The Chicago World’s Fair exhibited books by women who changed the world in 1893 – now they’re on display at Newnham

In 1893 a World’s Fair was held in Chicago to mark the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ arrival in America, and to showcase the city’s survival after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.

The exhibition covered more than 600 acres, and hosted nearly 30 million visitors and participants from 46 countries.

The Woman’s Building Library held ‘a collection of more than eight thousand texts written, illustrated, edited, or translated by women which […] aimed to document a comprehensive chronology of women’s writing’ sent to Chicago from 40 countries and 31 American states.

The Woman’s Library ‘established a baseline for the future study of women and women’s writing’ and its collection was dispersed across the world.

A selection of British books had been sent to the Fair by Alice Gordon, author of Decorative Electricity.  After the Fair, books were returned to their senders and Gordon donated 600 volumes to Newnham.

Since then, the books have moved around Newnham College and been recorded in lists from 1914 and 1946. Two World Wars in the intervening period scattered the collection; the volumes on display today form a reassembled library of the books that travelled to Chicago and back again 123 years ago.

Newnham members can now view the exhibition in the library.

Sources

Sarah Wadsworth and Wayne A. Wiegand, Right Here I See My Own Books: The Woman’s Building Library at the World’s Columbian Exposition, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2012.