Digital Collections at Bryn Mawr College

The collection consists of representative images from more than 150 botanical and ornithological books, printed between 1499 and 1920, and including many of the landmark works in each field. The books are from the Ethelinda Schaefer Castle Collection. (Illustration of Aethopyga flavostriata (Sunbird), from Monograph of the Cinnyridae, by George Ernest Shelley, London, 1876-1880.)

Carrie Lane Chapman Catt (1859-1947) was an internationally recognized suffragist, feminist and political activist. The Catt photograph collection consists of over 800 photographs of suffrage leaders and events, dating primarily from the last years of the nineteenth century through the first two decades of the twentieth century.

The Early Advertising Collection contains European and American printed advertisements dating from 1790 to 1910. The majority of the collection are trade cards of the late nineteenth century.

Scrapbook of letters written by Frances Arnold, Bryn Mawr College Class of 1897, to her parents and cousin, written from Bryn Mawr and during Arnold's travel to France, Germany and Italy, ca. 1893-1897. Note that to date, the scrapbook is loaded with no additional transcription or description at the page level. It is uploaded for browsing only and it not full-text searchable.

Beginning in the late spring of her freshman year at Bryn Mawr College, Mary Worthington, M. Carey Thomas's "dear, intelligent niece," recorded in a clear strong hand the significant events and emotions of her college years and life as part of the Class fo 1910. Bound into nine by twelve green scrapbooks with her name stamped on the front in gold letters, the diary was expanded to include photographs, invitations, play programs, examinations, clippings, and lists of books she had read. This collection also includes eight folders of additional materials, including letters, entrance exams, newspaper clippings and other ephemera.

Bryn Mawr College’s Single Leaf Manuscripts Collection comprises an eclectic assembly of manuscript leaves in a variety of languages and given by a number of donors. For the most part, these manuscripts originated in Europe and concern religious or legal subjects. A majority of the manuscripts are medieval, but the collection contains documents from other time periods including Greek, Arabic, and Coptic papyrus fragments, some of which date to as early as the first and second century CE. The collection also contains many French, English, and American documents which date from the sixteenth to twentieth century CE.

The Speer Family Papers represent four generations of that family, with the bulk of material attributed to Robert Elliott Speer and his wife and three of his five children: Emma Bailey, Elliott, Margaret Bailey, and William Speer. To date, a selection of letters, scrapbooks, images and ephemera from the Speer collection have been digitized to provide an introduction to Margaret Bailey Speer, a strong leader and visionary who applied herself fully to the matters that compelled her. This engagement is most visible in her work for the education of Chinese women, with which she involved herself in various capacities beginning in the years shortly after her graduation from Bryn Mawr College in 1922, and continuing up until her death.