Abolitionist and Women's Rights Activist Sojourner Truth dictated the story of her life as a slave in Upstate New York and eventual escape to freedom to a friend, publishing and distributing this book herself.

Uncle Tom's Cabin author Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote this statement for Truth to help her promote it. Notable names, but the extensive collection of Brooklyn native Lisa Unger Baskin goes beyond famous women in history.

"It's ordinary women as well. It's women we've never heard off. Women that we don't think about. Women that have left a record in some way," said Co-Curator Lisa Unger Baskin.

Spotlighted in an exhibition called Five Hundred Years of Women's Work, The Lisa Unger Baskin Collection is at The Grolier Club in Midtown, the nation's oldest and largest society for lovers of books and the printed word.

Baskin is a member of the club, which did not include women until the late 1970s. The exhibition includes highlights of her 45 years of collecting monuments of women's history and literature, plus lesser known works by female scholars, printers, publishers, scientists, artists and political activists.

"Probably 11 thousand printed books, and thousands and thousands of manuscripts, pieces of paper, ephemera, objects," said Baskin.

Baskin Co-Curated the exhibit with Naomi Nelson and Lauren Reno from the Rubenstein Library at Duke University, where Baskin placed her collection four years ago.

She hopes the exhibition reinforces that women have for centuries pursued a wide range of careers and vocations to support themselves and their families and causes they believed in.

"Women had names, women had professions, women did work, and they were paid for that work, and that's really what this exhibition is about," said Baskin.

And the Grolier Club is located on East 60th street between Park and Madison, you can see the exhibition here through February 8th, Monday through Saturday from 10 to 5 and it’s free. To find out more, visit GrolierClub.org.