Curators’ Tour: 'By a Lady' Exhibition (Sydney Rare Book Week)

Women have always been at the forefront of storytelling, creation, invention and knowledge-sharing across cultures and eras. This exhibition features over 150 works – including posters, novels, tarot cards, manuscripts and photographs – which reveal the complex breadth and strength of female-created works.

Join our curators for a tour through the exhibition’s highlights, exploring both historic moments and local tales.

_

More about the exhibition

Women have always been pioneers of storytelling, ideation and knowledge-sharing – whether quietly working by candlelight or boldly demonstrating in public, crafting with delicate artistry or words ablaze. 

Despite substance and brilliance, many attempts have been made throughout history to suppress or diminish the work of women – ‘women’s work’ is associated with unpaid or lowly-perceived tasks, such as housekeeping and childcare, and ‘matriarchal crafts’ such as textiles and ceramics are considered inferior and separate to the ‘fine arts’. 

The act of female authorship and creation has been one of resistance and survival. Through their works, women have preserved culture, protected their knowledge, and fought back against movements that have sought to silence them, including patriarchal systems, colonisation and homophobia. 

This exhibition’s title references the 18th–19th century practice of not crediting female authors by name, as this was considered improper or risky. At the time, authorship was often under a male pen name or, if there was any reference to a female author at all, she was credited as simply ‘by a lady’.

The most famous example of this is Jane Austen’s first novel Sense and Sensibility (1811), a first edition of which is in the Library’s collection (Triple-decker A933 J2 1).

Read more about the exhibition