Stunning paintings of butterflies by two Australian teenage sisters, from an era when women had no formal artistic or scientific opportunity, which sparked one of the most heartening triumphs of conservation and rewilding a century after their death. Meet Harriet and Helena Scott.
The Spirit of the Woods – the world’s first encyclopedia of trees, composed and gorgeously illustrated by poet and painter Rebecca Hey, in an era when hardly any women were published authors.
The stunning natural history illustrations of 18th-century artist Sarah Stone, who began painting at seventeen, in an era when the doors of both art and science were formally closed to women.
Happy Women’s History Month! Meet the fierce 19th-century sculptor Harriet Hosmer (pictured in the middle of this man’s micro-world) – the forgotten pioneer who paved the way for women in art. Every woman artist, every queer person, every creative person who has carved out a purposeful life amid a culture where they are in any way “other,” is indebted to Hosmer — the bedrock of our being is marbled with the ancestral genes of hers. Here is her timeless wisdom on ambition and what it takes to be a great artist.
Literary Witches — an illustrated celebration of women writers who have enchanted generations and transformed the world: Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, Octavia Butler, Sappho, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Emily Brontë, Anaïs Nin, (pictured above), and more.
“By the end of 1938, there were 274 librarians riding out across 29 counties. In total, the program employed nearly 1,000 riding librarians.”
Sure beats a bookmobile: Meet the women who rode miles on horseback to deliver books during the WPA era, a knightly testament to how libraries save lives.
The brilliant and forgotten Margaret Fuller, trailblazing journalist and beacon of women’s empowerment, on critical thinking and reaping wonder from everyday reality.
Amelia Earhart disappeared over the Atlantic on this day in 1937 and left, in a letter to her sister, her timeless advice on sticking up for yourself.
A century and a half before the Women’s March, the pioneering astronomer Maria Mitchell paved the way for American women in science and education.
The Glass Universe – the untold story of how Harvard’s 19th-century female astronomers revolutionized our understanding of the cosmos decades before women could vote.
Pussygrab this: The Dinner Party – artist Judy Chicago’s iconic 1979 symbolic celebration of women’s heritage in creative culture, in which 39 pioneering women of various disciplines are represented as their stylized vulvas on hand-painted ceramic plates.
Pictured above, 19th-century astronomer Caroline Herschel, 10th-century German poet and dramatist Hrotsvitha, and 20th-century writer Virginia Woolf. More here.
How pioneering physicist Lise Meitner, born on this day in 1878, was denied the Nobel Prize for the groundbreaking discovery she herself made but paved the way for women in science nonetheless.
