Kawachiya Tasuke, [18?]

RARES 710 K64

新撰庭作傳 : 築山山水・石垣園生・八重 垣 (New Garden Design: Tsukiyama Landscape, Ishigaki Garden, Yaegaki), vol. 3

Ōsaka, Kashiwahara Seijirō, Meiji 27 [1894]

RARES 712.0952 AK5T

During the Edo period, Akisato Ritō published numerous works on the classification and standardisation of the Tsukiyama (築 山) garden. Tsukiyama gardens were popular with the powerful lords (aimyo) of the Edo period and were characterised by simulating the grandeur of mountains, providing a sense of depth.

Kawamura BUNPŌ, author

(1779–1821)

金波園画譜 (Drawings by Kimpaen)

Kyoto, Hishiya Magobē, c. 1820

RARES 759.952 K12S

Tokifuyu YOKOI, designer

(1859–1906)

大日本美術圖譜 (Dai Nippon Art Book), vol. 4

Tōkyō, Yoshikawa Hanshichi, Meiji 34 [1901]

RARES 709.52 K846

Through beauty in simplicity, the aesthetics of Japanese landscape gardens translated well into the decorative arts. From paintings to ceramics, textiles to books, the aesthetic simplicity of the Japanese garden lends itself to contemporary and modern design.

都名所二十五景 (25 Famous Sights of the Capital)

Kyōto-shi, Tanaka Jihē, Meiji 28 [1895]

RARES 759.952 M82M

Akisato RITŌ

(Active 1780–1814)

築山庭造傳 (Tsukiyama Garden Construction), vol. 1, part 3

Edo (Tōkyō), Suharaya Mohē; Ōsaka, Kawachiya Tasuke, [18?]

RARES 710 K64

挿花衣の香 (On Flower Arrangement)

Ōsaka, Kashiwaraya Seiemon; Edo (Tōkyō), Kobayashi Shinbē, Kyōwa 1 [1801]

RARES 635.9663 T235

Sharing closely connected traditions of aesthetic and philosophical principles, flower arrangement (ikebana) and Japanese gardening engage with the natural world on different scales.

National Museum’

Exhibition print of wood engraving, published in The Australasian Sketcher, 5 August 1876

PCINF AS 05-08-76 P.68

Researches on the Fossil Remains of the Extinct Mammals of Aust[ralia], vol. 1

London, J. Erxleben, 1877

RARESF 569 OW2

Richard Owen made significant contributions to the study of animal fossils in the Victorian period. His legacy includes

classifying the newly discovered fossils of giant reptiles as a separate order. In the process, he coined the term Dinosauria (Greek for ‘terrible lizard’). Owen originally trained as a surgeon and worked as a curator at the Royal College of Surgeons’ Hunterian Museum, in London. Later appointed superintendent of natural history at the British Museum, he was responsible for the creation of the National Museum of Natural History. These collections provided him with valuable insights into comparative anatomy.

Memoirs on the Extinct Wingless Birds of New Zealand: With an Appendix

on Those of England, Australia, Newfoundland, Mauritius, and Rodriguez

London, John Van Voorst, 1879

RARESEF 568.2 OW2

In this photograph, Richard Owen stands next to a fossil of Diornis maximus; known as the Moa, the flightless bird was endemic to New Zealand. These birds grew up to 3.6 metres tall and were a significant source of food for early Māori. Its skin, bones and feathers were used for clothing and tools. Such usefulness led to the bird’s rapid demise; they were hunted

to extinction before the arrival of Europeans. The birds were known only in mythology until Owen classified a fragment of Moa bone in 1840. He went on to name 13 separate species of Moa.

‘The Variegated Lizard’

Exhibition print from Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales

London, Debrett, 1789

RARELTF 919.44 W58

The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands

London, printed for B. White, 1771

RARESEF 574.975 C28

Englishman Mark Catesby was able to pursue his interest in natural history after inheriting a modest fortune. His chosen field was the new British colonies in North America, where he made two long study trips, in 1712–19 and 1722–26. To limit production expenses, Catesby engraved the plates himself and did much of the hand colouring. He also devised the novel approach of combining an animal – here a beautiful snake, one of the reptilian descendants of dinosaurs – and a plant specimen within the one plate, sometimes naturalistically but sometimes with surreal results.

Nouvelles Illustrations de Zoologie

(New Zoological Illustrations)

London, printed for B. White, 1776

RARESF 591 B81N

This bilingual French–English book is by Danish natural history illustrator Peter Brown. It is best known for containing the earliest published colour illustration of an Australian bird, the Rainbow Lorikeet (or as Brown called it, the Blue-bellied Parrot). The book also recorded many other species, including this Mediterranean Tortoise, another descendant of dinosaurs.

Books are valued not only for their content but also for their beauty and craft. Since the invention of the codex in the first century CE, artists have been intimately involved in book production, from papermaking and illustration to design and binding.

The mass production and consequent decline in the quality of books in the 19th century prompted artists such as William Morris to revive traditional bookmaking crafts, laying the

foundations for the fine press movement. Contemporary artists continue to challenge the nature of the book, ensuring its future as an ever-changing object to be admired, read, viewed, and desired.

Arts and Crafts Bookbinders

In mid-19th-century Australia, the small numbers of women working in binderies were primarily employed as folders (folding printed paper sheets) and sewers; men undertook the bulk of the bookbinding work. In response to the industrialisation of book production, the Arts and Crafts movement saw women move to binding by hand in the early 20th century.

In Melbourne, Mrs Francis Knight established a bindery in 1902, where she taught women the art of bookbinding.

Margaret Chapman was one of these students, establishing the Craftsman Bindery first in Melbourne and then in Sassafras.

Chapman went on to teach numerous women the skills of bookbinding, including Edith Dew.

Working out of her house in the leafy suburb of Canterbury, Dew hand-bound books for both private and commercial customers.

Loan from State Library Victoria staff member

Bookbinding specimen by Edith Dew

Melbourne, Edith Dew, [early 1900s]

RARES 292.211 H31W

Bookbinding specimen by Edith Dew

Melbourne, Edith Dew, [early 1900s]

RARES 824.91 P93S

Edith Dew commonly used morocco leather for her bindings, primarily working in earthy tones such as green and brown.

Edith DEW, binder

(1893–1958)

A History of the Friends in Council, 1948

Manuscripts Collection, MS BOX 1288

Founded in 1898, The Friends in Council endeavoured to raise the tone of society by checking idle gossip and doing kindly deeds. Written for the Jubilee of the Friends in Council, this history was bound in calf skin and presented by Edith Dew in 1962. Australian Arts and Crafts artists often used local botanical motifs to adorn their work, as is evident on this specimen. To ensure her work remained in the best condition possible, Dew included a ‘binder’s note’ to help provide for the book being handled and housed in the best possible way.

Edith DEW, binder

(1893–1958)

Society of Artists Pictures: Edited by Sydney Ure Smith, Bertram Stevens and

C. Lloyd Jones

Sydney, Angus & Robertson, 1920

RARELTF 708.9 SO1

Edith DEW, binder

(1893–1958)

Pioneering Ballet in Australia

Sydney, Craftsman Bookshop, 1946

RARESF 792.8 B41P

Edith DEW, binder

(1893–1958)

Australian Landscape Painters of To-day

Sydney, Art in Australia, 1929

RARES 759.994 A11

Edith Dew often adopted the French bookbinding aesthetic of a quarter or half leather over decorative paper. Quarter leather refers to approximately 25 per cent of the book being protected in leather. Dew was also fond of incorporating simple blind-tooled decoration to her books. Most of her books include a binder’s stamp, like the example in the bottom left corner of the

cover. The bookbinder practice of signing or initialling their work is a relatively modern concept.

Edith DEW, binder

(1893–1958)

Melba’s Gift Book of Australian Art and Literature

Melbourne, George Robertson, [1915]

RARES 819.98 M48

This work was published as a gift book to raise money for the Belgian relief Fund during World War I. It includes works by Norman Lindsay, Ida Rentoul Outhwaite, Arthur Streeton, Ethel Turner, Henry Lawson and more. Dew’s binding demonstrates an interesting use of textured paste paper with identifiably Australian tones and colours.

Scrapbook from the Papers of Edith Dew

Manuscripts Collection, MS BOX 3292/13, MS12535

Photograph of Edith Dew

Manuscripts Collection, MS BOX 3292/12, MS12535

Letter to Edith Dew

Manuscripts Collection, MS BOX 3292/11, MS12535

A small collection of Edith Dew’s papers was donated to State Library Victoria’s Manuscripts Collection. Included is this letter from bookbinder Margaret Chapman to her former student Edith Dew. Chapman’s failing hand suggests this was perhaps the last correspondence between the two.

Unfolded sheet from Dissertation sur le dieu Sérapis, où l’on examine l’origine, les attributs & le culte de cette divinité (Dissertation on the God Serapis, in which the Origin, Attributes and Cult of this Divinity are Examined)

Amsterdam (false imprint) and Paris, J. Barbou, libraire-imprimeur, rue S. Jacques, près la fontaine S. Benoît, aux Cigognes, 1760

Wallace Kirsop Collection, RAREWK 299.31 G1373D (1760)

Before the mass production of books began in the 19th century, books were sold by printers unbound or in cheap paper wrappers that were intended to be temporary. The person purchasing the book as a stack of folded leaves (known as ‘gatherings’ or ‘quires’) would take it to a specialist bookbinder and commission the type of binding they desired.

Functional blank books such as account book, notebooks and ledgers were given durable vellum bindings called stationery bindings. Some printed books remained in their temporary bindings. This display from the Wallace Kirsop Collection celebrates the way most books looked in the pre-modern era – encased in not gilt-tooled leather but in simple paper wrappers.

Manuscript notebook on the sale and taxation of salt

Mâcon, France, c. 1595–1603

RARESEF 095 C4252

Pierre Chesnard was a grenetier in Mâcon, one of the royal officers who assisted in controlling the sale and taxation of salt. This notebook is in a classic stationery binding: limp parchment, with three primary over-bands of thick tanned leather sewn into the spine; six vertical twisted cords (tackets) sewn into a loop

to each over-band; the over-bands extending to the boards with alum-tawed (prepared animal skin) cords as ornamental lacing; a fore-edge envelope flap with alum-tawed tie; and tie-downs sewn through the spine and knotted together externally

at head and foot. Mâcon is near Lyon, which was at the time the sole thriving production centre for decorated leather stationery bindings in France.

(1695–1780)

Dissertation sur le dieu Sérapis, où l’on examine l’origine, les attributs & le culte de cette divinité (Dissertation on the God Serapis, in which the Origin, Attributes, and Cult of this Divinity are Examined)

Amsterdam (false imprint) and Paris, J. Barbou, libraire-imprimeur, rue S. Jacques, près la fontaine S. Benoît, aux Cigognes, 1760

Wallace Kirsop Collection, RAREWK 299.31 G1373D (1760)

This printed dissertation has remained entirely unbound; its gatherings are not even sewn together in a simple fashion, as was sometimes done in the printery. You can see one sheet unfolded in the frame above this showcase.

religious subjects

France, 1713–14

Wallace Kirsop Collection, RAREWK 273.7 Q37L (1714)

This volume contains 15 printed pamphlets bound together, all dating to 1713–14. They relate to the Jansenism, a Catholic theological movement that was strong in France in the 18th century. Their owner has had them bound together in paper boards, which were made by compressing layers of wastepaper to form a cardboard-like material, and then stitched to the text block with a coarse thread. No spine covering has been applied. This style of binding benefited the printery by using up any scraps, and it was a cheap option for the buyer.

L’Office de la Sainte vierge, celui des trépassés avec le pseautier de David, le tout imprime en faveur des Ecolieres des Dames Religieuses Ursulienes de Caen (The Office of the Blessed Virgin, the Office of the Dead, with the Psalter of David, All Printed for the Benefit of the Ursuline Nuns of Caen)

Caen, France, chez la Ve. Poisson, Imprimeur-Librairie Rue Froiderue, c. 1821

Wallace Kirsop Collection, RAREWK 264.024 C2862O (1821)

This small volume was printed for the nuns of the Ursuline Order in Caen, as its title notes. It is a prayerbook containing the various ‘offices’ the nuns would recite at specific times. It has been very simply bound in wastepaper grey boards, with no spine covering. The pages are untrimmed, and sheets of printer’s wastepaper have been recycled as endpapers.

Charles-Joseph MAYER

(1751 – c. 1825)

Lisvart de Grece, roman de chevalerie; ou Suite d’Amadis de Gaule (Lisvart

of Greece, a Chivalric Romance; or Sequel to Amadis of Gaul)

Amsterdam (false imprint) et se trouve à Paris, rue et Hôtel Serpente, 1788

Wallace Kirsop Collection, RAREWK 843.5 M4521L (1788)

Some book owners were happy to keep their volumes in paper wrappers. This five-volume edition of a chivalric romance novel is in the coarse, blue paper wrappers issued by the printer. The anonymous owner has added handwritten paper labels, with the title and a shelf mark (‘L5’) giving us an insight into how the owner arranged their personal library.

Les provincials . . . (The Provincials . . .)

Amsterdam (false imprint), aux dépens de la Compagnie (at the expense of the Company), 1753

Wallace Kirsop Collection, RAREWK 271.53 P2607P (1753)

The simple marbled paper wrapper on this volume conceals a sensational interior. In 1656–57, the philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote letters in defence of Antoine Arnauld, an opponent of the Jesuits and a defender of Jansenism. Arnauld was on trial before the faculty of theology in Paris for his controversial religious works. This 1753 printing uses a false imprint (it was likely printed in Paris, not Amsterdam), demonstrating the

continued controversy of the text. Marbled paper cost more than plain or wastepaper but was still an inexpensive wrapper.

De l’importance des opinions religieuses

(On the Importance of Religious Opinions)

London [possibly a false imprint for Paris] and found at Hôtel de Thou, rue des Poitevins, Paris, 1788

Wallace Kirsop Collection, RAREWK 230 N282L (1788)

This publication by Jacques Necker, controversial Genevan banker and finance minister to the ill-fated French King Louis XVI, survives in its original domino paper wrappers, as issued by the anonymous publisher. Domino paper, known in French as papier dominoté or dominoterie, was colourful block-printed paper, used as both wallpaper and for book coverings in 18th-century France. The patterns are thought to have been named ‘domino’ because they look like the dots on domino game tiles.

Oeuvres de M. Boileau Despréaux

(Works of Mr Boileau Despréaux)

Paris, de l’imprimerie des Sourds-Muets, 1792

Wallace Kirsop Collection, RAREWK 841.4 B6361O (1792)

Like the book to its left, this volume has been bound in domino paper. It is what rare book cataloguers describe as ‘quarter vellum’, referring to the vellum spine covering. The paper boards have been covered in domino paper, also used as wallpaper in this period. The red pattern with overlaid blue crescent moons was printed by hand, using two different woodblocks.

The role of all books is to communicate. Words and images form the messages to be conveyed and graphic design is the vehicle by which this is

done. Books are also vehicles for sharing design, as this display of the work of William Morris, Edward La Trobe Bateman, Owen Jones and Christopher Dresser demonstrates.

The introduction of the printing press, around 1455, enabled multiple copies of identical books to be produced for the first time, opening a new range of possibilities for font style and size. In the 18th century, the Industrial Revolution and the development of mass printing, automated typesetting and photographic forms of reproduction also greatly expanded the role and possibilities of graphic design. Books were increasingly produced for larger and more competitive markets.

Mass production has also encouraged some designers to look to history for inspiration for both design and production quality.

Proof print of border decorations from William Caxton’s The History of Godefrey of Boloyne and of the Conquest of Jerusalem

Hammersmith, printed by William Morris at the Kelmscott Press, 1893

MS Sequence (International Box 12/5)

Proof print for decorated initials from The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer

Hammersmith, printed by William Morris at the Kelmscott Press, 1896

MS SEQUENCE (International Box 12/5)

Designs for wallpapers (sample book), vol. 1

RARESEF 745.3 M83

William Morris was a socialist, designer, author and printer associated with the Arts and Crafts movement and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He was inspired by medieval craftsmanship and particularly the manuscripts and early printed books of the 15th century. In publishing, his greatest achievement was his ‘Kelmscott Chaucer’, which featured woodcuts by Edward Burne-Jones alongside Morris-designed type, ornamental initials and decorative borders. In 1861, Morris founded the decorative arts firm Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. with Burne-Jones and others to produce neo-medievalist tapestries, wallpaper, fabrics, furniture and stained-glass windows. He famously declared, ‘have nothing in your house which you do not know to be useful or find to be beautiful’.

Exhibition prints from proof prints of initials and finials for the 1861

Melbourne Public Library catalogue – letters S, T, U

Pictures Collection, H90.91/409, H90.91/410, H90.91/411

Artist and designer Edward La Trobe Bateman trained under Owen Jones at the Government School of Design in London. A cousin of Victoria’s Lieutenant-Governor Charles La Trobe, Bateman immigrated to Victoria in the 1850s, during the gold rush. In 1861, Redmond Barry, founder of the Public Library

(today, State Library Victoria), commissioned him to produce the decorative letters and tailpieces for its first printed catalogue.

Engraved as woodblocks by Samuel Calvert, his designs are the first instances of Australian flora being used for decorative motifs.

‘Egyptian No.4’, from The Grammar of Ornament

London, Day and Son, 1856

RARESEF 745 J72

The Grammar of Ornament

London, Day and Son, 1856

RARESF 745 J72

Architect Owen Jones was one of the most significant design theorists of the 19th century. His masterpiece, The Grammar of Ornament, intended as a resource for designers in the Victorian era, reflected Jones’ belief that modern design could learn important lessons from the past. The book, which

sought to reveal the universal design principles that lay behind all historical ornament, comprised 112 chromolithographic plates illustrating the styles of 19 cultural periods. Jones’ lasting influence can be seen in his student Edward La Trobe

Bateman’s decorative schema for the Ian Potter Queen’s Hall in this library.

Studies in Design

London, Cassell, Petter and Calpin, [1874–76]

RARESEF 745 D81

Designer, theorist, botanist, author and architect, the polymath Christopher Dresser was a leading member of the English design reform movement of the mid to late 19th century. The movement sought to restore quality and artistry to the mass-produced goods of the industrial age. A pupil of Owen Jones at the Government School of Design in London, Dresser

is considered the first industrial designer. His theory and practice drew on all three of the major artistic movements of the Victorian era: the Arts and Crafts emphasis on function and material, the luxurious qualities of Aestheticism and the elegance of Art Nouveau.

Books

Some books are more interactive than others. Here you can see a collection of books that are designed to move: pop ups, blow books, and flip books.

The pop up books shown here range from early simple paper pull tabs to more recent highly engineered paper architecture.

A blow book is itself a magic trick: if you know the secret to operating the book, you can make its contents appear,

disappear or change entirely. Most of the blow books here come from our W.G. Alma Conjuring Collection. If you take a close look, you may be able to discover how they work. A precursor

to animation, flip books appear to show movement when pages are quickly flipped.

(1928–2012)

Arthur YORINKS, author

(Born 1953)

Matthew REINHART, designer

(Born 1971)

Mommy?

New York, Michael Di Capua Books; Scholastic, 2006

RAREJ 813.6 SE5M

Maurice Sendak’s first pop-up book, Mommy? has been described as ‘a dark twist on the classic children’s book Are You My Mother?’. A baby overcomes a series of scary monsters, defeating all of them in an ingenious manner while trying to find his mother. In collaboration with Sendak and Yorinks, talented pop-up artist Matthew Reinhart brings the action to life through the use of a spinning dowel and string.

Old Mother Hubbard

London, Dean & Son, [1861]

RAREJ 398.8 OL15D

This is one of the oldest movable children’s books in the library’s collection, published by the London-based Dean & Son, which came to specialise in children’s toy books. It comprises eight hand-coloured engravings with moveable parts, activated by paper pull tabs.

(Born 1968)

Simon ARIZPE, paper engineer

(Born 1984)

Zahhak: The Legend of the Serpent King

Thailand, Fictionville Studio, [2015]

RAREJ 741.5955 R1295Z (2015)

This story is derived from a part of the Shahnameh, a Persian epic by 11th-century poet Abolqasem Firdawsī. It follows the fortunes of Zahhak, a foreign prince convinced by the devil to kill his father. It is thought to be the first pop-up book to depict a traditional Persian tale.

Peeps into Fairyland: A Panorama Picture Book of Fairy Stories

London, E. Nister; New York, Dutton, [1896]

RAREJEF 398.4 P34

German publisher Ernest Nister was widely recognised as a great maker of movable books. Those between 1891 and 1900 are considered among his most beautiful. Aware that the tastes of German and English children may vary, he set up an office in London with staff to choose and translate appropriate titles. The panoramas in this book are operated by linen strips that pull up three layers of scenery from the page as the book is opened.

Robert SABUDA, paper engineer

(Born 1965)

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

New York, Little Simon, 2000

RAREJ 813.4 B32WS

Robert Sabuda’s pop-up book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was published to mark the centenary of L. Frank Baum’s original publication. It features eye-catching layouts that are so intricate and sophisticated in their engineering that they might more properly be regarded as paper sculptures.

Blinky Bill: Magic-action Book

Racine, Wis., Whitman Pub. Co., c. 1935

RAREJLT A823.2 W155B

Dorothy Wall’s character Blinky Bill was so popular that just two years after it first appeared, this pirated pop-up book, which takes text directly from the first story, appeared on sale in the United States. It fails to credit Dorothy Wall and it was never intended for sale in Australia. Despite being published illegally, the US publisher was able to argue copyright for the book and obtain two separate patents covering its

pop-up elements!

Artist’s flip book

Melbourne, Virginia Fraser, 1980

Acquired by the Women Writers Fund, Rare Books Collection

This is a framed selection of pages from an unbound handmade flip book by Victorian artist, writer and advocate for women artists Virginia Fraser. The full item consists of approximately 100 slightly different headshots of the artist photocopied onto cards. The sequence displayed shows the minimal variations in the images that when put together and flipped through convey a sense of movement or animation.

A curious amalgam of images blow book

Italy, [not published], c. 1800

RAREALMA 793.8 B6239

This Italian manuscript blow book (a conjuring trick) features hand-drawn illustrations in a series of seven repeated sequences. As well as the skeleton and a devil grasping a pitchfork, as seen here, other images include a flower, a snake entwined around the trunk of a slender willow tree, a cobbler at his workbench playing cards and the characters of Harlequin, Colombina and Pulcinella. This item was once part of the collection of American stage magician and actor Ricky Jay.

and publisher

(1742–1794)

A conjurer’s blow book

[Paris], [J.F. Chéreau], [between 1780 and 1789]

RAREALMA 793.8 AM16C

France became the hub of blow book production in the latter half of the 18th century, with publishing company J.F. Chéreau distinguishing itself by producing particularly beautiful hand-coloured engravings. As well as playing cards, this book features sequences of flowers, harlequins, soldiers and clergy.

Blow book

[Germany], [publisher not identified], [c. 1870]

RAREALMA 793.8 B6239 (1870?)

This hand-coloured German blow book is displayed so that images from two of the featured series can be seen. Depicted in colour and monochrome are animals, alphabets, postage stamps, silhouettes, domestic scenes and people. It is similar in style to the Bilder-Zauberein displayed alongside it, and it features some identical sequences.

Bilder-Zauberein: eine amüsante Unterhaltung für Jung und Alt (Blow book, or Magic Picture Book: Amusing and Interesting for Young and Old)

Berlin, Luxus Papier Fabrik, [1880?]

RAREALMA 793.8 B49Z

By the mid-19th century, Germany was leading the way in producing blow books for export. Bilder-Zauberein, displayed here with its original slip case, includes instructions in several languages, allowing the one edition to be sold internationally.

It is intended for young readers and magicians. The range of transformations reflects childhood pastimes of the 1880s, including knotwork, stamps, silhouettes and puzzles.

The Magic Magic Book

[New York], Library Fellows of the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1994

RAREALMA 016.7938 J33M

This collaboration between magician Ricky Jay and the Whitney Museum of Art elevates to a high art form what was once a reasonably simple portable tool used by travelling conjurers. It features contributions by five contemporary

American artists, and the pages on display are the work of Philip Taafe, who draws inspiration from ornament, pattern and optical illusion.

Le dompteur (The Tamer)

[Montreal], [Cinémathèque canadienne], [1967]

Rare Books Collection

This flip book by Czech writer, director and animator Vladimír Lehký depicts a lion tamer being eaten by his lion.

1ère cigarette (First Cigarette)

Montreal, Cinémathèque canadienne, [1967]

Rare Books Collection

This flip book, by ‘father of animation’ Émile Cohl, features approximately 100 pages. When quickly flipped through, they create an animated photographic sequence showing Cohl’s son smoking his first cigarette. It was initially printed as part of the Montreal World Retrospective of Animation Cinema.

Horst Antes Flickbuch

Humble, Texas, H&R Magic, 2003

ALMAC 759.3 AN8F

This book by German artist Horst Antes features a phased-image transformation. As the pages are flipped through, the image of Antes slowly becomes the face of Marilyn Monroe. This technique was developed in England in the 19th century using magic lantern projectors – fading out one image while fading in another. These were known as ‘dissolving views’.

Be Divided

Fast, loud and angry, punk rock exploded onto the music scene across the world in the mid-1970s. Born from social and economic inequality and fuelled by the corporatisation of independent music, punk rock coalesced disenfranchised youth everywhere, who found their voice in its raw and unapologetic anti-establishment ethos. Under intense media and police scrutiny, disparate communities of punk fans began to

mobilise and organise.

The DIY (Do it Yourself) approach of fanzines, founded by the science-fiction community as a way to communicate with one another, was embraced by the punk rock movement. Fanzines provided an independent, cheap and creative platform for sharing, gigs, music, reviews, politics and art.

In Australia, punk fanzines were a necessary means to combat the ‘tyranny of distance’, both domestic and internationally, connecting geographically isolated towns and cities. Fanzines became a vehicle for political subversion in Australia, where punks faced significant hostility from the government and police, who conducted raids and made arrests at live shows.

(Dates unknown)

Stab Your Back, no. 1

Chicago, unknown publisher, 1977

RAREP 070.593 ST116S

THE SAINTS

(I’m) Stranded

Australia, Sire Records, 1977

D 788 SAI1

The Gun Rubber, no. 6, 1977

Search & Destroy, no 1, 1977-1979

Ripped & Torn, no. 6, 1976-1979 Where Is Hank?, XL Capris [1981] Autopsy, no. 1, 1978

Skum, no. 4, 1977 Alternative Ulster, c. 1970s Sniffin’Glue, no. 8, 1977

Search & Destroy, no 8, 1977-1979

Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols, Sex Pistols 1977

(Born 1957)

Andrew MAINE, creator

(Dates unknown)

Fast Forward, nos 10, 11, 12

Melbourne, Fast Forward Productions, 1980–82

RARELT 784.54015 F26

‘Home Taping Is Killing Music’ – British Phonographic Industry, 1981

Documenting the Australian and international post-punk scene of the early 1980s, Fast Forward was created by Bruce Milne and Andrew Maine, then Triple R radio presenters. This brief and innovative ‘cassette magazine’ is an assemblage

of interviews, music, printed material, discographies and photographs. Melbourne designer Michael Trudgeon created the designs, which are synonymous with the colourful soft plastic covers.

Matt DICKSON, author

(Dates unknown)

Self Abuse, no. 3

North Sydney, Self Abuse, 1978

RARELTP 070.593 D561S

Unknown creator

Mental, no. 6

Madrid, unknown publisher, [1983]

RARELTP 070.593 M5284M

Bruce MILNE, editor

(Born 1957)

Clinton WALKER, contributor

(Born 1957)

Pulp, no. 2

Hawthorn, Vic., Bruce Milne, Cee Walker, [1977–78]

RARELTP 781.64 P9677

Focused on the Melbourne and Brisbane punk scenes, Pulp was released in three issues during 1977 and 1978, with the third being a double issue numbered 3/4. The plans for a fifth issue, which would include a flexi-disc by Melbourne punk band News, never materialised and the fanzine ceased. Remnants of the fifth issue were published in Clinton Walker’s Inner City Sound: Punk and Post-punk in Australia, 1976–1985 (2005), and in 2020 a facsimile was reconstructed by Melynda von Wayward (punkjourney.com).

Carnation Your Piss, no. 1

[Sydney], Jon Dickson, 1982

RARELTP 070.593 D561C

Spurt, no. 1

Sydney, Spurt Magazine, 1977

RARELTP 781.66099441 SP97

Punk: fotografías de Salvador Costa

Barcelona, Producciones Editorales, 1977

Rare Books Collection

In this influential photobook Salvador Costa captured and recorded the raw immediacy of punk. Photographs were a mainstay of many punk fanzines, but Costa was one of the first artists to document the movement in a photobook format.

Self Abuse, no. 1

North Sydney, Self Abuse, 1977

RARELTP 070.593 D561S

Language

‘Worte trennen, Bilder verbinden’ (Words separate, pictures unite)

– Otto Neurath

From the development of pictograms in the 5th century bce to our modern reliance on emojis, humans have long used images to convey information. However, the modern art of data visualisation began with the pioneering work of Austrian philosopher and social scientist Otto Neurath (1882–1945), German designer and social scientist Marie Reidemeister (1898–1986) and German artist Gerd Arntz (1900–1988)

in Vienna in the 1920s.

They developed a lexicon of standardised pictograms with the aim of presenting complex social and economic information in an accessible way that transcended language and illiteracy.

Initially referred to as the ‘Wiener Methode der Bildstatistik’ (Vienna Method of Pictorial Statistics), the method was renamed ‘Isotype’ when its founders fled Vienna in 1935 due to the rise of fascism. ‘Isotype’ is an acronym for ‘International System of Typographic Picture Education’.

This method of statistical visualisation influenced the development of public signage, data visualisation and contemporary infographics.

A. F. RUMIANTSEV, editor

(Dates unknown)

Two leaves from Shestoi piatiletnii plan razvitiia narodnogo khoziaistva SSSR (The Sixth Five-Year Plan for the Development of the National Economy of the USSR)

Moscow, Gos. izd-vo Politicheskoi Literatury, 1956

RARESF 330.947 SH5R

Gerd ARNTZ, artist

(1900–1988)

International Picture Language: The First Rules of Isotype

London, K. Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd, 1936

RARES 419.2 N39

After Neurath’s move from Austria to London in 1936, he published this work setting out the practical and theoretical principles of Isotype. This manual remains the foundational reference for visual communication and continues to have a profound influence on modern graphic design. In 1941, Neurath and Reidemeister married; Marie subsequently published under her married name. Together, the Neuraths founded the British Isotype Institute in Oxford in 1942.

Wendingen: Beeldstatistiek sociologische grafiek (Upheaval: Statistical Images, Sociological Graphics), series 11, no. 9

Amsterdam, Uitgevers-maatschappij de Hooge Brug, 1930

Rare Books Collection

Along with Otto Neurath, Marie Reidemeister and Arntz Gerg, Dutch artist Peter Alma was closely associated with the foundation of pictorial statistics. Alma treated the misinterpretation of economic and social statistics as a

design problem, theorising that the development of simplified and universal graphics could hold the key to improving the accessibility of complex data. In 1930, Alma contributed to

a special edition of the Dutch avant-garde design journal Wendingen, which focused on beeldstatistiek, or pictorial statistics.

How John Grew an Inch

London, Heinemann, 1963

J 574.31 AL5

Designer and social scientist Marie Neurath had a particular interest in creating educational and instructional books

for children. The British Isotype Institute, which Marie co-founded in Oxford with her husband Otto, published more than 80 illustrated children’s books. More than half of these relate to science education, such as the work shown here,

which explains how the human body works. After Otto’s death in 1945, Marie continued the institute’s work championing isotypes as an international language until her own death, in 1988.

Lazar M. LISSITZKY (El Lissitzky), artist

(1890–1941)

USSR: An Album Illustrating the State Organization and National Economy of the U.S.S.R.

Moscow, Scientific Publishing Institute of Pictorial Statistics, 1939

RARESF 330.947 SC12

In 1931, a satellite of Otto Neurath’s Viennese Isotype institute was founded in Moscow, after Russian dictator Joseph Stalin mandated the use of its model for social and economic communications both within and about the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). This style of visualised statistics has become closely associated with propaganda about the purported successes of Marxist–Leninist (and ultimately Stalinist) governance.

Two Commonwealths

London, Toronto, G.G. Harrap, [1945]

RARES 330.947 H73T

Michael YOUNG

(1915–2002)

There’s Work for All

Prague, Theodor, 1945

RARES 331.137 Y86T

Human Problems in Industry

London, Nicholson & Watson, [1946]

RARES 658 D29H

Stephen TAYLOR

(1910–1988)

Battle for Health: A Primer of Social Medicine

London, Nicholson & Watson, 1944

RARES 614 T21B

Australian Acquisitions

While visual artists have been regularly involved in producing images for books, some have adopted the book itself as their medium of choice. Since the early 20th century, the book has provided artists with a form through which to explore new means of expression. Page, text, image, binding, shape and size are all aspects of a book that have been

deconstructed and reconstructed through the artist’s experimentation.

The definition of an artist’s book is broad and encompasses great diversity of approach. Some books are lavish productions issued in small editions; others are mass produced using affordable processes. Some exist within traditional models

of printing and binding; others redefine the book through the development of unusual forms and the use of new materials.

Through the creation of books as artworks, artists encourage us to consider the very question of what makes a book and what distinguishes it from other forms of artistic expression.

Exhibition prints from How Will They Know There’s No-one Left

North Fitzroy, Vic., Gracia & Louise, 2025

Rare Books Collection

How Will They Know There’s No-one Left,

no. 1 of 10

Digital collage, inkjet printed tunnel book, 2025

Rare Books Collection

Gracia Haby and Louise Jennison have been creating art together since 1999. The fusion of their words, collages, drawings and prints has forged a unique aesthetic. Their work as wildlife carers and environmental activists guides their art practice and daily lives. Using the theatricality of the tunnel-book form (their first use of this mode), this work draws the viewer in:

[It’s] an empty forest, in which no wildlife roamed . . . As the red curtain falls, it dawns, the stage is empty, the set abandoned .

. . How will we, any of us, know what we have lost, when entire ecosystems crumble?

Unwritten Law, no. 8 of 8

Melbourne, the artist, 2023

Rare Books Collection

Theo Strasser arrived in Australia from the Netherlands at four years of age. He later studied painting at Prahran College,

in Melbourne. From large-scale wall works to more intimate artists’ books, his vivid abstract paintings use colour, water and ‘controlled chance’ to explore the possibilities of pigment on paper. Of this work, Strasser writes:

It deals with how we respond to landscape, the informal, the emotional, the graphic unspoken truths of our responses.

There are many layers that explore continent, land and place. I use paper, paint and collage to unearth the possibilities of landscape.

Always > Never, no. 7 of 8

Risograph, double-sided concertina format, in a bespoke box by Monica Oppen

Rare Books Collection

This collaboration by Peter Lyssiotis and Caren Florance is the result of ongoing conversations between the artists about global political actions. The artists state:

In this book, the Occupy Wall Street movement of 2011 is positioned as the central pivot between past and future. We want to cut the string of the puppet masters. It is deliberate agitprop, trying to get in your face. We have created the book as a zig-zagged continuum to emphasise that protest will and should never cease, now more than ever. It’s a difficult book. It wants to be a difficult book.

Great Industrial Heartland (Altar)

Linocut, unique-state artist book, 2025

Rare Books Collection

Corio-based artist Peter Ward has long been inspired by the crumbling industrial infrastructure in his environment. Of this work, he states:

[It] is political and the images deliberately link the Church to the ‘dark satanic mills’. It plays with the idea propounded by Max Weber who, when discussing the Protestant work ethic, suggested that religious cultural values acted as implicit or hidden affirmations reinforcing capitalist ethics and behaviour. The book is created by deconstructing and reconstructing linocuts to resemble an altarpiece.

OMENS Alphabet, no. 3 of 10

Inkjet printer with Chinese ink stamp on kraft paper, concertina form, 2026

Rare Books Collection

John Hinds’ latest work, OMENS Alphabet, reflects the unease of our times. Using fonts that span the gothic to the contemporary and with a concertina form that unfolds as a

series of alarming words and phrases, it is an unsettling version of the alphabet books used to teach children to read.