Émilie du Châtelet (1706-49) was born into an aristocratic family. Highly educated, she first used her mathematics skills as a teenager to gamble and win money to buy books. In 1725, du Châtelet married the Marquis du Châtelet, but had a string of lovers, one of whom was French writer and philosopher, Voltaire (1694-1778). Together for 15 years, du Châtelet and Voltaire’s relationship was a meeting of two great minds. They worked together, reading and editing each other’s manuscripts – her most famous work was a translation of Isaac Newton’s Principia (1687). The first two lines of Voltaire’s ‘Epistle’, show the respect he held for du Châtelet’s intellect. However, he failed to give her any credit for her contribution to his Éléments de la Philosophie de Newton.]]> Voltaire. Translated by W.S. Kenrick]]> Books]]> Vanessa Bell (1879–1961) was Virginia Woolf’s older sister, and in her own way was just as successful as her novelist sister. Bell was a painter and interior designer, and was an early member of the Bloomsbury Group, which met at her house in Gordon Square, London. Influenced by artists such as Roger Fry and Duncan Grant, Bell developed her own painting style. She also designed book jackets, some 38 for her sister, Virginia, and the Hogarth Press imprint. She preferred jagged unclean lines that are perversely refreshing. They carry their own power. This is her take on her sister, Virginia’s A Haunted House.]]> Virginia Woolf]]> Book covers]]> Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) was ‘scribbling’, as she once wrote: ‘ever since I was a little creature, scribbling a story in the manner of Hawthorne on the green plush sofa in the drawing room at St. Ives while the grown-ups dined’. Woolf was another who adopted the ‘stream of consciousness’ technique. Mrs Dalloway, her second novel (1925), details one day in the life of high society woman, Clarissa Dalloway, in post-WWI England. It contains ‘interior’ narrative that flips back and forth in time. In 2005, The Times listed the novel as one of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923. This is the first edition, which carries her own imprint: ‘Published by Leonard & Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press’.]]> Virginia Woolf]]> Books]]> Ursula K. Le Guin (née Kroeber, 1929-2018) read Ghandi, Murray Bookchin, and Peter Kropotkin, in preparation to write her utopian novel, The Dispossessed. In the novel, Le Guin writes about an anarchist society on the planet, Anarres, where there is ‘no government, church, or ruling class’ (Jaeckle, 2009). She explores the freedoms experienced in an anarchist society, and the opposite in a non-anarchist state. More an imaginative anarchist than an active one, Le Guin writes works containing themes associated with the philosophy of anarchism. The Dispossessed, first published in 1974, was a vehicle to bring the ideas of anarchism to a contemporary audience of science fiction readers; Le Guin said it was her ‘reaction to the Vietnam War’.]]> Ursula Le Guin]]> Book covers]]> Kate Sheppard (née Malcolm; 1848-1934), whose face graces New Zealand’s ten dollar bill, was instrumental in making that happen. The campaign for women’s suffrage was fuelled by the realisation that temperance and welfare reforms could be passed through legislation more easily if women had the vote, and representation in Parliament. So, Sheppard, as the National Superintendent of Franchise and Legislation Department of the New Zealand Women’s Christian Temperance Union, helped to gather 30,000 petition signatures. As a result, all women aged over 21 gained the right to vote in 1893 – a long wait for women since democracy had begun in Athens some 2500 years before.]]> The Reserve Bank of New Zealand]]> Money]]> Frances Hodgkins (1869-1947) left New Zealand in 1900, age 31 and spent time in London, Manchester, Paris, and Morocco, eking out a living painting, and teaching. She returned briefly to New Zealand in 1912 as ‘the girl from down under who conquered Paris’. Although her European reputation grew, life as an artist was always hard, and support from the Calico Printers Association, the London Group, the Seven and Five Society, and individuals such as Arthur Howell, enabled her to continue. Hodgkins remained fiercely independent, determined, and by necessity, obstinate. She is regarded as one of New Zealand’s foremost artists. This catalogue of a ‘Memorial Exhibition’ of her works shown at the Tate Gallery, London, is from the Brasch Collection.]]> The Arts Council]]> Catalogues]]> Sarah M. Smith is the Book Arts Printer at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire. Minutes was printed in 2012, while she was at an artist’s residency at Asheville Bookworks in Asheville, North Carolina. It is a book about meetings, people and their behavior before, during, and after such occasions. Animal behavior, animal mimicry, flocking patterns and other disparate images and texts form the content. Minutes not only shows off Smith’s excellent skill as a printer and artist, but also her great sense of humour. In 2016, Smith was Printer in Residence at Otakou Press, University of Otago.]]> Sarah M. Smith]]> Book covers]]> Robin Hyde (1906–1939) was the pen name of Iris Guiver Wilkinson, born in Cape Town, but later moving to New Zealand when she was very young. The Desolate Star was Hyde’s first poetry book, and it appeared in 1929.]]> Robin Hyde]]> Book covers]]> Robin Hyde's work as a journalist and columnist at the Dominion, the Christchurch Sun, and Mirror led her to write about her experiences. Journalese appeared in 1934. In a period of four years, after much personal suffering, and travel, she wrote five novels: Passport to Hell (1936), Check To Your King (1936), Wednesday’s Children (1937), Nor the Years Condemn (1938), and The Godwits Fly (1938). The reputation of this very modern writer continues to rise.]]> Robin Hyde]]> Books]]> Joan of Arc, or the Maid of Orléans (1412-31) was inspired by ‘visions’, and petitioned King Charles VII to go into battle for France against the English in the Hundred Years War. In early May of 1429, Joan, still only a teenager, dressed in armour and atop her horse, accompanied the French troops in a successful siege to liberate Orléans. She was instrumental in turning France’s fortune in the war. Joan was a rebel in the sense that she challenged societal convention, fought for what she believed in, and never gave up. She became a hero for the French. However, the English saw Joan as a cross-dressing witch, and after capturing her in 1430, they quickly convicted her and burnt her at the stake. Here is the first volume of Robert Southey’s epic poem on the legendary Joan.]]> Robert Southey]]> Books]]> Marguerite Radclyffe Hall (1880-1943), known as Radclyffe, thought of herself from an early age as a ‘masculine female’. Probably dyslexic, and not really an intellectual, she did spend a lot of time studying the idea of self, especially in relation to her cross-gender existence. Hall’s attitude to ‘selfhood’ pervaded all her writing. In 1928, her most famous novel, The Well of Loneliness, was published. The story follows the hero/ine, Stephen Gordon, a ‘sexual invert’, a woman who dresses as a man and pursues an intimate relationship with a woman. Famously, the last line of the novel reads: ‘Give us also the right to our existence’. The novel was part of the nascent ‘enterprise of developing a lesbian public culture’ (Dellamora, 2011). The book was promptly banned. Pictured on the cover is Hall with her long-term partner, Una Troubridge (1887-1963).]]> Richard Dellamora]]> Book covers]]> Louise Magdalene Teowaina (Magda) Wallscott (1898-1999) was daughter of Ema Karetai and Frederick Wallscott, and she was the great grand-daughter of Chief Karetai, who signed the Treaty of Waitangi on 13 June 1840. Although a foundation member of the Araiteuru Cultural Club, a member of the Otakou Māori Committee, Te Wai Pounamu District Council, and the Māori Mission Committee, it was Wallscott’s role in the Māori Women’s Welfare League that she most treasured. She was a founding member of the Otepoti Branch, and relished their achievements: ‘We have made our voice heard…we are listened to…we have just simply been so sincere that people have taken notice of us.’ In 1960, she became the first Maori woman in Dunedin to be a Justice of the Peace, and in 1976, she was awarded the Queen Service Medal for services to the community.]]> Reg Graham photographer]]> Photographs]]> Janet Frame, sitting beside the unfinished bust executed by the sculptor Anthony Stones.]]> Reg Graham Photographer]]> Photographs]]> Queen Victoria (1819-1901) gave her name to an entire era. Born in Kensington Palace, London, Victoria endured an isolated childhood and was heavily controlled by her mother. She ascended the throne at the age of 18 and ruled Great Britain and Ireland for the next 64 years. Victoria had nine children, popularising the use of the anaesthetic chloroform along the way. Unusually for the time, all her offspring survived childhood. She was a prolific letter and journal writer and in all, it is thought Victoria wrote 60 million words in her lifetime. Here is a letter in her hand, to the Duke of Wellington, Arthur Wellesley (1769-1852), approving the continuation of Sir John Murray’s command in Nova Scotia, among other things.]]> Queen Victoria]]> Correspondence]]> Amazons was in Homer’s Iliad. Ancient historians Herodotus (5th cent. BC), Polybius (3rd cent. BC), Strabo (1st cent. BC), and Plutarch (1st cent. AD) all wrote of these ‘warrior women’ who were remembered as skilled horsewomen; man-haters, who were fierce and unforgiving in battle. It is easy to dismiss them as a myth. However, with the discovery in recent years of female warrior graves on the Russia-Kazakhstan border, there is now evidence that the Amazons could have existed. The frontispiece of Pierre Petit’s work on Amazons features a breastless Amazon, seated in the foreground, while a battle rages in the background. The most modern iteration of the women is, of course, Wonder Woman (2017), with Gal Gadot in the lead role.]]> Pierre Petit]]> Books]]> Murasaki Shikibu (born c. 978) is not the real name of the Japanese woman who wrote, what some believe to be, the first ever novel. Unconventionally, Murasaki was raised in her father’s household, and in a time when women were considered to lack real intelligence, she learnt the difficult language of Chinese alongside her brother. After leaving home, Murasaki became a lady-in-waiting in the Empress’s Court, and began writing The Tale of Genji in about 1000. On completion, the novel had over 1000 pages and 400 characters. Although the plotline of the book is lacking, the characters are well-developed, and it is considered to be a masterpiece. Uniquely, this ‘first novel’ was written by a woman, ostensibly for, other women. This copy is sinologist, Arthur Waley’s, translation.]]> Murasaki Shikibu (Translated by Arthur Waley)]]> Book covers]]> Baroness (Lady) Anna Brassey (1839-1887), who finally got the opportunity in November 1878 to visit Cyprus, Constantinople, and Greece in her motor schooner Sunbeam. Illustrated throughout, the text in journal form is packed full of social comment; individuals met and described; places of interest (Temple of Theseus; Messina); and notes on local customs and traditions. Prior to this trip, in 1876 and 1877, Brassey and her husband circumnavigated the world, and her account, A Voyage in the Sunbeam (1878), was so successful that it made her famous. The cover design of this first edition is by the French artist, Gustave Doré.]]> Mrs Brassey]]> Books]]> Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-97), as was so often the case, did not receive the same education as her brother. This, along with her father’s shabby treatment of her mother, was the foundation of her indignation against the disparities between men and women. Inspired by her publisher, and the events of the French Revolution, Wollstonecraft wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1791) first, before writing her more well-known treatise, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. In the latter text, she argues that women appeared to be ignorant, and were perceived as inferior because of their lack of education. She abhorred the idea that a woman had to be everything a man needed her to be – meek, docile, and compliant; as she writes above ‘all the sacred rights of humanity are violated by insisting on blind obedience…’. Wollstonecraft was a progressive and visionary feminist.]]> Mary Wollstonecraft]]> Books]]> Mary Somerville’s first love was mathematics. Self-taught in the family library, Somerville (1780-1872) studied mathematics in secret, as her father had forbidden her to do so. Her interests extended into science, and Somerville published her first scientific work, ‘The Magnetic Properties of the Violet Rays of the Solar Spectrum’, in 1826. She was involved in London’s educated scientific circles, and consulted with the likes of astronomer Sir John Herschel (1792-1871) and computer scientist Charles Babbage (1791-1871). Somerville continued to publish throughout her life on various topics: the mechanics of astronomy, physics, meteorology, and physical geography. This volume was published when she was 89 years old.]]> Mary Somerville]]> Books]]> Marianne Moore’s The Arctic Ox, a collection of poems that appeared in 1964, the first for her in seven years, since her successful Like a Bulwark (1957). Moore was a great lover of nature and was a frequent visitor to the American Museum of Natural History in New York. In this volume, Moore not only poeticises chameleons, jellyfish, a giraffe, and the Arctic Ox (or goat), but also baseball, which was another of her passions. In 1951, she won the Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Award for her Collected Poems (1951).]]> Marianne Moore]]> Book covers]]> Marianne Colston (née Jenkins, 1792-1865) married the wealthy Bristol merchant, Edward Francis Colston. Almost immediately, they set off on their Continental tour, with servants in tow. Marianne recorded their travels in her Journal of a Tour, which sadly Special Collections does not own. However, we do have the 50 folio lithographs that accompanied her two-volume set. Marianne was also an amateur painter and sketched her way through Europe. In the hope that her pencil supplied the deficiencies of her pen, she sketched picturesque sights that always appear grand. When people are placed within the scene, they are always small-scale. Here, Marianne is at Marignac, near St. Beat Haute, Garonne, sitting quietly with pencil and pad in hand. Perhaps, it is her husband shading her with the umbrella.]]> Marianne Colston]]> Drawing]]> Lady Mary Montagu’s famed ‘Embassy Letters’ were the result of her two years in Turkey, when she accompanied her husband, the British ambassador, to his post in Constantinople. Her Letters, written from a then uniquely new female perspective, describe the Turkish men and women encountered, their dress, habits, traditions, limitations, and liberties. Montagu happily wore the veil (yashmak), which enabled her greater freedom of movement denied to other uncovered Christian females. She was the first to favourably describe polygamy. Montagu (1689-1762) was well equipped for her travels. She had read Arabian Nights, de la Croix’s Milles et un jours (Persian Tales), and the Koran (in French). She had Latin, and understood Turkish in the original. This third edition appeared in 1763, the same year as the first.]]> Lady Mary Wortley Montagu]]> Books]]> Katherine Philips (1631–1664), who was known as ‘Orinda’. ‘The Matchless Orinda’ also did translations. These included Corneille’s Pompée, the first rhymed version of a French tragedy in English, as well as the first English play written by a woman to be performed on the professional stage. This folio edition of her posthumously produced Poems was edited by her friend, Sir Charles Cotterell, Master of Ceremonies at the court of Charles II. The large folio format is important. It not only reflected her reputation in refined literary circles, but also her standing with her publishers, who no doubt recouped their investment. Here is the second edition, which not only reconfirmed her popularity but also helped establish in print her poetic legacy.]]> Katherine Philips]]> Books]]> Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923) is perhaps New Zealand’s most famous export, a modernist poet and short story writer who made her name in Europe with works such as Je ne parle pas francais, Bliss and Other Short Stories, and The Garden Party. Extrapulmonary tuberculosis claimed her life at the early age of 34. Her husband, John Middleton Murray, was quick to forge his own version of Mansfield. Shortly after she died, he culled text from 53 notebooks and masses of unbound papers, she left behind, to form Poems (1923). ‘To L.H.B.’ was a poem written about her brother, Leslie Heron Beauchamp, who died on 6 October 1915, when a grenade malfunctioned while he was instructing troops.]]> Katherine Mansfield]]> Books]]> Jules Maurice Gaspard]]> Drawing]]>