FIRST EDITION OF SIMPSON'S PROBLEMS WOMEN SOLVED: BEING THE STORY OF THE WOMAN'S BOARD OF THE PANAMA-PACIFIC INTERNATIONAL EXPOSITION, 1915, WITH DOZENS OF PORTRAITS OF NOTABLE WOMEN

SIMPSON, Anna Pratt. Problems Women Solved. Being the Story of the Woman's Board of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. What Vision, Enthusiasm, Work and Co-Operation Accomplished. San Francisco: Woman's Board, 1915 [i.e. 1916]. Octavo, original half beige cloth, paper spine label, uncut and unopened, original dust jacket. $450.

First trade edition of this compelling contemporary narrative of women's organized participation in the 1915 World's Fair, with dozens of mounted plates featuring prominent women, very scarce uncut and unopened in the original dust jacket.

"One hundred years ago, Anna Pratt Simpson wrote a book titled 'Problems Women Solved.' It was a story of the vision, enthusiasm, work and cooperation accomplished by the first Woman's Board that worked on the Panama-Pacific International Exposition… [T]he women who formed the first San Francisco Woman's Board of 1915, spent much of their time working effortlessly in the background, one day to be part of one of the state's most successful fairs. It was the Woman's Board that first organized the California State Woman's Auxiliary. This organization helped to bring women together, to bind relationships and show the possibilities of what could be accomplished when working together. The Auxiliary felt that it was the right of every woman in California to participate in the making of this Exposition which would celebrate some of the greatest engineering achievements in their current history—therefore, adding to the Pacific Coast a future of commercial importance and success" (Sausalito Historical Society). The group also formed the first Traveler's Aid of California in an attempt to assist young people who had headed to the Exposition, but failed to research and account for practicalities such as food and lodging. Preceded by a 1915 limited edition of only 250 copies bound in half morocco. Bookplate. Small owner label to dust jacket front flap of Dr. Alexander Thomas Leonard, a San Francisco physician with a passion for local art and history. He enthusiastically collected paintings and books about California and was a member of many regional historical societies, as well as co-chairman of the annual San Francisco Celebration. Interestingly, he was both a member, trustee and a Fellow of the California Historical Society: as such he may well have known many of the women discussed in his work.

Book fine; light edge-wear to very scarce about-fine dust jacket.