The Women's Library reopens in London next month, the shelves of its impressive new building stocked with material ranging from tips on washing silk stockings to a first edition of Mary Wollstonecraft. Suzanne Lynch reports
Tucked away in a back street of east London, between the high finance of the City and the poverty of the East End, stands the Fawcett Library. Having been renovated over the past year, it is reopening as the Women's Library at the beginning of next month. The uninspiring Victorian wash-house facade belies an impressive interior. The £6.9 million sterling project, funded primarily by a grant from the UK lottery heritage fund, is an architectural triumph in an era when the institution of the public library, once a pillar of British society, has been in decline.
In its creation of a contemporary, spacious atmosphere through the fusion of old and new, the decor reflects the ethos of the reinvigorated institution, which aims to chart the continuities and changes of women's lives over the past few centuries. The converted wash house is more than just a library, incorporating a cafe, exhibition hall, conference facilities and a family room. The library's director, Antonia Byatt - daughter of the novelist A.S. Byatt - hopes it will become a centre "for living and making history".
The history of the library is bound up with that of the suffrage movement, the non-militant campaign for votes for women that culminated in the limited granting of the vote in 1918. Founded as the library of the London Society for Women's Service, it was renamed the Fawcett Library after its founder, Dame Millicent Garrett Fawcett. By the 1930s it was attracting interest from feminists such as Vera Brittain and Virginia Woolf and began to expand its collection. In 1977 it became part of what is now London Guildhall University, an institution to which it is still affiliated.
The library evolved through the steady amassing of leaflets and pamphlets relating to the suffrage campaign, as well as through generous donations of material by leading women of the time. The collection's strength lies in its unrivalled material on the suffrage campaign.
As well as the archive of Emily Davison, the infamous suffragist who fell to her death under the horse of King George V at the Epsom Derby in 1913, the collection houses an impressive array of photographs, posters and a unique collection of textiles and banners relating to the women's movement.
Its earliest book, the first on women and the law, dates back to 1632. It also boasts a first edition of Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication Of The Rights Of Woman, from 1792. With more than 60,000 books and 2,500 periodicals from the 18th century, the library has long been a favourite with researchers for whom traditional historical sources have too often sidelined women's history.
But the collection is also rich in alternative sources of social history, reflecting the minutiae of the domestic lives of women as well as the principal social changes of the past 300 years.
Cooking manuals dating back to the 17th century, travel books for women and an impressive collection of fashion-magazine favourites, such as Cosmopolitan and Vogue, offer a multitextured approach to women's history. From 17th-century tips on washing silk stockings to the archive of the National Council for One Parent Families, the collection is an array of oral and visual material that falls outside the scope of the traditional library.
The desire to highlight aspects of the collection other than the suffrage campaign is reflected in the renaming of the institution as the Women's Library. An exhibition on the ground floor aims to show the interplay between history and the present. Arranged thematically, it displays material chosen from the archive by leading contemporary women. Cherie Booth QC, the British barrister whose husband is Tony Blair, compares the experiences of the first woman barrister, Helena Normanton, to the life of the contemporary barrister.
The Princeton academic Elaine Showalter selects archive material relating to hysterectomies, contraception and mental illness from the past and present, while Vogue's fashion editor chooses early contributions by Mary Quant.
Recent acquisitions have included a collection of signed books by Muriel Spark, a manuscript by Barbara Cartland and a T-shirt from Dawn French. By bringing the history of women into dialogue with the present, the exhibitions attempt to highlight not only the distance women have come, but also, in some cases, the similarities they share with the past. A display entitled Work, for example, culminates with the movement for the ordination of women, a campaign that Byatt sees as far from won.
A series of three exhibitions per year has been planned for the library, as well as various talks, study days and conferences. There will also be specially commissioned artworks, the first a sound piece responding to the collections. The library hopes to attract school groups and families as well as further its academic reputation. Its spacious reading room and online catalogue make it an attractive place for academic research.
It also runs a fellowship programme that, from next month, will include Kate Pullinger, the library's writing fellow, and Ellen Ross, Leverhulme visiting professor.
In its interdisciplinary approach to history, the library hopes to foster greater academic research into law, medicine, literature and the social history of women.
The Women's Library is on Old Castle Street, London EC1 (00-44-20-73201189). See www.thewomenslibrary.ac.uk
