Friendship books of women

A (still growing) group of alba with female owners is known from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. These sources provide a glimpse of the existence of women – a subject that history often remains silent about.

Although male and female alba were not strictly separated, the women's album has a specific character. Women's alba usually show a mixture of songs and poems. These are alternated with pages on which writers (inscribers) limit themselves to their motto, their name, the year and possibly a small flower, heart or other symbol. They are frugal with paper. There are alba where sometimes twelve of such 'minimal inscriptions' can be found on one page. In the eighteenth century, the number of women's alba increases, until in the nineteenth century the genre increasingly takes on the form of the 'poesiealbum' we know.

How exactly the individual booklets were used remains a mystery: it is rarely or never mentioned where a contribution was written down.