ABSTRACT
From the creation of the University in 1901, the library’s collection policy involved assembling both the works of such standard women authors as Jane Austen, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Charlotte Bronte and the works of such recent or contemporary women authors as Charlotte Mary Yonge, Kate Douglas Wiggin, George Sand, Margaret Elizabeth Sangster, George Eliot, Mary Raymond Andrews, Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, and Mary Antin. It also involved the collection of works either by or about women who were receiving recognition for contributions in their field including Democracy and Social Ethics and The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets by Jane Addams, Introduction to Psychology and A First Book in Psychology by Mary Whiton Calkins, The Life of Alice Freeman Palmer by G. H. Palmer, Women in Industry by Edith Abbott, and Woman and Labor by Olive Schreiner. Not unexpectedly the early collection included a varied number of works in the category of manners and morals including Woman’s Share in Primitive Culture by O. T. Mason, Beauty in the Household by T. W. Deuring, The Business Girl by R. Ashmore, What Dress Makes of Us by D. Quigley, A New Era for Woman, Health Without Drugs by E. Dewey, and What a Young Woman Ought to Know and Almost a Man by Mary Wood-Allen. The place of women was depicted in such works as The Subjection of Women by John Stuart Mill, Anti-Suffrage, Ten Good Reasons by Grace D. Goodioni, Woman Suffrage published by the National American Woman’s Suffrage Association, and The Four Epoch’s of Woman’s Life by Anna M. Galbraith. Biographical or autobiographical examinations of women of greater or lesser influence were illustrated in the early collection by Mary Queen of Scots by Jacob Abbot; Age of Elizabeth by Mandell Crieghton, first editor of the English Historical Review; Margaret Fuller Ossoli by T. W. Higginson; and The Story of My Life by Helen Keller. 1
