Women's Labour and the History of the Book in Early Modern England

Description

This collection reveals the valuable work that women achieved in publishing, printing, writing and reading early modern English books, from those who worked in the book trade to those who composed, selected, collected and annotated books. Women gathered rags for paper production, invested in books and oversaw the presses that printed them. Their writing and reading had an impact on their contemporaries and the developing literary canon. A focus on women's work enables these essays to recognize the various forms of labour -- textual and social as well as material and commercial -- that women of different social classes engaged in. Those considered include the very poor, the middling sort who were active in the book trade, and the elite women authors and readers who participated in literary communities. Taken together, these essays convey the impressive work that women accomplished and their frequent collaborations with others in the making, marking, and marketing of early modern English books.

Valerie Wayne is Professor Emerita of English at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa, USA.

The essays in this collection add substantially to what is known about early modern women's work in book production and the culture of print. The volume has a nice balance of essays that sweep broadly through the archives and that focus on individual women printers, publishers, writers, booksellers, collectors, and readers. The scholarship is superb, including Valerie Wayne's outstanding introduction, and the intersection of the essays is unusually rich * Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal * An arresting and important volume that rethinks the role of women in book history. * Times Literary Supplement * Valerie Wayne's editorship skilfully marshals a range of essays, drawing out key themes and setting out an intellectual stall ... this book advances the work of placing women into the history of books with research that is explicitly feminist, uses modern technologies and covers new ground as well as reassessing the old ... [A] landmark volume. * Publishing History * The scholars here have performed impressive acts of archival investigation, much dust has been kicked up, but it has the benefit of clearing the air and making it possible to see the truly impressive busyness of business women, urban scavengers, and noble ladies of leisure alike. * Maureen Quilligan, Duke University, USA *