Women's Studies
Ransom Center collections advance the study of women's achievements across many ages and in many areas: religious leadership, business, politics, science, publishing, and literature, this last being the most substantial component of the Center's holdings.
Literature
French
Louise Marie Madeline Dupin (1706-1799), the wife of a well-to-do government official, cultivated a salon of prominent writers and artists in her chateau Chenonceaux. In the mid-1740s she conceived the idea of writing the entire history of women. Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (17121778) served as her research assistant on this ambitious project from 1745 to 1751, but after years of labor, Madame Dupin's Ouvrage sur les femmes (History of Women) was shelved unfinished. The research notes, drafts, and fair copies written by Dupin and Rousseau were stored at the castle, essentially forgotten, until they came to light at a series of auctions in the 1950s, and were purchased, in large part, by the Ransom Center.
Among items by Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) is the original manuscript of her story collection La Femme rompue (ca. 1967). Letters from novelist Colette (1873-1954) to friend and well-known music critic Emile Vuillermoz (1878-1960) are also present. Among the papers of Valentine Hugo (1887-1968) are manuscript drafts for articles on various figures active in French art and letters, and her correspondence file. Letters to a young writer from French novelist Rachilde (1860-1953) are also preserved.
The Maurice Saillet Collection comprises correspondence and other manuscript material, photographs, and printed ephemera documenting the life and activities of Sylvia Beach (1887-1962). Beach's relationship with Adrienne Monnier, together with her roles as publisher of James Joyce's novel Ulysses and proprietor of Shakespeare and Company, the bookstore she operated in Paris from 1919 to 1941, are emphasized.
British
One of the earliest items is a seventeenth-century manuscript volume of poems by Katherine Philips (1631-1664), The Matchless Orinda, in the hand of Sir Edward Dering. A large collection of manuscripts for stories, poetry, novels, and articles, as well as diaries, travel and commonplace books by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik (1826-1887), depict the moralistic ardor that made her popular. Manuscripts of Irish playwright and novelist Clotilde Inez Mary Graves (Richard Dehan, 1863-1932) represent practically the entire literary output of this once-popular writer. Robert Lee Wolff had a particular interest in the work of Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1837-1915), and he collected a large number of her manuscripts and letters along with hundreds of other volumes of women's writing, now in the Robert Lee Wolff Collection of Victorian Fiction.
More than six hundred letters by Radclyffe Hall (1886-1943) to Evguenia Souline (1904-1958), a White Russian living in Paris, evince the devotion of the novelist to her younger friend. Una Troubridge's (1887-1963) papers, containing diaries and several manuscript versions of Hall's The Well of Loneliness, are an important complement. The archive of Constance Holme (1880-1955) includes her last, unpublished novel.
Manuscript drafts and a sizable correspondence file comprise the collection of British novelist Storm Jameson (1897-1986). Complementing these is the archive of the international writer's organization, P.E.N., with which Jameson was associated. Diaries, notes, letters, and manuscripts by novelist and playwright Elizabeth Dewing Kaup (1885-1966) are also preserved at the Center.
The fiction writer Marie Belloc Lowndes (1868-1947) is represented by diaries, notes, and a large group of letters to her daughter Susan Lowndes Marques, as well as by correspondence with politicians, actors, artists, and writers with whom she was associated. Among materials relating to actress Lillah McCarthy (Lady Keeble, 1875-1960) are her annotated typescript of J.M. Barrie's feminist one-act play The Twelve-Pound Look, her theater scrapbooks, and much of the correspondence on which she drew for her autobiography.
The manuscripts of the Scottish novelist Naomi Haldane Mitchison (1897-1999) record her travels across Europe, Russia, India, and Africa. The massive correspondence archive of Lady Ottoline Morrell (1873-1938) reflects not only her Bloomsbury connections but also her pacifist activities and other intellectual interests.
The anti-imperialist convictions and political activities of South African writer Olive Schreiner (1855-1920) are reflected in her manuscripts and letters. Of special interest is her correspondence with psychologist Havelock Ellis (1859-1939). A large collection of the letters and manuscripts of Freya Stark (1893-1993), one of the few women to travel in the Near East in the aftermath of the Arab revolt, are preserved, as well as fifty-seven hundred letters written to her by writers, artists, scholars, archaeologists, mountaineers, diplomats, and politicians. Manuscripts of British poet Flora Thompson (1876-1947) include autobiographical works chronicling her country childhood.
American
Within the collection of poet Alice Corbin Henderson (1881-1949) are correspondence, manuscripts, and information on New Mexico and Native American life and art collected while Henderson was living in Santa Fe.
Among the large correspondence archive of novelist Fannie Hurst (1889-1968) are letters from such varied figures as Zora Neale Hurston, Eleanor Roosevelt, Rebecca West, and numerous fans who sought her advice about their personal lives. Manuscripts for Hurst's novels, short stories, and articles complete the collection.
The complete library, correspondence archive, papers, and manuscripts of American novelist Nancy Wilson Ross (1901-1986) cover her years as a student of the Bauhaus; her Asian trips; as well as her research on the settling of the American West, from which she wrote her unsentimental studies of women pioneers. Included in these latter documents are interviews with Native Americans and descendants of the first settlers.
Publishing
The publishing archive of Knopf, Inc. includes much of Blanche Knopf's correspondence with such writers as Elizabeth Bowen, Willa Cather, Fannie Hurst, Storm Jameson, Clare Boothe Luce, Mabel Dodge Luhan, Sigrid Undset, and Elinor Wylie.
The Margaret Cousins (b. 1905) papers document her career as a writer and as an editor at Doubleday & Company, including memoranda from other editors, minutes from editorial meetings, and correspondence with authors and literary agents.
The Sunwise Turn Book Shop documents the efforts of Madge Jenison (1874-1960) and Mary Mobray-Clarke to operate an independent bookstore in New York City in the nineteen-teens.
(See also Marguerite Caetani and others in Publishing.)
Art
The Center's Art Collection contains many works by women artists, the best-known of these being a 1940 self-portrait of Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) wearing a necklace of thorns. Two portraits by Mary Beale (1632-1697), of Lord John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, and his sister, Lady Anne Wilmot, show that though Beale was a self-taught portraitist, she profited by copying the style of Sir Peter Lely.
Among other distinguished artworks in the collection are those by Dorothy Brett, Charlotte Brontë, Sonia Delaunay (including the famous six-foot-tall "accordion book" done with poet Blaise Cendrars), Maria Henle, Alice Liddell (Lewis Carroll's model for "Alice"), Marie Laurencin, Frieda Lawrence, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Elizabeth Olds.
Paintings and drawings by the mothers of Wyndham Lewis, Ernest Hemingway, and George Bernard Shaw are also here.
The University's collection of the work of one of Europe's foremost sculptors, Elisabet Ney (1833-1907), who settled in Austin in 1893, is now exhibited at the Elisabet Ney Museum in Austin. Several items, however, including Ney's papers, remain at the Ransom Center. Among these are self-portraits, paintings, and sculptures by her friends Texas artists W.H. and Nannie Huddle.
Daily Life
A manuscript of "Mrs. Wilson's Receipts" (ca. 1783) consists of one hundred ninety-two recipes for "pyes," jellies, pickles, and curatives for human and beast alike.
The registration records of the British Women's Rescue Society for homeless and delinquent girls (1892-1905) contain graphic snapshots of the lives of often desperate women.
Letters of the Count Eugene Poutiatine family document their lives in Great Britain after emigrating from Russia. In particular, a group of letters dating from 1912-1918 describes life in England and Denmark during the war years and reflects the hardships faced by the female members of this upper-class family as they responded to their changed socio-economic circumstances.
Letters of the Townshend family of Great Britain, most from the period 1840-1880, cover every sort of subject—love letters, weather, scandal, school, illness, travel, amusements—and were sent from England, Ireland, and Scotland.
Religious Leadership
Joanna Southcott (1750-1814), the self-proclaimed "Greatest Prophet that ever came into the World" believed that God had chosen her to give birth to the new Messiah, called Shiloh, who would usher in the millennium. Southcott is thought to have attracted as many as one hundred thousand followers. The Center's Southcott collection contains manuscripts and books relating to Southcott and her sect, including letters (1804-1913), transcripts of communications, prophecies, printed books, and pamphlets.
Science
The manuscript memoirs and daybooks of Caroline Herschel (1750-1848), sister and aunt, respectively, of two of the world's most famous astronomers, and herself a discoverer of eight comets, recount the working and daily lives of the Herschels in early industrial England.
Performing Arts
Lithographs, programs, dramatizations, and song sheets relating to G.C. Howard's successful production of Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) are here as are photographs and papers documenting the career of the American actress Laurette Taylor (1884-1946) who starred in the first Broadway production of Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie. The papers of the American actress, singer, and playwright Virginia Vernon (1894-1971) contain letters from theatrical and literary notables such as Noel Coward and Dame Edith Evans (1888-1976), as well as her own plays and translations. A large collection of American and British playbills, as well as scripts annotated by actresses from the nineteenth century to the 1970s and 80s, provide a wide range of information to those interested in women's contributions to drama and entertainment.
Photography
The Photography Collection includes images made by Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1979), as well as Christina Broom's (1863-1939) documentary photographs of women's suffrage demonstrations and women during World War I. In addition, individual and multiple works by significant female photographers include such artists as Catherine Weed Ward (1851-1913), Dorothea Lange (1895-1965), Sanora Babb (b. 1907), and Marion Post Wolcott (1910-1990), as well as contemporary artists such as Eve Arnold (b. 1913), Barbara Crane (b.1928), Ave Bonar (b. 1948), Debbie Fleming Caffery (b. 1948), Sharon Stewart (b. 1955), Paula Richards, and Tammy Cromer-Campbell.
Among women represented in the photographs themselves are numerous nineteenth-century stage actresses such as Lily Langtry (1853-1929) and Maxine Elliott (1868-1940).
Politics
Nancy Cunard's (1896-1965) work as a journalist documenting the suffrage movement, race relations, and The Spanish Civil War is represented in her papers.
Elias Tobenkin's (1882-1963) research materials for his book The Peoples Want Peace (1938) contain substantial numbers of pamphlets by women's groups supporting pacifism.
The archive of Morris L. Ernst (1888-1976) includes trial transcripts briefs, correspondence, and legal papers dealing with the various public movements—birth control, fair labor practices, censorship, and the right to privacy— with which this distinguished lawyer was involved.
