About Miriam Holden and Her Collection

Women of the Future by Meta Stern Lilienthal.
Women of the Future by Meta Stern Lilienthal.

Miriam Y. Holden (née Young) (1893 - 1977) was a civil and women’s rights activist as well as a prolific collector of books, pamphlets, and manuscript material, particularly that related to the argument for women’s rights in American society and abroad.

Born in 1893 to Boston residents Harry H. Young and Lillian Richmond Young (née Hoxie), Holden would go on to graduate from Miss Mary’s School and attend Simmons College before marrying architect (and Princeton University graduate) Arthur Holden in 1917. The couple moved to New York City where Arthur received a Bachelor of Architecture and a Master of Economics from Colombia University.

Meanwhile, Miriam become involved in activist groups including the Junior League, the New York Urban League, Planned Parenthood and the Women’s Party. She was an early advocate for birth control, working with and supporting Margaret Sanger. She served on the advisory board of the Women’s Archives at Harvard’s Radcliffe College, helping to add the college’s first women’s history course to the roster in 1952.

Through her activism and experience watching her children navigate K-12 school curriculum, Holden became infuriated with the lack of female representation in history textbooks. In a 1960 speech to fellow bibliophiles, she noted "throughout the ages, men have recorded with care the achievements of men, and yet kept all too few records of the story of women." In response, she co-authored The American Woman in Colonial and Revolutionary Times, 1565-1800: a Syllabus With Bibliography to support curricula centered on women in history.

Commensurate with Her Capacities and Obligations are Woman's Rights
Commensurate with Her Capacities and Obligations are Woman's Rights

To further “reveal women's part in the making of long history," Holden began to collect books, periodicals, manuscripts, clippings, photographs, and other ephemera related to the lives of women and their achievements throughout history. At the time of her death in 1977, Arthur gifted this collection of 6,000 items to Princeton University, where it lives today.

The collection is particularly strong in biographies of notable women of the past: Jenny Lind, Amelia Earhart, Joan of Arc, Catherine Gladstone, Fanny Burney, Margaret Bourke-White, Kate Greenway, Clara Burton, Simone Weil, Harriet Martineau, Hannah More, the Song sisters, and many others.

Some items are available as part of the Gender and Sexuality Studies section of Firestone Library while others are available in Special Collections including original women's rights pamphlets by Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Lucy Stone; copies of the Lowell Offering, a magazine of compositions written by girls who worked in the Lowell mills in the 1840s; books by and about Phillis Wheatley Peters, including an edition of Poems on Various Subjects; a first edition of the Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollenstonecraft; and two 18th century editions of works by Hrotsvitha, canoness of the Benedictine Monastery of Gandersheim, Saxony from the 10th century.

To learn more about Holden and her collection, please see the articles from the Princeton University Library Chronicle (open access).