Women At the Chrysler: Annie Wood - Author

During the exhibition Women of the Chrysler: A 400-Year Celebration of the Arts, we’re celebrating the contributions of women to the history of the Chrysler Museum. Women from all backgrounds have played an integral role in the creation, development, and operation of the Museum from its very beginning. Each week during the exhibition, we’re a story about a woman or group of women accompanied by an online album of images from the Library's collections. We also invite you to join us in the Library to learn more about these dedicated women.

This week we thought we’d share an interesting aspect of a well-known figure in the Museum’s history. If you are a regular Museum visitor or a Norfolk native, chances are you’ve heard of Irene Leach and Anna Cogswell Wood) and their contributions to the establishment of an Art Museum in Norfolk. (If you haven’t stop by the Library and take a look at our
Women at the Chrysler exhibit to learn all about it.) What you may not know, however, is that Annie Wood was also a prolific writer, authoring and co-authoring numerous works of fiction and non-fiction. Beginning in 1891 with the novel Diana Fontaine written under the nom de plume Algernon Ridgewood (taken from Wood’s Father’s name) Wood followed this work with the 1892 novel Westover’s Ward. Over the next forty-nine years, she published five other works of non-fiction and essays on topics ranging from her travels in Europe to parlor dramatics to criminal psychology. Wood also tirelessly compiled albums of her thoughts and ideas in beautifully leather bound books she called her “pensées”. Many of these were donated after her death to the Norfolk Museum of Arts and Science and remain in the collections of the Chrysler Museum and the Irene Leache Memorial Foundation. In the attached slide show you’ll find images of works by and about Wood. If you’d like to learn more, we urge you to stop by the Library or to read Jo Ann Mervis Hofheimer’s 1996 biography Annie Wood: a  Portrait.

Westover’s Ward is also available through Google Books.

L.C.