We end this Themed Thursday for #NationalWomensHistoryMonth with this seed catalogue from Miss C. H. Lippincott's eponymous company. "Pioneer seedswoman" Carrie H. Lippincott was the first woman to found and manage a seed company. The covers of her catalogs both featured and appealed to her core clientele: other women. Lippincott used a personal touch, like the informal "Greetings" on the banner and a "Thank you note" included with every order; her seed packets were labeled w...ith the number of seeds within, and were tied together with blue ribbon. Competitors noticed her success, and started adding seed count to their packets and colorful chromolithographed covers to their catalogs. A few of them even named their companies after women, even though they were run only by men! We hope you enjoyed this week's Themed Thursday, and that you will return often to see what else the Smithsonian Libraries has to offer.

On this Themed Thursday honoring National Women's History Month, we have paid tribute to traveler, author, and Egyptologist Amelia Edwards (see the previous two posts), but she is certainly not the only woman whom we could celebrate. The cover of this 1897 Canadian seed catalogue features Britain's Queen Victoria; it was the year of her "Diamond Jubilee", her 60th year on the throne. When Edwards travelled to the United States for her lecture tour on Egyptian archaeology, how...ever, she would have crossed the Atlantic in a hybrid steamship similar to the one shown here. (Switching to sails reduced the amount of coal these ships had to carry as fuel, leaving more room for cargo and passengers.)

When Amelia Edwards first came to Egypt (see previous post), she stayed at Shepheard's Hotel in Cairo. By chance, the Smithsonian Libraries has a copy of the hotel's guidebook, published two or three decades later. Shepheard's was famous for its opulence, with colorful gardens, Persian carpets on the floor, and massive granite columns like those of Egyptian temples in the foyer. It offered splendid meals, and formal dances every night. Among its guests, it numbered not only E...dwards but such luminaries as Winston Churchill, T. E. Lawerence ("of Arabia"), and Charles Lang Freer, the art collector who founded the Smithsonian's Freer Gallery of Art. In short, it was *the* place to stay for British and American travelers from the mid-19th century until it was burned down during the anti-British riots in 1952.

In honor of National Women's History Month, we'd like to introduce to you the redoubtable Amelia Blanford Edwards, English traveller, journalist, novelist, and Egyptologist. In 1873-1874, she and some friends hired a dahabiyah (houseboat, with crew) and made their leisurely way down the Nile, stopping along the way to investigate the ruins. Her A Thousand Miles up the Nile is a vivid and engaging description of this trip, profusely illustrated. We have added the story of what... they did when they got to the temple at Abu Simbel to the two illustrations of the colossal statues there -- it's worth reading. Hint: gallons of coffee. (Not making this up!)