The Helen Augusta Whittier Album illustrates the experience of four well-educated, upper-class women from the Lowell, Massachusetts, area who set off for a two-week adventure in a ramshackle cottage on remote Great Brewster Island in Boston Harbor. The women—who dubbed themselves the “Autocrat,” the “gentle Aristocrat,” the “artistic Acrobat,” and the “veracious Scribe”—kept a meticulous diary of their sojourn, which began on a hot July day in 1891.

The 58-page album was created primarily by Helen Augusta Whittier but includes entries from the hands of at least three other women.