Women's Studies Archive : Rare Titles from the American Antiquarian Society, 1820-1922

The American Antiquarian Society collection Women's Studies Archive: Rare Titles from the American Antiquarian Society, 1820–1922 is a database that contains more than 5,700 works by American women published between 1820 and 1922, totaling over one million pages. Our university introduced this archive in the 2023 academic year. One of the advantages of this archive is that it allows us to see the overall landscape of works by women authors, who tended to be marginalized within American publishing culture during the period from 1820 to 1922. It also makes it possible to discover literary works that did not enter the established canon. Furthermore, the archive documents aspects of women’s everyday lives—such as cooking, education, and religion—that cannot be understood solely through well-known literary works.

Traditionally, the literary canon has been dominated by male authors. However, when we examine the actual culture of publishing, the number of works written by women was in fact greater. Of particular interest is the question of how slavery was discussed by women writers during this period, which includes the years before and after the American Civil War. In addition, writings on domestic life and household management by women authors reveal not only how technological developments and social discourse influenced family life, but also how gender roles within the household were understood at the time. In this way, these valuable materials—comprising works by a wide range of women authors—are extremely important and useful for understanding the voices of individual women in society. I hope to continue making use of this archive in my research in the future.