Selected history links

Once again my list of "emails to read when I've got time" has surpassed the 200 mark, so I'm digging in and finding some gems:

* Early Women Masters - a truly international collection, from discographies of medieval and Renaissance Western composers to gender-inclusive translations of Chinese religious texts, to American quilting.

* The Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition: which "will create a full-text, digital edition of six nineteenth-century journals, with concept maps and advanced metadata. The journals include: English Woman's Journal (1858-1864) an early woman's magazine; Leader (1850-1859) a reformist weekly with an interest in science as well as politics; Monthly Repository (1806-1838) a non-conformist religious journal; Northern Star (1838-1852) a Chartist newspaper; Publishers' Circular (1880-1890) a publishing trade paper; Tomahawk (1867-1870) an illustrated satiric weekly, a radical parallel to Punch. There's not much there yet, but sounds interesting.

* Women in Print: Essays on the Print Culture of American Women From the
Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. A university press puts the whole book online, which sounds like a public service to me. Should be more of it.

* And posted on the Women Writers' Yahoo group, a wonderful poem from Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, who is on my list of people to find out more about ...

A Woman drest by Age

A milk-white hair-lace wound up all her hairs,
And a deaf coif did cover both her ears,
A sober countenance about her face she ties,
And a dim sight doth cover half her eyes,
About her neck a kercher of coarse skin,
Which Time had crumpled, and worn creases in,
Her gown was turned to melancholy black,
Which loose did hang upon her sides and back,
Her stockings cramps had knit, red worsted gout,
And pains as garters tied her legs about.
A pair of palsy gloves her hands drew on,
With weakness stitched, and numbness trimmed upon.
Her shoes were corns, and corns the upper leather.
A mantle of diseases laps her round,
And thus she's dressed, till Death lays her in ground.

* Finally, I haven't tried it out, but it sounds like a potentially good idea: Titletrader aims to match up people who want to swap books. Here's the history section.