Women’s Liberation [envelope and article collection]

Brooklyn: Graphics Collective, ca. 1972. Screenprint to envelope measuring 12 x 9 in. Envelope creased and bumped at corners, with light soiling. Contents near fine. Item #10359

Nine articles and a bookseller’s catalog on women’s liberation and feminist politics housed in a screenprinted “Women’s Liberation” envelope. The articles are reprints from underground press periodicals such as RAT, Leviathan, Quicksilver Times, and Great Speckled Bird, as well as from more narrowly focused feminist publications like Redstockings, Women’s Liberation Health Collective, and View from the Bottom. The articles contained in the envelope range from widely circulated classics like Pat Mainardi’s “The Politics of Housework” and Kathy McAfree and Myrna Wood’s “Bread and Roses” to more obscure essays and narratives. 

The articles were likely compiled by Ina Clausen, an activist and printer who co-founded a women’s collective print shop in Brooklyn where she designed and edited informational packets on the women’s liberation movement. We have been unable to locate any holdings of this envelope outside of The Brooklyn Library’s collection of Clausen’s papers. 

A document of the DIY circulation of feminist political analysis in the early-1970s, a product of the practices and networks of self-publishing and small scale distribution that were an engine for the circulation of feminist political analysis.

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