What’s Inside? A Century of Women and Handbags

1900–1999 by Anita Davis

If you haven’t already visited ESSE Museum & Store in Little Rock’s SoMa neighborhood, you may not know that it is the only purse museum in the U.S.

November 8 marks ESSE’s 5th birthday and also the launch of the museum book: What’s Inside? A Century of Women and Handbags, 1900–1999 by Anita Davis. Museum and book alike are built around the notion that purses are much more than fashionable objects containing items women need to go about their daily business.

Purses are personal, private places into which only the privileged dare put their hands, vessels of the feminine that hold the essence of a woman’s individuality.

What’s Inside compliments the permanent exhibition of ESSE Purse Museum & Store, offering intimate portraits of this most intimate accessory. Open the book and step inside one of only three purse museums in the world where, decade by decade, you’ll conjure the lives and habits of 20th century American women through clutch-sized vignettes and gleaming minaudières of fashion.

In these pages, discover evocative photographs of purses and their contents, enticing essays, vibrant artistic renderings, and illuminating historical fictions that celebrate a century of everyday women. Breathing life into often unnamed heroines, you’ll revere the stylish changemakers whose struggles and triumphs forged the way for generations of women to come.

Other local contributors Arkansans may recognize are Betsy Davis (illustrations), Laura Cartwright Hardy (nonfiction text), Rita Henry (historical fiction text), Steven Otis (design & styling), George Chambers (photography), Brandon Markin (photography), and Nancy Nolan (photography).

8.5 x 9, 118 pages, premium color. $29.95. Use code ESSE10 for 10% off, plus free shipping for a limited time at etaliapress.com.

A Hot Springs native, Erin Wood is a writer, editor, and publisher in Little Rock. She owns and runs Et Alia Press (etaliapress.com). She is editor of and a contributor to Scars: An Anthology and is currently at work on Women Makers of Arkansas, featuring 50+ women creatives. Wood’s work has appeared in Catapult, The Rumpus, Ms. Magazine’s Blog, Psychology Today, Tales from the South, and elsewhere, and was a Best American Essays notable.