Rather aptly for Women's History Month, we have recently been cataloguing the papers of Beatrice Warde, a pioneering woman in the world of print and typography, referred to by some as the 'first lady of typography'.

Beatrice Warde (1900-1969) was born in New York, to parents May Lamberton Becker, a journalist and literary critic, and Gustave Becker, a composer and music teacher. The young Beatrice inherited a fascination with the printed word from her mother and showed an interest in both writing and letterforms during her education at Barnard College, Columbia University. Our collection of her papers includes short stories and poems written by Warde in her youth, demonstrating this early love of language.

Beatrice Warde first entered the professional typographic community in 1921, working for the Typographical Library and Museum of the American Type Founders Company. She soon moved to London to pursue her career, writing articles for trade publications and eventually taking on the role of Editor for The Monotype Recorder. By 1929, Warde was Head of Publicity for the Monotype Corporation and making a name for herself as an in-demand writer, researcher and speaker on all things typographic. 

Warde published much of her written work under the male pseudonym Paul Beaujon. Our collection includes tapes of a recorded 1959 interview, in which Warde explains the reasoning behind her male pseudonym:

"I wasn't quite sure at that time (which is a long time ago) that women would be taken quite as respectfully. I thought that if I was going to have a pen name, I might as well have a man, and I took a Frenchman's at that, to make it a little more mysterious."

Warde was a governor of St Bride Foundation from April 1953 until her death in 1969, an active member of both the Governing Body and Libraries Committee. Very close to the hearts of our library team, Warde dedicated herself to fundraising for our library, heading up the Appeal Sub-Committee to oversee this and securing the future of the collections that we still care for today.

The Beatrice Warde papers held at St Bride include a vast collection of her writing, from childhood short stories to her famous essay The Crystal Goblet, with examples in both manuscript and published form. There are examples of her manifesto for printers, This is a Printing Office, in multiple languages and variations. Photographs of Warde mingling with the great and the good of the print world can be seen alongside correspondence and ephemera such as a family tree. The collection also encompasses a large amount of material relating to Warde's work setting up the May Lamberton Becker Reading Room at the National Book League, cementing her mother's legacy in promoting the printed word.

You can view our work-in-progress catalogue of the Beatrice Warde papers here. This project is part of a much wider programme of cataloguing our archives and special collections at St Bride Library. We have added specialist archive cataloguing software to our collections management system, so when searching our online catalogue you will now see separate tabs for 'Printed Material' and 'Archives'. We have been surveying our collections and prioritising them for cataloguing based on their research value and relevance for our researchers. We are working to add many more of our special collections to the catalogue, making them more accessible to researchers and building a clearer understanding of the treasures we hold.