Table of Contents

List of Figures
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

Promotional Information

This collection reveals the labours of women printers and publishers, authors and editors, owners and readers in the production and reception of early modern English books.

About the Author

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

Reviews

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*

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*