‘Her booke’
Early modern
women and
their books in
Lambeth Palace
Library
Free entry
This exhibition highlights material owned, written, commissioned, and translated by women during the long early modern period. It celebrates the ways in which women and their books were an integral part of England’s devotional, intellectual, and bibliographical cultures. Beginning in the late fifteenth century, the exhibition examines the production and use of books for personal and spiritual practices; books as a statement of power and piety; the development of the commercial trade in books; books as a site to demonstrate women’s intellectual ability; and the material evidence of women’s book ownership.
Items on display include:
- Medieval manuscripts written by the sisters of Syon Abbey on the cusp of the Reformation
- Elizabeth I’s newly identified translation of Tacitus
- Correspondence from a future Archbishop of Canterbury about Jane Austen
- The first editions of the works of Mary Woolstonecraft and her daughter, Mary Shelley
This exhibition includes a programme of lectures by Helen Smith (University of York), and exhibition curator Julia King, as well as a special curator’s panel where guests can participate in a Q&A with the curator and the British Library’s Eleanor Jackson, co-curator of the exhibition Medieval Women: In Their Own Words.
You can see further details of these events, and register to attend them, on our events page.
