Auctor….femina fuit’ – ‘The author…was a woman’ – so says the preface to this reprint of Itinerarium Egeriae – ‘The Travels of Egeria’. The text is a detailed account of Egeria’s three-year journey from Western Europe, probably France or Spain, to the Middle East. It is the earliest written example of a Christian pilgrimage. Egeria wrote for a female audience, and described her stay in Jerusalem, from where she visited many Holy Places, like Mount Sinai. She also recorded detailed descriptions of religious practices in the Holy Land. It is uncertain whether Egeria was a nun, but she was certainly educated, and a pious Christian, with the means and strength to travel – a difficult task for anyone in the 4th century.]]> [Egeria] ]]> Books]]> Janet Frame, sitting beside the unfinished bust executed by the sculptor Anthony Stones.]]> Reg Graham Photographer]]> Photographs]]> 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]]> 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]]> Katherine Mansfield was part of a New Zealand Profiles series on prominent New Zealanders.]]> Heather Curnow]]> 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]]> 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]]> 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]]> Marie Curie (1867-1934) was born Marya Skoldowska in Poland. Initially educated in Warsaw, she attended the Sorbonne in Paris. In 1903, Curie won her first Nobel Prize (the first woman to do so), alongside her husband, Pierre, and a colleague, Henri Becquerel, for their researches into radiation. During her career, Curie also lectured at the Sorbonne; won another Nobel Prize – this time solo in 1911; and trained radiographers for WWI. She continued her studies into radium and radioactivity her whole life, all the while refusing to accept the dangers of radiation. This biography, written by her daughter Eve, paints Curie as a highly intelligent, selfless woman, who eschewed fame and fortune for the greater good. Curie, of course, died of radiation poisoning.]]> Eve Curie. Translated by Vincent Sheean]]> Books]]> 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]]> Trota of Salerno, Italy, was an 11th century medical practitioner. Tolerated as a female in the medical world, Trota wrote a treatise focussed on women’s health, specifically for a female audience. Over time, the treatise was copied, translated, and added to, and the extant manuscripts have become known as the ‘Trotula texts’. In the preface of some variations, the translator encourages literate women to read the text to illiterate women, so the knowledge becomes widespread. This book contains an ‘English Trotula’ (Sloane Manuscript 2463), translated from Middle English, and like all Trotula, it covers all kinds of medical conditions specific to women. Here is one of the sixteen explanations, with illustration, on ‘unnatural childbirth’.]]> [Trotula]. Translated by Beryl Rowland]]> Books]]> Lady Hester Stanhope (1776-1839) left England for the Middle East, never to return. This forceful and opinionated (according to William Pitt, her uncle) woman was a risk taker, certainly in a world dominated by male social and religious customs. En route to Cairo, Stanhope lost all her possessions. She refused to wear a veil, and adopted male attire. Indeed, she met the local Pasha wearing a purple velvet robe, embroidered trousers, waistcoat, jacket, and a sabre. Known as ‘Queen Hester’, she undertook the first archaeological dig in Palestine, excavating the ruins of Ashkelon, north of Gaza. She retired to Sidon, halfway between Tyre and Beirut, reclusive, but still forceful. This is volume one of Stanhope’s Memoirs.]]> Hester Stanhope]]> Books]]> 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]]> Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea (1661–1720) was encouraged by friends Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope to voice her writing in her own name. The first edition of Miscellany Poems was advertised as ‘Written by a Lady’. In later printings, like this scarce edition, Finch bucked the anonymity trend; her name was emblazoned on the title-page. Topics touched on were wide-ranging: marriage, fortune, depression, political events, and spiritual beliefs. Many of her poems are laced with feelings on how hard it was for a woman writer to gain respect in a man’s world. And, like many others before and after, she mused on the temporality of life. Finch is an important female poet of the Restoration era.]]> Anne, Countess of Winchilsea]]> Books]]> 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]]> Alexandra David-Néel’s autobiographical book on Lhasa is ‘The personal story of the only white woman who succeeded in entering the forbidden city’. In August 1911, dissatisfied with married life, David-Néel (1868-1969) travelled to the East. Her adventures had her living in a cave in Sikkim, Varanasi (Benares, India), and finally at Lhasa, Tibet. She was the first European woman to enter the city. While travelling, David-Néel adopted Tibetan dress, and was happy to beg, like other pilgrims. On returning to ‘civilisation’, she tirelessly promoted her three passions: women’s causes, theosophy, and Orientalism. The photograph shows ‘Lamp of Wisdom’, her Buddhist name, sitting in front of her retreat, Dechen Ashram, at 16,000 feet.]]> Alexandra David-Néel]]> Books]]> Emmeline Pankhurst (1858-1928) grew up on a diet of activism. Both her parents were political animals. Pankhurst first began to notice disparities between the sexes, when she saw that her education was not considered as important as that of her brother. She attended her first Suffrage meeting with her mother aged 14, and so began her lifelong career as a political and social activist. A self-professed ‘hooligan’, Pankhurst was arrested many times, all in the name of gaining the vote for women in England. Here is Pankhurst with fellow Suffragettes, Christabel, her daughter, and Flora Drummond (1878-1949), at her ‘First Conspiracy Trial’. They look decidedly bored with proceedings.]]> Emmeline Pankhurst]]> Books]]> Mary Barton, Elizabeth Gaskell (1810–1865) found fame. Charles Dickens was taken with her writing, and published in his periodical, Household Words, many of her works, including North and South. With a focus on social problems, Gaskell used the North (fictional industrial Milton) and South (a rural area) to help play out the conflict between workers, landed gentry, capitalist manufacturers, and employers. In 1897, an anthology celebrating women novelists included Gaskell, who was deemed ‘pre-eminent’, possessing a ‘genius which time, fashion or progress cannot dim or take from.’]]> [Elizabeth Gaskell]]]> Books]]> Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) had to fight was against her family. She was born rich and privileged, and at the time, nursing was a profession for low class women. Nightingale’s family were determined to stop her, but luckily they were unable to. Her life-long achievements are too many to list here, but ‘in a nutshell’: Nightingale made nursing a recognised profession; she established the first training school for nurses; she used statistics to highlight deficiencies in healthcare and sanitation; she wrote over 200 books and articles; and she was instrumental in the reform of hospital best practice. Nightingale’s influences on healthcare continue to be felt today. This is Notes on Nursing, her most famous and influential book.]]> Florence Nightingale]]> 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]]> Janet Frame (1924-2004), Nene Janet Paterson Clutha is certainly one of New Zealand’s best known novelists and short story writers. Her reputation is international, and there is high regard for all her work, especially the autobiographical sequence: To the Is-land, An Angel at my Table, and The Envoy from Mirror City. While Frame’s The Lagoon and Other Stories (1951) gained her prizes, it was Owls Do Cry, her first full-length novel, published in 1957, that established her literary career. The famed cover illustration by Dennis Beytagh on this work has become a classic.]]> Janet Frame]]> Book covers]]> 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]]> 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]]> 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]]>