In the early 19th century, Midwestern farmers loaded their crops on flatboats at the end of every summer and floated them down the Mississippi River to New Orleans. The timber that was used to make these boats came from places like Minnesota and Wisconsin, and yet because the river’s current was so strong, it was impossible to take the boats back upriver after they had been unloaded. Instead, they were sold for scrap in New Orleans and were subsequently used to build many of the city’s houses.

Although the flatboat trade ended with the coming of the railroad, another product of the Wisconsin woods recently found its way to Louisiana. Between 1996 and 2006, Gaylord Schanilec and Ben Verhoeven (both of Midnight Paper Sales) collected 24 species of wood near Schanilec’s home fifty miles southwest of Eau Claire—ranging from maple and birch to ironwood and black walnut—and wrote a “biography of a forest.” But it’s not just a catalog of dry, scientific facts. “Gaylord and I have found that trees are fitting vehicles for human history,” Ben writes. “They have been not only witnesses, but also players in many pivotal events, both nationally and locally.” Bound in beautiful wooden boards and featuring, in the text, cross-sections or “portraits” of each of the 24 trees, the book is entitled Sylvae (from the Latin word for “forest”). LSU Special Collections recently purchased a copy of it for the E.A. McIlhenny Natural History Collection.

Almost 350 years ago, the English writer and horticulturalist John Evelyn wrote a similar book, Sylva, or A Discourse on Forest Trees (1664). The English may not have used flatboats to get their crops to market, but they did need trees for something else that was just as important—their navy. England’s famous “wooden walls” protected it from being overrun by foreign armies, and yet, as Evelyn complained, landowners “oftener find wayes to Fell down, and Destroy their Trees and Plantations, than either to repair or improve them.” A great nation, he pointed out, needed great forests. Although England ended up getting most of its timber from North America and Russia in the 18th and 19th centuries, Evelyn’s work was very popular and went through many editions. LSU now owns two copies—the second edition of 1670 and a later, annotated edition dated 1801.

If you had to choose an image for the first page of a book called An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex, what would it be? A picture of a woman might seem like the obvious choice, but when this book was first published in 1696, somebody wasn’t just trying to be funny when they chose a picture of a man and his barber. Wearing a long curly wig, frilly cuffs, high-heeled shoes and even a beauty spot, the “Compleat Beau” admires himself in a mirror while his barber stands at attention, powder puff in hand.

The point the anonymous author (identified only as “a lady”) was trying to make was that men could be just as silly as women; furthermore, if women were silly it was only because they had been “industriously kept in ignorance”—i.e., denied an education—for so long. Mary Astell, an early feminist whose A Serious Proposal to the Ladies for the Advancement of their True and Greatest Interest LSU’s Special Collections division has also recently acquired, made a similar argument in 1694. In order to shield women from “the follies of the town” as well as the tyranny of men, Astell called for the establishment of a “religious retirement” or secular convent where “those who are convinced of the emptiness of earthly enjoyments… may find more substantial and satisfying entertainments.”

Some women, however, such as Jane Barker, tried to compete with men on their own turf. In 1688, Barker co-authored Poetical Recreations, a volume of poetry, with “several gentlemen of the universities.” In addition to being just as capable as men as far as book learning was concerned, women, Barker believed, had more common sense, too. Without women:

Houses, alas, there no such thing wou’d be,
[Men would] live beneath the umbrage of a Tree:
Or else usurp some free-born Native’s Cave;
And so inhabit, whilst alive, a Grave.

Another recent addition to LSU’s rare book collection is Miscellany Poems, on Several Occasions, by Ann Finch, the Countess of Winchilsea. Published in 1713, it is, along with Barker’s Poetical Recreations, one of the earliest volumes of English poetry to have been published by a woman.

Last but not least among this month’s featured acquisitions is Eliza Haywood’s Memoirs of a Certain Island Adjacent to the Kingdom of Utopia (1725), a strange tale of lust, greed, scandal and corruption that offers a thinly-veiled commentary on the period in which it was written. Along with Daniel Defoe, Haywood was one of the most prolific authors of her time, publishing everything from plays and novels to poetry and translations, one of which—La Belle Assemblée, or, The Adventures of Six Days, by Madame de Gomez (1725)—is also now available to readers in Special Collections.