RARE banners, photos and other artefacts will feature in a Bodleian Library exhibition to mark the centenary of women’s suffrage.

The Representation of the People Act was passed on February 6, 1918, and gave women over 30 who owned property and all men over 21 the right to vote.

Now the Bodleian’s Weston Library in Broad Street is staging a special exhibition, starting on Tuesday, entitled Sappho to Suffrage: Women who Dared.

Professor Senia Paseta, co-director of Women in the Humanities and a history tutor at St Hugh’s College is the curator of the exhibition.

She said: “As well as highlighting the richness of the Bodleian’s holdings produced by women, this exhibition will showcase aspects of Oxford’s particular suffrage history.”

Displays will feature banners, texts, medieval book bindings, photographs, posters, letters, musical scores and games.

Highlights will include a colourful banner for the Oxford Women Students’ Society for Women’s Suffrage.

The library is also commissioning an artist to recreate an Oxford banner, which was taken to a demonstration in London.

The exhibition will also display the only known surviving version of the board game Suffragetto.

The object of the game is for each player to get six of their pieces into the squares representing the Albert Hall or the House of Commons.

The suffragettes’ player has 16 small green pieces with five larger ones for their leaders while the other player has 16 black pieces, representing police officers, with five larger pieces for police inspectors.

The board game was produced by the militant British Women’s Social and Political Union to raise money for the suffragette campaign.

The Bodleian holds the only known surviving copy of the game, donated by collector Richard Ballam in 2016.

Also on show will be a ‘platform ticket’ for a meeting of the Oxford branch of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, which took place at Oxford Town Hall in October 2013.

The NUWSS, also known as suffragists, were committed to campaigning using peaceful means.

A postcard from May 22, 1912, will show ‘The Imprisoned Suffragist Leaders’ Emmeline Pankhurst, and Emmeline and Frederick Pethick Lawrence.

Catríona Cannon, deputy librarian and keeper of collections at the Bodleian, said: “We are proud to be part of the wonderful programme of commemoration throughout the UK and Ireland by highlighting the achievements of women past and present.”

As well as the Bodleian exhibition, which runs until February 2019, there will be a series of events throughout Oxford.

Last month Oxford colleges and the city council flew a flag which said ‘Votes for Women’.