Women’s History Month – Readings | If I Had My Own Blue Box:

Women’s History Month – Readings

In celebration of Women’s History Month, each day I will add a new book to this list. The growing list contains favorite books from my book shelf as well as many books from my own wish list. (I annotated these BS and WL in the list.)

You will notice my list focuses on the everyday lives of women, mostly in 19th Century America with a dabbling of further connection.

I hope you find some new additions to your reading list. Each book is available through your local library, book seller, or Amazon.

Employments of Women by Virginia Penny (Primary) (BS)
Novel Craft: Victorian Domestic Handicraft and Nineteenth-Century Fiction, by Tilia Schaffer (WL)
The Dress Diary: Secrets from a Victorian Woman’s Wardrobe by Dr. Kate Strasdin (WL)
Female Economy: The Millinery and Dressmaking Trades, 1860-1930, by Wendy Gamber (BS)
American Milliners and Their World: Women’s Work from Revolution to Rock and Roll, by Nadine Stewart (WL)
An American Girl’s Book, by Eliza Leslie (Primary) (BS)
Women in Business, 1700-1850, Nicola Phillips (WL)
Eliza’s Story, by Eileen Hook (BS)
Maritcha: A Nineteenth-Century American Girl, by Tonya Bolden (WL)
Untidy Origins: A Story of Women’s Rights in Antebellum New York, by Lori D Ginzberg (BS)
Only the Clothes on Her Back: Clothing and the Hidden History of Power in the
Nineteenth-Century United States, by Laura F. Edwards. (WL)
The Chinese Lady: Afong Moy in Early America, by Nancy E. Davis (WL)
All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake, by Tiya Miles (BS)
Women and the Law of Property in Early America, by Marylynn Salmon (WL)
Face Value: The Consumer Revolution and the Colonizing of America, by Cary Carson (WL)
Threads of Life: A History of the World Through the Eye of a Needle, by Clare Hunter (BS)
Buying into the World of Goods: Early Consumers in Backcountry Virginia, by Ann
Smart Martin (WL)
Village Life in America, 1852-1872, by Caroline Cowles Richards (Primary) (BS)
Material Lives: Women Makers and Consumers in the 18th Century, by Serena Dyer (WL)
The Business of Charity: The Woman’s Exchange Movement, 1832-1900, by Kathleen Sander (WL)
Bound in Wedlock: Slave and Free Black Marriage in Nineteenth Century, Tera W.
Hunter (WL)
The Wrongs of Woman: Milliners and Dressmakers, by Charlotte Elizabeth (Primary) (BS)
An Intimate Economy: Enslaved Women, Work, and America’s Domestic Slave Trade, by Alexandra J. Finley (WL)
Mothers and Daughters of Invention: Notes for a Revised History of Technology, by
Autumn Stanley (BS)
Sisters in Spirit: Haudenenosunee Influence on Early American Feminists, by Sally Roesch Wagner (WL)
Vanished Arizona, by Martha Summerhayes. (A recommendation from Marna Davis.)
Shirts Powdered Red: Haudenosunee Gender, Trade, and Exchange across Three Centuries, by Maeuve Kane (WL)
The Lucky Ones: One Family and the Extraordinary Invention of Chinese America, by Mae M. Ngai (A recommendation from Anneliese Meck)
Polly Bemis: The Life and Times of a Chinese American Pioneer, by Prascilla Wegars. (A recommendation from Anneliese Meck)
Letters of a Homesteader, by Elinore Pruitt Stewart. (S recommendation from Marna Davis.)