Mission of This Beautiful Sisterhood
This Beautiful Sisterhood of Books is a digital humanities recovery project that recreates the Woman’s Literary Department from the New Orleans 1884 World’s Fair and “recovers the exclusion” of Black women and their work from the Woman’s Department exhibit. The Beautiful Sisterhood Project is for scholars, educators, students, and members of the public who wish to explore, build, and help interpret our collections. The site offers a digital archive, a curriculum for undergraduate students, and exhibits on topics relating to the 1884 Woman’s Department. The Beautiful Sisterhood Project is committed to publishing new research by scholars at all levels, inside and outside of the academy.
Contact us about your ideas. Your contributions are welcomed!
“Eminent Women 1884” by Eugene L’Africain. Read about the Composite Photograph.
This composite photograph hung over Maud Howe’s desk in the Woman’s Literary Department at the 1884 New Orleans World’s Fair. To create it, Canadian artist Eugene L’Africain photographed the twelve women separately, assembled their images together on a painted background, then photographed the resulting collage. It depicts famous authors of the day, including Nora Perry, Mary A. Livermore, Sara Orne Jewett, Grace A. Oliver, Helen Hunt Jackson, Lucy Larcom, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Louise Chandler Moulton, Louisa May Alcott, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and (Maud’s famous mother) Julia Ward Howe