The Josephine Long Wishart Collection: Mother, Home, and Heaven
The Josephine Long Wishart Collection: Mother, Home, and Heaven
Aimed primarily at women, this collection is a monograph collection of popular advice literature. Books cover topics from cooking and cleaning to marriage and birth control. Many of the titles are manuals that offer guidelines for self-improvement. The collection demonstrates how self-improvement advice has been redefined to meet the needs of popular culture.
The Victorian notion of the woman as the "Angel in the House" is well-represented, with many of the texts proposing that every young woman should be prepared to be the guardian of her home and to provide heaven on earth for her family. Later imprints document the change in social constructs.
As result of more women taking an active role in the work force during World War I and World War II, the texts reflect the changes made to the guidelines for becoming an "ideal woman." Books published in the 1960s represent the explosion of the youth culture and the need for women to look and feel young to keep up with the demands of daily life.
The original collection consists of approximately 800 titles that were collected by Harrison Hayford. In 1990, his wife, Josephine Wishart Hayford (Class of 1937), donated the bulk of the collection in honor of her mother, Josephine Long Wishart, wife of President Charles F. Wishart. All titles have been catalogued and appear in the CONSORT and OhioLINK databases. Related items have been added to complement the original collection and can be searched as "Mother Home and Heaven Related Works.”