The entry into the Sitting Room Library

[1]The Sitting Room Library is a reading room and archive in Penngrove, California, US, that provides the community with access to women's literature and art. The Sitting Room focuses on the work of women, but its resources are open to anyone.

History

Established in 1981 by June Farver, Jane Flood, Marylou Hadditt, Susan Miller, Karen Petersen, D.A. Powell, and J.J. Wilson.[2] At the time, Petersen and Wilson recognized the lack of access to literature and related publications and worked to create a library that would serve as a place for conversation and collections of books and resources.[3] The Sitting Room Library began in a rented office building in Cotati, California. In 2004, the library moved to a house in Penngrove.

Inspired by the Morrison Reading Room at the UC Berkeley University Library, the Sitting Room began as a place for women to gather, hold salons, and celebrate the cultural contributions of women artists and writers.[4] The library's collection of books began with donations provided by early visitors and volunteers and has expanded to over 7,000 titles.

The Woolf Wall

A portrait of Virginia Woolf with text from her novel The Waves (1931)
The Waves by Isota Tucker Epes

The Sitting Room Library books and archives began in the early 1970s as a collection of one of the Sitting Room’s founders, J.J. Wilson. Her long interest in the British modernist writer, Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) has resulted in a wide assortment of books by and about Woolf, her family and the Bloomsbury Group of her talented friends ranging from the economist, John Maynard Keynes to the art critic, Roger Fry.  The Woolf Wall, as it is called, includes all of Virginia Woolf’s published novels and short fiction, as well as complete sets of the Collected Essays, Letters, and Diaries. The Wall also includes books that span over fifty years of scholars’ writings about Virginia Woolf, her craft, her reception, and her life. Archived documents include a complete set of The Virginia Woolf Miscellany (VWM), which was first published in 1973 at Sonoma State College (now Sonoma State University) with the stated goal of putting “Woolf readers in touch with one another”.[5] The evidence of the success of the VWM goal can be found in the correspondence and documents that fill the VWM archive file. The Woolf Archives are also home to documents, articles, essays, and correspondence from Woolf scholars and common readers collected over the past fifty years. The 300 volumes of the Woolf Wall can be searched via the online catalog, https://www.librarycat.org/lib/Sitting_Room/.

References

  1. ↑ Peyton, Sara (April 18, 1997). "Shakespeare Sisters". San Francisco Focus (magazine). p. 17.
  2. ↑ "The Sitting Room". Bohemian | Sonoma & Napa Counties. 2001-03-29. Retrieved 2023-10-25.
  3. ↑ "Penngrove's 'Sitting Room' stands up for literary women". Petaluma Argus-Courier. 2016-08-27. Retrieved 2023-10-12.
  4. ↑ "Reading Room: The Sitting Room Community Library". Bohemian | Sonoma & Napa Counties. 2020-03-04. Retrieved 2023-10-12.
  5. ↑ "Virginia Woolf Miscellany". Virginia Woolf Miscellany. Retrieved 2023-11-29.
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