Introduction
The voices of women in American literary history before 1920 (a date generally marking the beginning of the modern period) reflect visions and styles as diverse as their experiences. Collecting the literary record of these authors—some very well known, others often neglected—has been the purpose of the Cairns Collection of American Women writers, 1650-1920. A major holding of American women's writing, the Cairns Collection is an invaluable resource for scholars, teachers, and students of American literature, American history, and women's studies.
The collection, housed in the the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections in the Memorial Library at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, began in 1979 with an endowment provided by the estate of William B. Cairns, a pioneer in the study and teaching of American literature on the Madison campus at the turn of the century. It is comprised of three parts: published books in contemporary and modern editions, and periodicals edited or authored by women writers; manuscripts and artefacts; selected secondary and reference materials supporting the study of the primary sources.
The collection at present numbers over 7350 titles by some 2500 writers of fiction, poetry, drama, essays, diaries, autobiographies, biographies, sheet music, travel accounts, devotional and religious works, and domestic economies. A number of titles are scarce items rarely to be found in libraries or research instititutions. Although its focus is essentially literary, the collection also contains selected writings by contemporary women on education, natural science, temperance, slavery, and women's rights. A regularly increasing body of manuscripts, handwritten diaries, and letters enhances the printed record. The Cairns Collection is complemented by other library holdings on the Madison campus: a national repository, the Wisconsin State Historical Society is a rich archive for the cultural and political history of American women, with extensive holdings in personal and public papers of both little-known and prominent women, including reformers and suffragists. The Steenbock Library, serving the School of Human Ecology (formerly School of Family and Consumer Sciences), has collected a number of mass circulation magazines for women. Memorial Library houses the massive microform set, History of Women, an indispensable resource for historians, drawn from a number of specialized repositories across the country. Other collections that complement the Cairns collection are the 20th-Century Collection of American and English Authors, the Private Press Collection, the Little Magazine Collection, and the general American literature collection in Memorial Library, including the extensive Reference Collection.
The Cairns Collection has evolved over time. Initially several established writers--Louisa May Alcott, Anne Bradstreet, Kate Chopin, Emily Dickinson, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Margaret Fuller, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Harriet Beecher Stowe—were collected in full: books – in all textual and bibliographical variants, pamphlets, periodical contributions, along with secondary sources. As a result of this approach, the Collection boasts, for example, a unique gathering of over 150 editions of Uncle Tom's Cabin, along with foreign editions, translations, adaptations for children, and piracies. To this already important group was recently added a unique private collection of some 220 early British editions of this extremely influential book, issued by no fewer than 28 British publishers outside of copyright regulations. Less well-known and obscure authors were also actively collected, mainly in their original editions; they are now collected as comprehensively as possible, and manuscripts are acquired whenever they can be found on the antiquarian book market.
The earliest and rarest book in the collection is Anne Bradstreet's The Tenth Muse, published in 1650; the bulk of the collection, however, is made up of works published in the second half of the 19th century and the first two decades of the 20th century. Many writers were phenomenally successful in their day, subsequently fading from public memory and inadequately represented in library collections. Their works are in the process of being rediscovered and reevaluated. The collection, with its predominant emphasis on literary works, is rich and resonant enough to support research in a variety of disciplines and fields of study: American studies and women's studies, social and cultural history, education, children's literature, and publishing history in all its aspects. The mix of well-known and obscure titles provides a cultural context in which the history of literature by American women, and American literature in general, can be located for objective evaluation.
First and significant editions of printed works are sought in preference for the collection, supplemented by facsimile, reprint, and microform formats in cases where originals are not at present available. Electronic resources are a growing part of library collections, and the library makes them accessible to campus users.
The Cairns Collection is almost fully accessible on MadCat. Special finding aids are developed for those parts of the collection (variants, etc.) not adequately described by standard cataloging. Careful selection of titles is the responsibility of the Humanities Bibliographer in charge of English and American literature collections, and policy is developed in an advisory committee made up of English Department faculty, the Humanities Bibliographer, the Curator of Special Collections, and the Women's Studies Librarian.
Scholars interested in the Cairns Collection are encouraged to visit the Department of Special Collections.
Last updated: 26 January 2006