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Women’s voices from the past marks International Women’s Week

Media release

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Wednesday 02 March 2022


To mark International Women’s Week, State Library Victoria is proud to unveil a number of significant acquisitions made thanks to its recently launched Women Writers Fund – the first of its kind to be launched by an Australian public library – at a free event on Friday 11 March.

Women’s voices from the past will feature journalist Patricia Karvelas in conversation with Women Writers Fund co-founder Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM, writer Andrea Goldsmith and Senior Librarian History of the Book and Arts Dr Anna Welch, hosted by Maxine McKew.

The event will provide an exclusive opportunity to view recent acquisitions to the Women Writers Fund which was launched in December last year. The fund seeks to redress the historical gender bias in the Victorian State Collection by acquiring works by under-represented 19th- and 20th-century women writers.

This fund is the first that aims to address gender imbalance in an Australian public library collection. To date it has enabled the Library to purchase 60 significant texts by female authors and Dr Anna Welch said there are still hundreds of works to pursue.

“Patriarchal perspectives on collecting in the 19th-and 20th-centuries have resulted in the systemic under-representation of women writers,” Dr Welch said.

“Works from this era are often scarce and/or expensive, with many only available through the international market. The Women Writers Fund allows the State Library to compete with private collectors and acquire works that can be made accessible to all through a public collection.”

The new acquisitions cover broad creative and literary themes and include iconic novels, feminist journals, children’s books, biographies and autobiographies as well as scientific texts, such as:

·       First edition of Institutions de physique (1740) by Emilie du Chatelet, a scientist whose translation of Isaac Newton to French is still used today.

·       Complete run of the short-lived suffragette and socialist journal Germinal (1923-24) edited by Sylvia Pankhurst, daughter of Emmeline and major figure in the Suffragist movement. This is the only set of the journal in Australia.

·       Orlando, a ground-breaking work of playful biography written by Virginia Woolf as a tribute to her close friend and sometime lover Vita Sackville-West. The gender-fluid title character, based on Vita, lives for centuries and explores the differences and continuities between male and female experiences.

·       Third edition of Frankenstein (1832) by Mary Shelley, the final edition published during Shelley's lifetime, and the first illustrated edition. Shelley was the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, a women's rights activist.

·       First edition of Not Waving But Drowning (1957), a major work by feminist poet Stevie Smith.

·       Prix Goncourt-winning The Mandarins (1956) by feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir.

·       First edition of Poems (1929) by Marianne Moore, a major figure in 20th-century poetry. The book was published by two female friends who urged her to go into print: Harriet Shaw Weaver (whose Egoist Press published the first parts of Ulysses) and the Imagist poet H.D. (Hilda Doolittle).

·       First edition of posthumously published Ariel (1965) by Sylvia Plath, the book that launched her as a major poetic voice.

·       Cruelty (1973) by Ai Ogawa (born Florence Anthony), an American poet and educator who described herself as "1/2 Japanese, 1/8 Choctaw-Chickasaw, 1/4 Black, 1/16 Irish, Southern Cheyenne, and Comanche".

·       “2002” – Childlife One Hundred Years from Now (1902) by Laura Dayton Fessenden. An illustrated science fiction novel for children, depicting a technological, interstellar, feminist and vegetarian utopia 100 years into the future.

·       Elogio storico di Dottoressa Maria Gaetana Agnesi (1799), the first biography of Italian mathematician, philosopher, theologian Maria Gaetana Agnesi, the first woman to publish a mathematics book.

The work of the Women Writers Fund will give future generations access to more
diverse and representative voices from different times, cultures and disciplines and ensure that women’s voices aren’t lost to history.

It is hoped that it will inspire women of today by telling the stories of those who have gone before and of their courageous work in forging a path and shaping society for future generations.

The Women Writers Fund also supports the creation of an ongoing program of events to inform and inspire today’s young people by shining a light on the intellectual and creative endeavours of women from the past.
 
For a full list of titles acquired and catalogued to date, see
here. Donations to the fund can be made via slv.vic.gov.au/womenwriters

-ENDS-