STICHWORT Antiquariat

The well-known Viennese historian Hanna Hacker offers a preliminary overview of the works contained in the antique part of the STICHWORT archive. In a playful use of superlatives (oldest to youngest, longest to shortest) followed by a short characterization of the genres to be found there, she gives a connoisseur's taste for the treats of this collection.

The Antiquariat's wide range of titles comprising - at the time the article was written - well over 700 works, are contrasted in terms of: their historical period, ranging from the 1820s to the 1960s ('antique' is defined here as dating prior to 1966); the volume of the author's output (from short, stray curiosities to multi-title authors) and the variety of nationalities and genres represented.

The collection's main emphasis is on novels and narratives of European women of the early twentieth century, the classical "women's literature", which complements, critiques, comments on and expands the political feminism of the turn of the century.

In addition to the diary of Anne Frank and a 1929 English edition of Virginia Woolf's Orlando, await a plethora of memoirs, autobiographies and letter collections from early salon leaders, travelers and countesses, doctors and poets, lesbians, classical novelists, detective writers, storytellers, political feminists, leaders in the women's movement, socialists and psychologists. And now even the publisher is among the other search terms in the literature databank - which can and should be used as interchangeably and playfully as possible, inviting the visitor to make her own associations and discoveries in the Antiquariat.