Catalogue of the Extraordinary Library … Consisting Entirely of Works by British and American Poetesses & Female Dramatic Writers

Original printed wrappers bound in modern full red buckram. Very good.

FIRST EDITION. This is the catalogue of the pioneering Stainforth library of women's literature, the first major auction devoted to the literary works of women writing in English from the mid-16th century to the Victorian era.

Francis John Stainforth (1797-1866), an Anglican clergyman, spent decades assembling the largest private library of Anglophone women's writing built in the mid-nineteenth century. Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge conducted the sale over six days in 1867. The catalogue lists 7,122 titles in over 8,000 volumes written and edited by more than 2,800 authors, almost all women.

"When we think of 19th-century private libraries in Britain, we usually envision a gentleman's library like the one Jane Austen's brother Edward kept at Godmersham Park. Shelved in an English countryside estate, the library contained works mostly in English and Romance languages written by men in the genres of biography, history, geography, theology, literature, and travel writings. Stainforth's library rejects this patriarchal model and makes a political claim that women—struggling working mothers, women of color, disabled authors, translators, children, aged writers, Jews, incarcerated poets, printers, schoolteachers, women who co-author with their husbands, survivors of assault, hymnists, those who publish only a single poem, and more—have a valued place in book history and on the shelf. He collected works by women writers not only from Britain but from America, Australia, Canada, and Asia who published between 1546 and 1866. His project, according to his catalog, was to collect a copy of every edition of every title by women poets, dramatists, and nonfiction writers before his death in 1866" (The Stainforth Library of Women's Writing website).

References:

H. T. W. "The Stainforth Library." The Woman's Journal 22 Sept. 1883

Leuner, Kirstyn J. "Locating Women's Book History in The Stainforth Library of Women's Writing." Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, vol. 60 no. 4, 2020, p. 651-671.