Deeds and words: suffrage and the London library

Abstract

ABSTRACT This talk, given at the London Library, traces the links between the Library, its members and the women’s suffrage campaign. Founded in 1841 by, among others, John Stuart Mill, the Liberal philosopher and MP who, 25 years later, gave the women’s suffrage campaign its first impetus, the London Library was always open to women subscribers, although in the nineteenth and early twentieth early twentieth centuries they had little influence on decision-making. However, by studying the Library’s membership forms and its successive catalogues, and by interrogating the books on its open-access shelves, it has been possible to discover something of those women members sympathetic to the suffrage cause, and of the way they influenced the Library’s holdings of books on the suffrage question.