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Women’s Labour and the History of the Book in Early Modern England
Women’s Labour and the History of the Book in Early Modern England
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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.
Table of Contents
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgements
Note on Texts
List of Abbreviations
1. Introduction: Locating Women's Labour
Valerie Wayne, University of Hawai'i at Manoa, USA
Part One: Making Books: Paper, Publishers, Printers
2. English Rag-women and Early Modern Paper Production
Heidi Craig, Texas A&M University, USA, and Editor, World Shakespeare Bibliography
3. Widow Publishers in London, 1540 - 1640
Alan B. Farmer, Ohio State University, USA
4. Female Stationers and Their Second-plus Husbands
Sarah Neville, Ohio State University, USA
5. Left to Their Own Devices: Sixteenth-century Widows and their Printers' Devices
Erika Boeckeler, Northeastern University, USA
6. 'Famed as far as one finds books': Women in the Dutch and English Book Trade
Martine van Elk, California State University, Long Beach, USA
Part Two: Making Texts: Authors and Editors
7. Isabella Whitney amongst the Stalls of Richard Jones
Kirk Melnikoff, University of North Carolina, Charlotte, USA
8.'All by her directing': The Countess of Pembroke and her Arcadia
Sarah Wall-Randell, Wellesley College, USA
9. Katharine Lee Bates and Women's Editions of Shakespeare for Students
Molly Yarn, Independent Scholar, USA
Part Three: Marking Books: Owners, Readers, Collectors, Annotators
10. Patterns in Women's Book Ownership, 1500 - 1700
Georgianna Ziegler, Folger Shakespeare Library, USA
11. Reader, Maker, Mentor: The Countess of Huntingdon and her Networks
Elizabeth Zeman Kolkovich, Ohio State University, USA
12. Frances Wolfreston's Annotations as Labours of Love
Lori Humphrey Newcomb, University of Illinois, USA
13. Afterword: Widows, Orphans and Other Errors
Helen Smith, University of York, UK
Index
Product details
| Published | 14 May 2020 |
|---|---|
| Format | Ebook (PDF) |
| Edition | 1st |
| Extent | 336 |
| ISBN | 9781350110038 |
| Imprint | The Arden Shakespeare |
| Illustrations | 20 bw illus |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
About the contributors
Reviews
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As comparative transnational history and gender history become more popular intersections with book history, Women's Labour and the History of the Book will remain an important foundation ... Wayne and her collaborators not only contribute valuable content but establish a careful framework for scholars to build on, and for that, they should rightfully continue to be lauded.
Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America
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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
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An arresting and important volume that rethinks the role of women in book history.
Times Literary Supplement
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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
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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
ONLINE RESOURCES
Bloomsbury Collections
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