Ida Leeson: a life; not a blue-stocking lady by Sylvia Martin

Librarians get bad press everywhere. No matter how much we re-invent ourselves as information architects, or cybrarians, we still get lumbered with the cardigans and sensible shoes. It’s always been of interest to me that the stereotype of a librarian is very close to the stereotype of a lesbian.

Any biographer of Ida Leeson would be vulnerable to promoting the stereotypes of a librarian who was also a lesbian. But this is a truly inspiring, engaging and admirable book, written in a most sensitive and respectful way.

For the past ten years or so, Sylvia Martin has been writing and researching about women in Australian history who, today, we would describe as lesbians. It’s a project which has brought back into focus women who have been neglected in the construction of Australia’s literary and cultural history.

Ida Leeson is a worthy subject. She was born and grew up in working-class Leichhardt, blessed with a fine intellect and the capacity to work very hard, and became the first female Mitchell Librarian for New South Wales. On the way she overcame blatant discrimination against her as a woman, and a great deal of wheeling and dealing in the acquisition of material for the impressive library. Her relationship with Florence Birch, another very accomplished woman, was known by everyone. But, as Martin points out; “…a person’s sexuality was not considered to be the core aspect of their identity in the 1920s and 1930s in the way it is today.”

Nevertheless, while Sylvia Martin has avoided typecasting, the reviews of her book haven’t. Bruce Elder’s review in the Sydney Morning Herald is titled “Is it possible to make the life and work of a librarian interesting?” Even the Gleebooks review begins with the notion that; “Ida Leeson was no ordinary librarian,” suggesting that, thankfully, she wasn’t a conservative crashing bookish bore like all the rest of them (us).

Ida Leeson’s examined life throws up challenges. I particularly enjoyed Sylvia Martin’s exploration of Ida’s mannish dress and manners, and her relationship with men; “Androgynous women like Ida are unsettling and create unconscious gender anxiety, particularly among heterosexual men…”

Ida’s heroic sense of herself as a librarian is nothing short of thrilling for those of us who clack away all day online in a contemporary atmosphere where library users are constructed as customers and all contact is noted, measured, collected and somehow valued in a set of numerical KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). Ida catalogued meticulously, building her own knowledge by reading copiously. She followed obscure leads and tracked down material to build the collection. She edited research papers. And she found time to promote other women librarians.

Sylvia Martin is open about the problems of biographical research. Much of the evidence of Ida’s personal life has been lost, but where a writer reveals their personal interests in a subject’s life, does it matter? What matters is the re-instatement of Ida Leeson as central to the preservation of the history of Sydney, New South Wales and Australia, and its continued accessibility. The book’s almost incidental history of Sydney in the twenties and thirties just adds to the pleasure.

Shortlisted for the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction 2007, I’m hoping it will be pronounced the winner on 31st May.

Available from the Feminist Bookshop, who tell me it’s a best-seller!

Sylvia Martin’s next project is a biography of the left-wing Melbourne literary figure, Aileen Palmer (1915-1988) All power to her.