Women's writing resources

Websites

A Celebration of Women Writers

'The Celebration of Women Writers recognizes the contributions of women writers throughout history. Women have written almost every imaginable type of work: novels, poems, letters, biographies, travel books, religious commentaries, histories, economic and scientific works. Our goal is to promote awareness of the breadth and variety of women's writing.'
A useful feature is the ability to browse by Author name, by Century or by Country. There is also a growing list of Bibliographies on particular people, time periods, countries, or focus groups.

Women Writers: a zine: women reading, writing, talking...

Creative and critical work on women's writing, a webliography, a listserv, and more. Especially valuable is the Links section; a collection of over 300 different women writers' websites, arranged by time period and subject headings such as Collections; Criticism, E-texts and so on.
A very rich resource which is updated every June and December.

Victorian Women Writers Project

The goal of the Victorian Women Writers Project is to produce highly accurate transcriptions of works by British women writers of the 19th century, encoded using the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). The works include anthologies, novels, political pamphlets, religious tracts, children's books, and volumes of poetry and verse drama.
You can use their search facility to find a particular work or consult their author lists of available works and works in preparation.
Included is a page of links to related WWW sites.

Women Romantic-era writers

Electronic texts, annuals, anthologies and gift books; Contemporary responses to women writers; Cultural and visual resources; Related websites.

South Australian women writers

A database of women writers in South Australia from 1836 to 1999 aiming to provide brief biographies and lists of their published writing. Compiled by researchers at the State Library of South Australia and Flinders University. SAWW is a subset of the AustLit database.
You can search the database in a number of ways, including by author, title, subject and genre.

William B. Cairns Collection of American Women Writers 1650-1920

A major holding of American women's writing, the Cairns Collection, housed in the Memorial Library at the University of Wisconsin, is an invaluable resource for scholars, teachers, and students of American literature, American history, and women's studies.The collection at present numbers over 7350 titles by some 2500 writers of fiction, poetry, drama, essays, diaries, autobiographies, biographies, sheet music, travel accounts, devotional and religious works, and domestic economies.
There is a searchable Author index of over 2000 names.

Women's Literary Salons Archive, 1975-1985: New York, Cerridwen, Paris, Los Angeles

Inspired by the historic examples of salon women such as, among others, Mme de Rambouillet, Mme Geoffrin, Mme de Stael, Gertrude Stein, and Natalie Clifford Barney, five feminist writers of the seventies, Marilyn Coffey, Erika Duncan, Karen Malpede, Gloria Orenstein, and Carole Rosenthal, decided to create a feminist forum for intellectual discussion and for the presentation of feminist writings that would serve a new generation of women writers in the ways that the salons of the past had served the male intellectuals and writers of their times.
Many of the writers featured in the Woman's Salon have, over the years, become prominent novelists and poets. They include Adrienne Rich, Kate Millett, Barbara Deming, Marge Piercy, Phyllis Chesler, Susan Griffin, Mae Swenson, Robin Morgan, Monique Wittig, Thulani Nkabinde Davis, Toi Derricotte, Cheryl Clarke, Michelle Wallace, Paula Gunn Allen, and Linda Hogan.

Feminist Science Fiction, Fantasy, & Utopia

Contains lots of useful material, including bibliographies, reviews and the Women Science Fiction Writers Index.

Literary Resources -- Feminism and Women's Literature

This page has annotated links to a number of sites on women's literature, feminist criticism, and gender studies. Part of the Literary Resources collection maintained by Jack Lynch of Rutgers -- Newark.

Journals

Tulsa studies in women's literature

Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature is a scholarly journal devoted to the study of the relations between women and writing of every period and in all languages. Publishing articles, notes, archival research, and reviews, Tulsa Studies seeks path-breaking literary, historicist, and theoretical work by both established and emerging scholars.
Holdings: we have the paper version from volume 2 (1983) onwards, and the online version from Volume 1 (1982) to five years from the present date and also from volume 26 (2007) onwards.
Location: Barr Smith Library Call number 805 T924

Women & literature

The annual bibliography of women and literature appears in the Fall issue of each volume.
We have volume 1-7 (1972-1979) at Call number 820.5 W872 and the new series volume 1-4 (1980 - 1988) at Call number 820.5 W872.2

Women's writing

We have the paper version and also online access, both from volume 1 (1994) onwards.

Microfilm sets of women's writing source material

The Barr Smith Library has several interesting and valuable sets of microfilms which could be useful sources if you are working in the field of women's writing:

Colonial discourses
Series one: Women, travel, and empire, 1660-1914. Part 1: Early travel accounts by women and women's experiences in India, Africa, Australasia, and Canada. 25 reels
BSL Microform collections MICROFILM 20989
Useful for the exploration of themes such as:
The development of women's travel literature, 1662-1914; The evolution of a female aesthetic sensibility; The use of travel as a form of escape from traditional gender roles; The ideology of Empire; Issues of identity - contrasts between imperial settlers and first and second generation 'colonials' who begin to develop a new national consciousness; Narratives of Empire and Anti-Empire; Gender and colonialism.

Sex and sexuality, 1640-1940
Literary, medical and sociological perspectives. 15 reels
BSL Microform collections MICROFILM 20999
A body of information and advice on sexuality was constructed from the seventeenth century onwards in the form of self-help manuals; moral tracts; medical dissertations; treatises of the specialist sexologists; works of literature; and texts on sexual habits, reproduction, masturbation, prostitution, and sexual pathologies. Through these texts we can understand how perceptions of the body have changed over time, and how attitudes towards sex have influenced broader gender issues.

Women advising women
Compares differing perceptions of women's status in 1450, 1550, 1650, 1750 and 1837 through an examination of the changes evident in cookbooks, household manuals, volumes on childbirth, and other topics across this period. The Journals provide unique access to poetry, essays and short stories by women otherwise forgotten by history.
Part 1: Early women's journals, c1700-1832. 17 reels. BSL Microform collections MICROFILM 2100
Were 18th century women regarded as equals in intellectual debate? Were they more outspoken than their Victorian counterparts? When did the image of woman as home-maker actually emerge? Was modesty a Victorian virtue? When did the glorification of womanhood begin? When did the cultivation of appearances assume a central role? How radical was the shift in attitudes towards women between 1690 and 1860? Did men and women perceive the role of women differently?

Part 2: Advice books, manuals, almanacs and journals, c1625-1837. 20 reels. BSL Microform collections MICROFILM 20954
Concentrates on prescriptive literature, offering over 300 household manuals, cookbooks, guidance books on marriage, child-birth and child-rearing, letter-writing manuals, recreational volumes and primers on the law and medicine for women.

Parts 3 and 4: The Lady's magazine, 1770-1800 and 1801-1832. 32 reels. BSL Microform collections MICROFILM 20955
The Lady's Magazine is a gold mine of poetry and prose by women, news of the latest fashions, pen portraits of female role models, and frank and revealing correspondence by women readers. Sample women's writing in the age of Jane Austen.

Part 5: Women's writing and advice, c1450 - 1700. 22 reels. BSL Microform collections MICROFILM 20965
Advice books, manuals and journals for women, 1450-1837.

Part 6, Household management, domestic economy, c1600-1800. 25 reels. BSL Microform collections MICROFILM 21078
Works on household management and domestic economy, 1600-1800.

Part 7, Sources from the Women's Library, London . 20 reels. BSL Microform collections MICROFILM 21084
Sources from The Women's Library at London Metropolitan University.

Women and Victorian values, 1837-1910.
Advice books, manuals and journals for women. 4 parts; total of 85 reels. BSL Microform collections MICROFILM PER 279
Accessible and legible materials that can be used for supplemental reading, project work and dissertations in the field of Victorian Studies. A rich collection of prescriptive literature for women, the collection also provides a number of rare women's journals, including early magazines for girls (a term that seems to have come into its own in the 1870's) as well as literary companions for the mother, housewife and maid.

Women, suffrage and politics.
The Papers of Sylvia Pankhurst, 1882-1960.
BSL Microform collections MICROFILM PER 268
Part 1: Inventory Numbers 1-224. 25 reels.
Part 2: Inventory numbers 225-362. 12 reels.

Women's journals of the nineteenth century
Part 1: The Women's Penny Paper and Woman's Herald, 1888-1893
4 reels. BSL Microform collections MICROFILM PER 275

Women's language and experience, 1500-1940
Women's diaries and related sources.
Scattered throughout the local record offices of England, Scotland and Wales are vital yet neglected sources for the study of women's history: Diaries, commonplace books, travel journals and letters which describe women's lives and experiences in their own language.
Part 1: Sources from the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire County Record Offices.
16 reels. BSL Microform collections MICROFILM PER 274
Part 2: Sources from Birmingham Central Library and Birmingham University Library.
24 reels. BSL Microform collections MICROFILM PER 274
Part 3: Sources from Suffolk County Record Office and Cambridge University Library
25 reels. BSL Microform collections MICROFILM PER 274
Part 4: Sources from the National Library of Scotland and the National Library of Wales
25 reels. BSL Microform collections MICROFILM PER 274

Working women in Victorian Britain, 1850-1910
The Diaries and Letters of Arthur J Munby (1828-1910) and Hannah Cullwick (1833-1909) from Trinity College, Cambridge
What did working women talk about? What were their hours of work? What were their wages? What did they like? What did they complain about? We get to know many of the women extremely well. Like Mayhew, Munby draws compelling vignettes, but he also particularises them and packs them with detail. He is just as adept at describing divorce court proceedings, the meeting of a suffrage society, work in a factory or entertainment in a music hall. Hannah Cullwick, a Victorian maid of all work, was Munby's servant. They were married secretly in 1873. Her life, before and after her marriage, is well documented in this microfilm project.
32 reels. BSL Microform collections MICROFILM 20825-20856

The Library will probably order the following microfilm collection when funds are available:

Medieval and early modern women. 14 reels
Important texts by key women authors; manuscripts bearing illustrations of women; and sources describing the lives of women in this period.

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This page is maintained by Jennifer Osborn