Originally focused on material devoted to the struggle for the vote (such as the poster and the picture of Emmeline Pankhurst, above right), it now includes more than 60,000 books and pamphlets, 500 personal and organisational archives, posters and photographs, badges and banners. Hannah Woolley’s The Queene-like Closet or Rich Cabinet (1670) is a pioneering cookbook full of recipes said to be “very pleasant and beneficial to all ingenious persons of the female sex”.
These are among the 135 items selected for The Women’s Library @ LSE online, which presents a timeline of women’s battle for equality from the 16th century until the present day.
Among the other items are a copy of Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792) and a document from the National Women’s Liberation Movement outlining its four demands. Each is accompanied by a description provided by experts from the library.
Send suggestions for this series on the treasures, oddities and curiosities owned by universities across the world to matthew.reisz@tsleducation.com