Exhibit examines popularity of mid-19th century female writers

Cougar news services

"America is now wholly given over to a d - d mob of scribbling women, and I should have no chance of success while the public taste is occupied with their trash."

So wrote Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1855 in response to the growing popularity of female authors such as Elizabeth Wetherall and Maria Susanna Cummins.

Those women, and others like them, set the stage for popular female authors, poets and novelists for years to come. Their contributions to the medium and increased success in the last century are traced in a new exhibit, "A Damned Mob of Scribbling Women," on display through Friday, July 31, on the main floor of the M.D. Anderson Memorial Library.

The exhibit examines the environment that brought about the success of women novelists and poets in the mid-19th century.

Highlights of the display include several rare books, such as an 1852 first edition two-volume set of Uncle Tom's Cabin, or Life Among the Lowly.

The exhibit is open during regular library hours and is curated by Senior Library Assistant Julie Grob with assistance from English Professor Dorothy Baker and Special Collections Librarian Katherine Fox.

For more information, call Grob at (713) 743-9750. For library hours, call (713) 743-1050.