Contribution to Book
The New Woman in the White City: Writing from Great Britain in the Woman’s Building Library
Global Voices from the Women's Library at the World's Columbian Exposition: Feminisms, Transnationalism, and the Archive
(2024)
Abstract
This chapter foregrounds the role of organizing and networking to explore the British contribution to the Woman’s Building Library as both a process that unfolded through the two years leading up to the Fair and the product of a pivotal moment in women’s history on the cusp of transatlantic modernity. It first introduces the women who organized Great Britain’s literature exhibit, including Alice Mary Gordon, Mary Augusta Ward, and Lucy Lane Clifford, to consider how their methods and priorities shaped the collection. It then turns to the collection itself to examine its spatial, topical, and temporal contours. From this analysis emerge two features with enduring importance for British literary and social history. First, the analysis highlights how the British collection functioned simultaneously as a mechanism of canon-building and container of the emergent canon of British women’s writing. Second, it illustrates how the British collection showcased early New Woman fiction and fostered transatlantic networks that would aid women’s pursuit of progress on an international stage.
Keywords
- British literature,
- women's literature,
- Victorian literature,
- women's movements
Disciplines
Publication Date
February, 2024
Editor
Marija Dalbello and Sarah Wadsworth
Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan
Citation Information
Sarah Wadsworth. "The New Woman in the White City: Writing from Great Britain in the Woman’s Building Library" Global Voices from the Women's Library at the World's Columbian Exposition: Feminisms, Transnationalism, and the Archive (2024) Available at: http://works.bepress.com/sarah_wadsworth/46/