The Jagiellonian Library and the Jagiellonian University Institute of English Studies are organising an exhibition entitled ‘Only women can write letters’, which will feature letters written by Rahel Varnhagen, George Sand, Marie Skłodowska-Curie, Sarah Austin, Helena Modrzejewska, and other women.

Besides manuscripts in German by these and other authors, the exhibition will include letters by eminent intellectuals, writers and scientists from Poland, France and Italy: Maria Szymanowska, Helena Modrzejewska, Gabriela Zapolska, Olga Boznańska, Marie Skłodowska-Curie, as well as Mary Shelley, George Sand, Sarah Austin and Josephine Bonaparte, to mention only a few.

The aim of the curators of the exhibition, Dr Paweł Zarychta from the JU Institute of German Studies and Joanna Baster, from the Jagiellonian Library, was not so much to show the multitude of females who wrote letters after 1750 as to illustrate their great contribution to Polish and European culture, which also manifested in letters. The exhibition will also address such issues as mentality, poetics and esthetics of women’s letters, letter sheets, epistolary novels, women’s letters in culture and literature, its role in the emancipation of women, etc.