Established in 1936, this is the earliest major collection by and about women at any women’s college in the United States. More than three thousand volumes include primary, published source material: diaries, letters, journals, memoirs, and autobiographies. Major areas of concentration are: Emancipation and Reform; Domestic History; Westward Expansion; and Woman in the Humanist Tradition. The Macpherson Collection also features women’s periodicals from the late 18th century to the present. Particularly notable is the extensive collection of woman printers and book designers from the earliest printed books to the work of contemporary printers.
One of the Library’s incunabula, La Historia D’Alexandro Magno, printed by Florentine Dominican nuns in 1478, is here along with Elizabeth Redman’s 1540 printing of the Magna Charta. Of more recent interest is the work of the Cuala Press founded in Dublin in 1903 by Elizabeth Corbett Yeats, and that of Helen Gentry, and Jane Grabhorn. Distinctive work by outstanding contemporary women printers and book artists is represented by that of Claire Van Vliet, Betsy Davids, Julie Chen, Carolee Campbell, Johanna Drucker, Roswitha Quadflieg, Sandra Reese, and Susan King.
- Susan B. Anthony Collection
- Marjorie Armstrong Family Papers
- Pearl Buck Collection
- Olive Constant Dougan Collection
- Phil Townsend Hanna Cookbook Collection
- Bess Hovey Games Collection
- Addison M. Metcalf Collection of Gertrude Steiniana
- Olive Percival Collection
- Irene Robinson Drawings
- May Sarton Collection
- Josephine Smith Papers
- Vivian Lee Welch Papers
- Women’s Employment Collection
- Women’s Suffrage Collection
- Ella Young Collection