WOODWARD, Katherine.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Album of material assembled by the gymnastics teacher Katherine Woodward, including illustrations by her sister, photographs, programmes, and newspaper cuttings. This album documents women's physical culture and education in late Victorian London, a period when organized exercise was promoted as a means of discipline and self-improvement, and increasingly as a route to paid work for women. It brings together visual and printed material tracing Katherine Woodward's progression from pupil at Miss Stuart Snell's Ladies' Gymnasium, Alexandra House, Kensington Gore, to her own teaching career at Fulham Congregational Lecture Hall and St John's Mission Hall, Chelsea.Among the highlights are designs by Alice Woodward for fencing and gymnastic lessons at the family home in Beaufort Street, together with a witty illustrated poem titled "Feminine Fencers". The prominence of fencing in the album reflects its late 19th-century revival, with women's fencing being championed by figures such as the French fencing master Baptiste Bertrand.Born into a cultivated scientific family, Katherine Woodward was the daughter of Henry Bolinbroke Woodward, Keeper of Geology at the Natural History Museum, and sister to Alice Woodward.The album also includes printed illustrations and tracings by Alice Woodward, photographs of students and instructors at Alexandra House, and printed programmes for gymnastic and fencing displays organized by Katherine Woodward between 1893 and 1897. Earlier programmes from

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.