Guide to the Alice Marshall Women’s History Collection, ca. 1546-1997. The Pennsylvania State University Penn State Harrisburg Library Archives and Special Collections Contact Information: Heidi Abbey Moyer Archivist and Humanities Reference Librarian Coordinator of Archives and Special Collections Penn State Harrisburg Library Archives and Special Collections 351 Olmsted Drive, Room 303 Middletown, PA 17057-4850 Tel.: 717.948.6056 E-mail: [email protected] Web: https://libraries.psu.edu/about/libraries/ penn-state-harrisburg-library/alice-marshall-womens-history-collection Date Completed: August 2010; Last Revised: 25 May 2017 © 2007-2017 The Pennsylvania State University. All rights reserved. Descriptive Summary Creator: Marshall, Alice Kahler. Title: Alice Marshall Women’s History Collection. Dates: ca. 1546-1997, bulk 1840-1950. Accession No.: AKM 91/1 – AKM 91/95. Language: Bulk of materials in English; some French. Extent: 238 cubic feet. Repository: Archives and Special Collections, Penn State Harrisburg Library, University Libraries, Pennsylvania State University. Administrative Information Access This collection is open for research. There are no access restrictions on this collection. Permission is required to quote from or duplicate materials in this collection. Usage Restrictions Use of audiotapes may require reformatting and/or production of listening copies. Acquisitions Information Gift and purchase of Alice K. Marshall of Camp Hill, Pa., in 1991. Processing Information Processed by: Heidi Abbey Moyer, Archivist and Humanities Reference Librarian and Coordinator of Archives and Special Collections (2006-Present), and Martha Sachs, Former Curator of the Alice Marshall Collection; in collaboration with Katie Barrett, Public Services Assistant (2014-Present), Lynne Calamia, American Studies Graduate Student (2007-2008); Jessica Charlton, Humanities Graduate Student (2008); Danielle K. Pfeffer, Humanities Graduate Student (2008-2010); Jennifer Dutch, American Studies Ph.D. Candidate (2010), Katherine A. Gorrell, American Studies Graduate Student (2012) and Archives and Public Services Assistant (2013-Present); and Megan Bennett, American Studies Graduate Student (2013-2014), Ashlee Vandewater, American Studies Graduate Student (2014-2015). Edited by: Susan Hamburger, Manuscripts Cataloging Librarian, and Jackie R. Esposito, University Archivist, 2011, and by Heidi Abbey Moyer (2007-2016). Alice Marshall Women’s History Collection (May 2017) P a g e | 2 Preferred Citation Courtesy of the Alice Marshall Women’s History Collection, [Insert appropriate series number and/or accession number for the entire collection, i.e., AKM 91/1], Archives and Special Collections, Penn State Harrisburg Library, University Libraries, Pennsylvania State University. Arrangement The collection consists of 18 series, which are arranged by format. Within some series, the collection is further divided into subseries by genre and/or topic. I. Catalogued and Uncatalogued Books II. Catalogued and Uncatalogued Pamphlets III. Magazines and Serials IV. Newspapers V. Sheet Music VI. Ephemera and Artifacts VII. Postcards VIII. Posters IX. Photographs X. Valentines XI. Graphics XII. Family and Personal Papers XIII. Women’s Organization Records XIV. Business, Government, and School Records XV. Albums/Scrapbooks XVI. Historical Manuscripts and Printed Works XVII. Vertical Files XVIII. Alice K. Marshall Papers Biographical Note Alice Kahler Marshall (1923-1997) was a Harrisburg-area journalist, magazine editor, speechwriter, researcher, compiler, and avid collector who devoted more than fifty years to collecting materials related to all aspects of women's lives, ranging from family and health to law and politics. Born in Ithaca, New York, she attended George Washington University and worked briefly as a reporter for the Washington Post. During World War II, Mrs. Marshall served in the Women's Army Corps for one year. Following service with the Corps, she developed her initial fascination with the contradictions between the realities of women's lives and the stereotypes of women's behavior, Alice Marshall Women’s History Collection (May 2017) P a g e | 3 particularly as revealed in popular culture. This led Mrs. Marshall to extensively collect materials on women's history for the rest of her life. She married in 1944 and raised four children. The Marshall family moved in 1948 to the Harrisburg area where Mrs. Marshall spent 20 years working in various capacities for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. She served as the first public relations officer for the Department of State. Her other positions included that of deputy press secretary, chief speechwriter for the Department of Commerce, and senior research analyst for the House of Representatives. She retired from the Commonwealth in 1981, at which time she increased her collecting efforts. When illness caused her to be housebound in her later years, she became an avid computer user, cataloging her enormous collection on her home computer, and enthusiastically browsing the Internet. Mrs. Marshall is the author of the reference book Pen Names of Women Writers from 1600 to the Present: A Compendium of the Literary Identities of 2650 Women Novelists, Playwrights, Poets, Diarists, Journalists and Miscellaneous Writers (1985). She also wrote numerous articles on women’s history. In 1987, she won Pennsylvania’s Award for Service to Women. Scope and Content The Alice Marshall Women’s History Collection (AMC) is the most extensive collection in Penn State Harrisburg’s Archives and Special Collections, and is considered by several scholars to be one of the largest, privately-compiled research collections on women’s history in the United States. Acquired by the Pennsylvania State University Libraries in 1991, the AMC was collected by Alice Kahler Marshall (1923-1997) over a period of 50 years. Items in this collection are an extremely eclectic compilation of approximately 11,000 visual, literary, and manuscript materials that reflect more than 300 years of women's history from the mid-sixteenth century through the mid-twentieth century. Represented in the AMC are advertising trade cards, broadsides, hand-colored fashion plates, journals, letters, manuscripts, newspapers, photographs, valentines, 105 posters, over 7,000 pieces of sheet music, more than 6,000 early 20th-century picture postcards, and 7,000 books and pamphlets. A detailed description of the collection’s components is as follows: Books and Pamphlets: This portion of the AMC includes rare works by English and American authors from the eighteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. The work of early women printers is well-represented, as are early Quaker and abolitionist tracts, accounts of criminal and divorce trials, works by 19th-century women travel writers, propaganda on both sides of the suffrage issue, including Women's Rights Convention programs, and materials on women as both victims and perpetrators of crime. While the collection is currently being cataloged according to the Library of Congress’ classification system for improved accessibility, the books were originally collected by Alice Marshall according to the following broad categories: abolition, artists, biographies (individual and collective), bigotry, birth control, bloomer, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, captivity, Civil War, crime, Dorothy Dix, divorce, doctors, education, expositions, fashion, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, health, hoboes, homemakers, housewives, Indian schools, journalism, law, Lowell, medicine, Mormons, novels and novelists, old women, pacifists, Pennsylvania, playwrights, poetry, politics, Queen Caroline, radicals, reform, religion, Salvation Army, Sanitary Commission, science, service Alice Marshall Women’s History Collection (May 2017) P a g e | 4 organizations, servants, sexual harassment, sexuality, social work, sports, spouse abuse, suffrage, temperance, travel, vice, war, women in the American West, woman, Victoria Woodhull, Women's Movement, Virginia Woolf, workers, and working women. Buttons, Badges, and Pins: The collection includes a wide variety of pins and buttons, many of which are related to social issues like abortion, birth control, war, political campaigns, and suffrage. Graphics: This segment of the AMC is composed of engravings, aquatints, lithographs, hand- colored fashion plates, cartoons, and advertisements, largely dating from the mid-1800s through the 1930s. Manuscripts: Among the manuscripts in the AMC are letters (including those of notable nineteenth-century literary women), autograph books, travel journals, and legal documents. Newspapers: The AMC includes limited runs and single issues of a wide variety of eighteenth- through early twentieth-century American titles (including numerous Pennsylvania titles), as well as some English publications. Magazines and Serials: Among the many journals in the AMC are The Free Enquirer, The Lowell Offering, The Women's Journal, The Revolution, The Forerunner, The Woman Citizen, The Anglo-Saxon Review, Mother Earth, The Suffragist, Godey's, and a complete run of Joanna Brome's The Observator (1681-1684). On the lighter side are early twentieth-century comic books, including a set of Arietta and the Cowgirls, and also a series of assorted romance comic books from the mid-twentieth century. Postcards: This very large collection of 6,131 postcards illustrates Mrs. Marshall's interests in the stereotyping of women. Posters: The AMC includes approximately 105 varied posters, such as large recruiting and