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Myra Sadd Brown © The Women's Library, London Metropolitan University
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Sadd Brown Library
The Sadd Brown Library was named in honour of
Myra Sadd who added her husband's name, Brown, to her own on her
marriage, rather than just adopting his name. She was born in Essex
into a non-conformist family of free-thinkers and was actively involved
in the suffrage movement. As a militant suffragette she was imprisoned
in Holloway and force fed. Her circle included many of the leaders of
the suffrage movement including the Pankhursts and the
Pethick-Lawrences. In 1925 she was a founder member of the British
Commonwealth League, now known as the Commonwealth Countries League, and retained a life long interest in opportunities for women in the Commonwealth.
The Sadd Brown Library was founded in 1939 in
memory of Myra Sadd Brown, and contains books, pamphlets and
periodicals about, and often by, women of the Commonwealth. It covers
colonial pioneers to modern day freedom fighters, as well as
investigations of women's political and economic advancement and their
positions in other societies and religions. It contains conference
reports of the British Commonwealth League from 1925 to 1938 which
vividly reveal the feminist concerns of pre-war generation, some still
waiting to be resolved today. The Library was the tribute of her
suffrage colleagues to Myra Sadd Brown and it continues to grow with
support from her family and the Commonwealth Countries League.
The collection includes some late nineteenth century publications, such as Olive Schreiner's Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland,
1897, but most of the collection dates from the twentieth century. Some
examples of books and periodicals in the Sadd Brown Library include The African child by Evelyn Sharp 1931, Women living under Muslim laws newsheet, Pakistan 1992-, Onions are my husband: survival and accumulation by West African market women by Gracia Clark, 1994 and Race relations news, South Africa 1947-1955.
The Sadd Brown Library is integrated into the
main library sequence and new material continues to be added to the
collection. Individual volumes from the Sadd Brown Library can be
identified on The Women's Library's online catalogue. Most of the collection is held on open access in the Reading Room and is immediately available to readers for reference.
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