Turning the Book Wheel
Our good friends at the Biodiversity Heritage Library have assembled a great collection of works published, written, illustrated, or including the research of women, just for Women’s History Month.
Just in time for Women’s History Month, we have scanned our copy of Maria Sybilla Merian’s Metamorphosis insectorum surinamensium…
in it’s entirety!
Merian (1647 – 1717) was a German naturalist, painter, and scientific illustrator most famous for her detailed observations and documentation of the metamorphosis of the butterfly.
Portrait of artist Emma Stebbins (1815-1882) from an album of 19th c. cartes de visite of famous artists in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery Library.
Stebbins was a sculptor, best known for her work the Angel of the Waters (1873), also called the Bethesda Fountain, in Central Park.
Illustration of insects and flowers, from Maria Sibylla Merian’s Raupen wunderbare Verwandelung und sonderbare Blumennahrung (1730) ( “Caterpillars, Their Wondrous Transformation and Peculiar Nourishment from Flowers” ) this image is from a later translated edition of Merian’s original, which was published in 1679.
The Getty has an excellent online exhibition of some of her other work.
Beautiful color lithograph on the back cover of an 1899 seed catalog by Miss C. H. Lippincott.
Carrie H. Lippincott was the self-titled “Pioneer Seedswoman of America.” A quote from a contemporary publication said “the key to her success is prompt service, best seeds, reasonable prices, beautiful flowers, by a woman.” Lippincott’s approach to marketing through her emphasis on a woman-owned company led to at least two other seed firms in Minneapolis beginning business under women’s names.
Smithsonian Libraries has a large collection of beautiful seed catalogs, some of which have been digitized.
Nest of a field sparrow (spizella pusilla) from the Illustrations of the Nests and Eggs of Birds of Ohio.
The illustration was made from a nest taken June 3rd, 1879, in a wild rose-bush. It fairly represents the usual size, materials, and position. The foundation consists of weed-stalks and a few straws; the superstructure of finer weed-stems, fibres, and split grasses; the lining of horse-hair and roller-grass. The eggs figured show the usual sizes, shades of ground-color, and markings.
This remarkable and now rare volume was produced largely by women and authored by Genevieve Jones, an amateur naturalist and illustrator.
Portrait of artist Rosa Bonheur, from an album of 19th c. cartes de visite of famous artists in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery Library.
Bonheur was an animaliste, a painter and sculptor of animals, and one of the 19th century’s most famous women artists. She also received special permission from the police to wear trousers (!) in public to facilitate her study of animals.
Portrait of Tatiana Ehrenfest-Afanaseva (1876-1964) for Women’s History Month.
Tatyana Afanaseva (also written Afanasyeva) was a Russian mathematician who studied at the University of Göttingen. She married physicist Paul Ehrenfest in 1904 and they collaborated throughout their careers, most notably on a review of statistical mechanics.
Smithsonian Libraries has a handwritten article (later published in Physikalische Zeitschrift in 1913) by Afanaseva titled “Zur frage uber die Koncentrationsschwankungen in Radioactiven Losungen.” (“To the question of concentration fluctuations in radioactive solutions.”) (transl. approximate, courtesy Google Translate.)
Putting Women on the Map: New Women’s History Collections on Historypin
March is Women’s History Month and March 8 is International Women’s Day! To celebrate, the National Archives has created four new collections focusing on women of the past in on Historypin.
The Women at Work collection depicts the role of women in the workforce throughout our national life – in farms, shipyards, hospitals, manufacturing plants, markets, and in the aviation industry - including “Mrs. William Wood manages a one hundred and twenty acre farm in Coloma, Michigan, with little male assistance.”
Historical photographs and documents reveal the struggle for woman suffrage in the collection of the same name, including women protesting at the White House in 1917.
Two more collections include Women in the military and famous women from National Archives holdings.
via NARAtions » Putting Women on the Map: New Women’s History Collections on Historypin »
March is Women’s History Month, so we’ll be featuring a few portraits and publications of women famous and not-so-famous.
Portrait of Agnes Mary Clerke (1842-1907) from the Smithsonian Libraries’ collection Scientific Identity: Portraits from the Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology
Clerke was a self-taught astronomer who published several authoritative texts on astronomy as well as writing on a variety of other subjects including literature, politics, and history. Several of her books are available to download for free from the Internet Archive here.
