Womens Labour And The History Of The Book In Early Modern England Valerie Wayne Editor by Valerie Wayne (editor) 9781350110014, 9781350110045, 1350110019, 1350110043 instant download after payment.

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.
This collection demonstrates 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. Isabella Whitney, the Countess of Pembroke, Frances Wolfreston and 51 widow publishers are among those discussed at length. A focus on women’s work enables the recognition of 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. Attention to class as well as gender enables a fuller sense of women’s industry in book-making along with their active book-sharing and mentoring. These essays also undo some long-standing assumptions: that stationers’ wives were the unwitting prey of ambitious apprentices; that a woman’s printing house could never be as productive as a man’s; and that only a handful of women edited Shakespeare’s plays before 1950. Working in depth with archival materials and historical documents, these scholars employ responsible speculation to describe the impressive work that women accomplished and their frequent collaborations with others in the making, marking, and marketing of early modern English books.