Huntington Exhibition Links Brontë, Butler, and Babitz Through Personal Artifacts

The Huntington Library, Art Museum, & Botanical Gardens in Los Angeles presents 'Stories from the Library: From Brontë to Butler,' an exhibition that uses personal effects to illuminate the inner lives of women writers from the Victorian era to the 20th century. The show features items from Charlotte Brontë, Octavia E. Butler, Mary Shelley, Eve Babitz, Velina Hasu Houston, and Patt Morrison. The focal object is one of Butler's notebooks, part of a collection of 400 archival boxes and 200 notebooks held by the Huntington. Butler, who grew up in working-class Pasadena, wrote 'Parable of the Sower' (1993), set in a dystopian 2024 Los Angeles. The exhibition also includes a letter from Mary Shelley (1819) about losing a child, a letter from Brontë to Ellen Nussey (1846), a diary entry by Houston, a red hat of Patt Morrison flecked with paint from Prince Andrew's 1984 visit, and photographs by Babitz. Curator Sarah Francis compiled a Spotify playlist featuring Joan Baez and Aimee Mann. The exhibition runs through June 15 at the Huntington (1151 Oxford Road, San Marino, CA).