Explore more than two thousand years of women’s
contributions to science, literature, philosophy,
education and social reform through the books,
documents and objects preserved in the library.
Each numbered entry corresponds with a person, institution or supporting object represented in the library display. The exhibition brings together women whose ideas sometimes complemented, challenged or directly opposed one another, allowing visitors to consider how knowledge, culture and society have evolved through debate across the centuries. Use the filters to explore the collection and follow the available links for additional context.
Physical exhibition location
Visit at the Zoe Vallé Memorial Library
This exhibition is displayed at the library, not at
Station Antiques.
The library is approximately one kilometre—or a
three-minute drive—from Station Antiques. Use the map,
scan the QR code, or open turn-by-turn directions.
Zoe Vallé Memorial Library
63 Regent Street
Chester, Nova Scotia · B0J 1J0
Alexandrian philosopher, mathematician and teacher whose life became an enduring symbol of intellectual inquiry, classical learning and the vulnerability of scholarship during periods of political and religious conflict.
An unmarked marble portrait in a late nineteenth- or early twentieth-century classical style. The bust presides over the display as a visual emblem of women in science, literature, education and philosophy.
Related artifact
Object 01B
Hypatia by Elbert Hubbard
An early twentieth-century literary treatment of Hypatia published for a broad reading public and reflecting the period’s renewed fascination with her life.
Related artifact
Object 01C
Red-leather Hypatia volume, circa 1910
A decorative early twentieth-century edition whose binding illustrates how Hypatia’s story circulated as both literature and intellectual history.
02
Literature · Feminism · Canadian writing
Margaret Atwood
Canadian novelist, poet and critic whose work examines power, gender, memory, ecology and the social structures through which freedom can be protected or lost.
A first edition in a fine original dust jacket. Atwood’s dystopian novel has become one of the most recognizable modern literary examinations of authoritarianism and control over women’s lives.
03
Literature · Eighteenth-century novel
Frances Burney
English novelist, diarist and playwright whose fiction helped shape the development of the novel of manners and the literary representation of women’s social experience.
The 1782 first edition of Burney’s influential novel, preserved as a six-volume leather-bound set. Its famous phrase “pride and prejudice” later supplied Jane Austen with the title of her best-known novel.
04
Literature · Romanticism · Poetry
Charlotte Smith
English poet and novelist whose Elegiac Sonnets helped revive the English sonnet and establish the introspective voice, emotional landscape and personal expression that became central to Romantic poetry.
Elegiac Sonnets and Other Poems, Jones & Company, 1835
A late nineteenth-century edition issued after Smith’s once-celebrated reputation had begun to fade from the Victorian literary canon. Her poetry profoundly influenced William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the emerging Romantic movement, and she is now again recognized as one of its foundational voices.
About this edition and binding
Published in London by Jones & Company as part of the Temple of the Muses series, this compact volume was intended to place attractive editions of English literature within reach of the expanding home-library market.
The copy retains its original embossed publisher’s cloth with a distinctive moiré, or watered-silk, surface. These decorative “ruffled silk” bindings were relatively inexpensive when issued but are now exceptionally difficult to find in such fresh, nearly unused condition.
The engraved title page is dated 1827, while the letterpress title page records the 1835 issue, demonstrating the publisher’s reuse of costly engraved plates across successive editions.
05
Literature · Education · Religion · Social order
Hannah More
British author, educator, philanthropist and religious reformer whose writings shaped moral education during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. One of the most successful women writers of her generation, she became a leading voice of the Evangelical Revival and an influential defender of traditional religious and social values.
Sacred Dramas; The Search After Happiness; and Other Poems, Jones & Company, 1832
A finely preserved volume that represents both More’s enormous nineteenth-century influence and the tensions within her educational and political thought. She promoted women’s learning, founded schools, opposed the slave trade and wrote for an exceptionally broad audience, while also defending Britain’s traditional social hierarchy and opposing many of the political ideals associated with Thomas Paine and the French Revolution.
More’s educational views and this edition
More believed education should cultivate Christian virtue and social responsibility rather than encourage political equality or movement between social classes. Her schools taught poor children to read the Bible and approved moral literature, but she generally opposed teaching writing to the labouring poor.
Her career contains striking tensions. She became a highly influential public author while accepting restrictive ideas about women’s proper social roles, and she declined a prominent literary honour because she believed her sex made the appointment inappropriate.
This Jones & Company edition formed part of the Temple of the Muses series. It retains its original crimson embossed cloth, black spine label and unusually vivid moiré, or watered-silk, finish. The engraved title page is dated 1825, while the letterpress title page identifies the 1832 issue, showing the publisher’s reuse of an earlier engraved plate.
06
Science · Engineering · Women’s suffrage
Hertha Ayrton
British engineer, physicist, inventor and suffragist whose research included the electric arc and the movement of water and air.
A scarce biography written by Ayrton’s close friend, fellow suffragist and literary executor. The book joins the lives of two important women through one physical object.
07
Literature · Journalism · Women’s suffrage
Evelyn Sharp
Writer, journalist, children’s author and suffragist whose work joined literary expression with direct political action.
Sharp’s account preserves Ayrton’s scientific achievements through the personal perspective of a friend and fellow campaigner for women’s political equality.
08
Philosophy · Social reform · Marriage and education
Dora Russell
British author, feminist and social campaigner who wrote independently on marriage, education, sexuality, peace and women’s freedom.
A fine copy retaining its jacket. The displayed volume presents Russell as an author and thinker in her own right, rather than merely through her marriage to Bertrand Russell.
09
Literature · Victorian fiction
Catherine Grace Godwin
Nineteenth-century British novelist represented here by multiple surviving editions, showing how popular women’s fiction circulated through different bindings and formats.
Related artifact
Object 09A
Cousin Kate
A surviving edition of Godwin’s novel in the collection.
Related artifact
Object 09B
Cousin Kate, second copy
A second copy retaining its white dust jacket, offering a useful comparison of how the same work was presented and preserved.
Related artifact
Object 09C
Cousin Basil Harlow
A further Godwin title that broadens the display beyond a single surviving work.
10
Literature · Social conscience · Women’s authorship
Edna Lyall
The pen name of Ada Ellen Bayly, a widely read English novelist whose fiction engaged questions of conscience, religious tolerance, politics and social responsibility.
A three-volume second edition, demonstrating the changing publication forms through which Victorian fiction reached its readers.
11
Education · Grammar · Printing and bookselling
Ann Fisher
English grammarian, lexicographer, educator and businesswoman, remembered as an early woman author of English grammar and as an active participant in the eighteenth-century print trade.
A fine full-calf copy signed by Fisher and carrying the armorial bookplate of Joseph Cool. The signature connects the surviving book directly to its woman author and publisher.
Related artifact
Object 11B
A New Grammar, later edition, circa 1789
A later eighteenth-century edition lacking its frontispiece, displayed as evidence of the continuing circulation of Fisher’s educational work.
12
Fashion education · Dressmaking · Publishing
Mary Brooks Picken
American author, educator and fashion authority whose books and correspondence courses helped professionalize sewing, dressmaking and fashion education for women at a remarkable scale.
A fine copy of the rare first and only edition, accompanied by correspondence connected with Picken’s Woman’s Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences in Scranton, Pennsylvania. The book and letters document her American network of fashion education and publishing.
An American correspondence school founded by Mary Brooks Picken in Scranton in 1916. Through lessons delivered by mail, it made instruction in dressmaking, sewing, fashion, domestic arts and related business skills available to women far beyond a conventional classroom.
Distinct institution: Picken’s Woman’s Institute was an American fashion and correspondence school. It had no organizational connection to the Chester Women’s Institute in Nova Scotia.
Correspondence preserved with A Thimbleful of Friendliness connects the volume to Picken’s educational and publishing enterprise and to the women who studied through its mailed courses.
13
History · Biography · Women’s scholarship
Agnes Strickland
English historical writer whose biographical histories brought the lives of royal women to a broad nineteenth-century readership.
A very fine tree-calf set with red morocco labels and raised bands, presenting women as central subjects of national history while also representing a major achievement by a woman historian.
13A
Labour reform · Economic security · Public service · 1930s
Frances Perkins
American social reformer, labour policymaker and the first woman to serve in a United States presidential cabinet. As Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Secretary of Labor from 1933 to 1945, Perkins helped transform decades of workplace reform into lasting national institutions.
A first edition in dust jacket, published by Viking Press in 1946. Written after Perkins’s twelve years in Roosevelt’s cabinet, the book is both a close political portrait of the president and an insider’s account of the administration in which she helped build the modern American social-safety framework.
Why Frances Perkins matters
Perkins entered the cabinet in the depths of the Great Depression. Her appointment broke a national political barrier, but her importance rests equally in what she accomplished once there: she combined moral urgency with an unusual command of legislation, administration and coalition-building.
As chair of the President’s Committee on Economic Security, she was a principal architect of the Social Security Act of 1935. Her wider labour agenda helped establish unemployment insurance, a federal minimum wage, overtime protection, shorter working hours and stronger restrictions on child labour, while advancing workplace safety and workers’ right to organize.
Her reform work had begun decades earlier and was sharpened by witnessing the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. In the 1930s she demonstrated that a woman could do far more than enter the highest levels of government: she could design institutions that changed ordinary life for generations.
Library founders and networks
Women who created and sustained institutions
14
Literature · Poetry · Library history
Isabel Valle Austen
Author, poet and benefactor whose books, correspondence and literary associations reveal an active creative life and a sustained interest in the circulation of women’s writing.
Related artifact
Object 14A
Circle in the Sand, special association copy
A copy whose inscriptions and accompanying documents connect Isabel Valle Austen with a broad network of women poets and literary organizations during the 1930s.
Related archive
Object 14B
1935 telegram and poetry-society list
The surviving documents preserve a working record of women organizing, publishing, corresponding and sustaining literary culture outside the best-known canonical institutions.
Digitized book
Object 14C
Epitaphs of Some Dear Dumb Beasts, 1916 presentation copy
An intimate collection of animal epitaphs and photographs, inscribed by I.V.A. to Mrs Foster in July 1916. Read the complete book online.
15
Philanthropy · Library history · Chester
Zoe Vallé
The woman for whom the Zoe Vallé Library is named, represented through the continuing institution and the books, artifacts and community memory gathered under her name.
The library itself is the principal artifact of this story: a continuing place of reading, memory, research and public access in Chester.
16
Community organization · Library stewardship · Chester
Chester Women’s Institute
The local branch of the Women’s Institutes of Nova Scotia that took responsibility for the day-to-day operation of the Zoé Vallé Memorial Library as a community project after the library was established. Its stewardship continued until the branch disbanded in the early 1970s.
Distinct institution: The Chester Women’s Institute was a Nova Scotian community organization. It was not Picken’s American Woman’s Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences.
The continuing library and its institutional history preserve the work of Chester women who helped turn a donated house and collection into an enduring public library and civic centre.
The names preserved with Isabel Valle Austen’s special copy and 1935 correspondence reveal a dispersed but connected culture of women poets, editors, patrons and society organizers.
Several women in this group remain subjects of active research. The catalogue distinguishes established identifications from names whose biographies or organizational roles are still being reconstructed.
Gertrude Claytor
Poet and namesake of the Gertrude Claytor Poetry Prize, connected with American poetry organizations and publication.
Marguerite Janvrin Adams
Poet and author whose published work survives in scarce editions.
Anna Hempstead Branch
American poet and dramatist associated with the Yale Younger Poets tradition.
Colorado poet who later served as the state’s poet laureate.
Helen F. Stickney
Poet and participant in the literary network represented by the surviving list.
Anne Lloyd
Poet named in Isabel Valle Austen’s circle; identification remains under study.
Mary Taylor
Poet named in the associated papers; research continues to distinguish her from others of the same name.
Faith Van Valkenburgh Vilas
Writer and occultist associated with literary and theosophical circles, and a recipient of an inscribed copy of Circle in the Sand.
Reference works
Women recognized as authors and domain experts
18
Reference publishing · Scholarship · Women contributors
Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition
Known as the “Scholar’s Edition,” the Ninth Edition was built around signed contributions by identified specialists. The displayed set provides an opportunity to recover women who appeared not only as subjects but as credited authors and authorities.
The complete contributor list is extensive and the identification of every woman contributor remains an active catalogue project. The women below are verified contributors represented in the edition’s contributor records.
A complete Scholar’s Edition set in leather bindings, with some minor wear. Its signed specialist articles make authorship and expertise visible in a way especially valuable for tracing women’s entry into authoritative reference publishing.
Agnes Mary Clerke
Irish astronomer and scientific writer who contributed specialist writing on astronomy and scientific biography.
Reference publishing · Scholarship · Modern knowledge
Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition
The celebrated 1910–1911 edition brought together major scholars and writers at a moment when women’s participation in professional intellectual life was expanding, though still sharply constrained.
Related artifact
Object 19
Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition
A complete 28-volume set plus index, bound in embossed full morocco and preserved in excellent condition. It serves as both a monumental reference work and a record of who was authorized to define knowledge in the early twentieth century.
Supporting display
Objects and books that establish context
20
Botany · Medicine · Translation · Early printing
Rembert Dodoens and the English Herbal
Although authored by a man, these leaves belong in the display because herbals preserved and circulated practical botanical and medicinal knowledge used extensively by women in households, healing and community life.
Supporting artifact
Object 20
Two framed leaves from the 1578–1579 English herbal
Two early printed botanical leaves from the English translation associated with Henry Lyte, displayed as evidence of the material transmission of plant knowledge.
21
Furniture · Reading · Display
Mahogany book stand
A practical angled book holder that supports the safe display of an open volume while also recalling the physical habits of reading, study and domestic scholarship.
Supporting artifact
Object 21
Angled mahogany book holder
Used within the installation to present a selected volume without forcing the binding flat.
22
Qing dynasty · Decorative arts · Adaptation
Pair of Chinese vases
A highly decorated pair from the Qing dynasty, later adapted as lamps and subsequently returned to display as ceramic objects.
Supporting artifact
Object 22
Pair of Qing dynasty vases
Their changing use demonstrates how historic objects can be altered, repurposed and reinterpreted by successive owners.
23
Victorian domestic life · Lighting
Pair of long-neck candlesticks
Tall push-up candlesticks with square bases, probably early- to mid-Victorian, representing the domestic lighting conditions under which many of the displayed books were read.
Supporting artifact
Object 23
Twelve-inch Victorian candlesticks
A matched pair used to establish the visual and material setting of nineteenth-century reading.
24
Literature · Imperial Britain · Collected editions
Rudyard Kipling collected works
A substantial multivolume set retained in its uncommon paper dust jackets. It provides a material comparison with the women authors in the display and with the literary canon against which many were read.
Supporting artifact
Object 24
Collected works, approximately twenty volumes
The volumes are near fine; most jackets survive, though several are torn or have small losses.
25
History · Classical studies · Victorian scholarship
George Grote’s History of Greece
A major nineteenth-century history of ancient Greece, included as intellectual context for the classical world represented by Hypatia and for the scholarly traditions from which women were often institutionally excluded.
Supporting artifact
Object 25
History of Greece, 1888, ten volumes
A nearly perfect full-calf set whose imposing physical form reflects the authority attached to nineteenth-century historical scholarship.
