Women’s Labour and the History of the Book in Early Modern England 9781350110014, 9781350110045, 9781350110038

Table of contents :
Cover page
Halftitle page
Series page
Title page
Copyright page
CONTENTS
LIST OF FIGURES
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
NOTE ON TEXTS
ABBREVIATIONS
1 Introduction: Locating women’s labour Valerie Wayne
The labours of Jacqueline du Thuit Vautrollier Field
Making books
Making texts and marking books
Additional labours
Notes
References
PART I Making books: Paper, publishers, printers
2 English rag-women and early modern paper production Heidi Craig
The historical rag-picker in early modern England
Rag-women in early modern English discourse
Notes
References
3 Widow publishers in London, 1540–1640 Alan B. Farmer
Wealth and riches: Marriage and stationer widows
Two kinds of publishers: Conservative and entrepreneurial
Widow stationers in the 1630s
Notes
References
4 Female stationers and their second-plus husbands Sarah Neville
Alice Bailey Charlewood Roberts
Joan Sturgis Kingston Robinson Orwin
Assuming women’s presence
Notes
References
5 Left to their own devices: Sixteenth-century widows and their printers’ devices Erika Mary Boeckeler
Joan Merrye Jugge and her flock of pelicans
Alice Bailey Charlewood Roberts leans out of the border
Joan Sturgis Kingston Robinson Orwin cuts into the record
Notes
References
6 ‘Famed as far as one finds books’: Women in the Dutch and English book trades Martine van Elk
Appendix of women stationers in seventeenth- century Amsterdam
Notes
References
PART II Making texts:Authors and editors
7 Isabella Whitney amongst the stalls of Richard Jones Kirk Melnikoff
Whitney’s ware
Jones’s ‘store of Bookes’
Whitney’s aspirations
Notes
References
8 ‘All by her directing’: The Countess of Pembroke and her Arcadia Sarah Wall-Randell
Notes
References
9 Katharine Lee Bates and women’s editions of Shakespeare for students Molly G. Yarn
Notes
References
PART III Marking books: Owners, readers, collectors, annotators
10 Patterns in women’s book ownership, 1500–1700 Georgianna Ziegler
What were women reading?
Doodlers, inscribers, collectors
Women’s signatures and what they tell us
Books as gifts
Women as annotators
Bringing owners alive
Notes
References
11 Reader, maker, mentor: The Countess of Huntingdon and her networks Elizabeth Zeman Kolkovich
Hastings as an author and ‘maker’ of books
Hastings as a discerning, erudite reader
Hastings as a mentor: Influential, intimidating, playful
Notes
References
12 Frances Wolfreston’s annotations as labours of love Lori Humphrey Newcomb
Recovering Wolfreston’s annotations
Selective collecting, shared reading
Wolfreston’s labours of annotation
Marking as literary appreciation
Notes
References
13 Afterword: Widows, orphans and other errors Helen Smith
Notes
References
INDEX

Citation preview

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

i

RELATED TITLES Performing Shakespeare’s Women: Playing Dead Paige Martin Reynolds 978-1-3500-0259-3 Playing Indoors: Staging Early Modern Drama in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse Will Tosh 978-1-3500-1388-9 Rethinking Theatrical Documents in Shakespeare’s England Edited by Tiffany Stern 978-1-3500-5134-8 Shakespeare’s Books: A Dictionary of Shakespeare Sources Stuart Gillespie 978-1-4725-7292-9 Shakespeare on the Record: Researching an Early Modern Life Edited by Hannah Leah Crummé 978-1-3500-0351-4

ii

Women’s Labour and the History of the Book in Early Modern England Edited by Valerie Wayne

iii

THE ARDEN SHAKESPEARE Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, THE ARDEN SHAKESPEARE and the Arden Shakespeare logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2020 Paperback edition published 2022 Copyright © Valerie Wayne and contributors, 2020, 2022 Valerie Wayne and contributors have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the authors of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on pp. xiii–xiv constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design: Charlotte Daniels Cover image: Abraham Casteleyn and his wife, Margaretha van Bancken by Jan de Bray (oil on canvas, 1663) All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Control Number: 2020932972 ISBN:

HB: PB: ePDF: eBook:

978-1-3501-1001-4 978-1-3502-4663-8 978-1-3501-1003-8 978-1-3501-1002-1

Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

iv

CONTENTS

List of figures vii Notes on contributors ix Acknowledgements xiii Note on texts xv List of abbreviations xvi

1 Introduction: Locating women’s labour Valerie Wayne

1

Part I Making books: Paper, publishers, printers 2 English rag-women and early modern paper production 29 Heidi Craig 3 Widow publishers in London, 1540–1640 Alan B. Farmer

47

4 Female stationers and their second-plus husbands 75 Sarah Neville 5 Left to their own devices: Sixteenth-century widows and their printers’ devices 95 Erika Mary Boeckeler 6 ‘Famed as far as one finds books’: Women in the Dutch and English book trades 115 Martine van Elk

v

vi

CONTENTS

Part II Making texts: Authors and editors 7 Isabella Whitney amongst the stalls of Richard Jones 145 Kirk Melnikoff 8 ‘All by her directing’: The Countess of Pembroke and her Arcadia 163 Sarah Wall-Randell 9 Katharine Lee Bates and women’s editions of Shakespeare for students 187 Molly G. Yarn

Part III Marking books: Owners, readers, collectors, annotators 10 Patterns in women’s book ownership, 1500–1700 207 Georgianna Ziegler 11 Reader, maker, mentor: The Countess of Huntingdon and her networks 225 Elizabeth Zeman Kolkovich 12 Frances Wolfreston’s annotations as labours of love 243 Lori Humphrey Newcomb 13 Afterword: Widows, orphans and other errors Helen Smith Index 279

267

LIST OF FIGURES

1.1

2.1

3.1 5.1

5.2

5.3

5.4

6.1

6.2 8.1 9.1

Title-page imprint for The Copie of a Letter sent out of England to Don Bernardin Mendoza [by William Cecil, Lord Burghley] (1588). Copperplate engraving of workers in a French paper-mill, from Joseph Jérôme Lefrançois de Lalande’s Art de faire le papier (1761). Title-page imprint for Jean Calvin, The Institution of Christian Religion (1634). Printer Joan Merrye Jugge’s title-page compartment for Thomas Raynalde’s The Birth of mankynde, otherwyse named the womans booke (1585?). The printer’s device on the last page of The Birth of mankynde (1585?), which correlates its images with the title-page compartment. Textual and visual references to women appear in the title, imprint and compartment on printer Alice Bailey Charlewood Roberts’s title-page of Edward Dering’s A Sermon Preached Before the Queenes Maiestie (1593). Thrice-widowed printer Joan Orwin cut out her last husband’s initials – ‘T.O.’ – from beneath this device’s clasped hands. Title-page of Ioannis Calvini Noviodunensis Opera omnia [John Calvin from Noyon’s Complete Works] (Amsterdam, 1671), vol. 1. Title-page of Katharina Lescailje, Ariadne, Treurspel [Ariadne, Tragedy] (Amsterdam, 1693). Frontispiece to Sir Philip Sidney, The Countesse of Pembroke’s Arcadia (1593). The entries for 6 June from Katharine Lee Bates’s five-year journal.

9

30 48

102

103

105

107

128 129 165 192 vii

viii

9.2

10.1 10.2 12.1

12.2

12.3

LIST OF FIGURES

First page of the ‘Textual Notes’ section from Bates’s edition of The Merchant of Venice (1894: 147). John Whitehouse, The doctrine of perfection vindicated (1663), front endleaf 1v/2r, detail. John Barclay, Barclay His Argenis (1625), leaf A2r, detail. The title-page of the 1593 edition of Venus and Adonis, with the characteristic signature of Frances Wolfreston. Annotations in the front pastedown of Travels of Persiles and Sigismunda (1619), an English translation of Cervantes’ romance. Verso of the last leaf of William Winstanley’s Poor Robin almanac for 1670, from a series of almanacs used by Frances Wolfreston for record-keeping.

195 215 217

244

250

253

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Erika Mary Boeckeler is Associate Professor of English at Northeastern University. She is the author of Playful Letters: A Study in Early Modern Alphabetics (2017). She has also published on dramatic typography, early modern engraving, text in Renaissance portraiture, staging Shakespeare’s alphabet and in related fields. Her present book projects consider the mutual influence of literary and material forms upon each other and upon reading human bodies, and pictorial typography in early printed books. She is editing ‘A Lover’s Complaint’ for the Internet Shakespeare Editions. Heidi Craig is Assistant Professor of English at Texas A&M University and Editor of the World Shakespeare Bibliography. Her first book project, ‘A Play without a Stage: English Renaissance Drama, 1642–1660’, considers the production and reception of early modern drama during the theatrical prohibition. Her second book project examines the role of rags and rag-pickers in early modern textual culture. Articles from these projects are published or forthcoming in English Literary Renaissance, Huntington Library Quarterly and Literature Compass. Martine van Elk is a Professor of English at California State University, Long Beach. She has published extensively on drama, Shakespeare, vagrancy and women writers. Her essays have appeared in edited collections and journals, including Studies in English Literature, Shakespeare Quarterly and Early Modern Women. She has co-edited the collection Tudor Drama Before Shakespeare (2004). Her book is called Early Modern Women’s Writing: Domesticity, Privacy, and the Public Sphere in England and the Dutch Republic (2017). She is currently working on a study of women on and behind the stage in England, the Dutch Republic and France. ix

x

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Alan B. Farmer is an Associate Professor of English at Ohio State University. He is the co-editor, with Adam Zucker, of Localizing Caroline Drama: Politics and Economics of the Early Modern English Stage, 1625–1642 (2006), and the co-creator, with Zachary Lesser, of DEEP: Database of Early English Playbooks. He has published extensively on the publication of early modern plays, and his current book project is a study of Shakespeare, popularity and printed drama in the early modern English book trade. Elizabeth Zeman Kolkovich is an Associate Professor of English at Ohio State University. She is the author of The Elizabethan Country House Entertainment: Print, Performance, and Gender (2016) and a contributing editor to The Pulter Project, a digital edition of Hester Pulter’s poetry. Her essays on women’s pageantry, women writers and Renaissance drama have appeared in such journals as Shakespeare Quarterly, Shakespeare and English Literary Renaissance. She is currently writing a book on masques in Shakespeare and researching the reading and patronage of the Stanley women. Kirk Melnikoff is a Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and President of the Marlowe Society of America. He is the author of Elizabethan Book Trade Publishing and the Makings of Literary Culture (2018) and has edited four essay collections: Writing Robert Greene (2008 with E. Gieskes), Robert Greene (2011), Edward II: A Critical Reader (2017) and Christopher Marlowe, Theatrical Commerce, and the Book Trade (2018, with R. Knutson). His essays have appeared in a number of journals and collections, and he is currently editing James IV, Selimus and Edward II. Sarah Neville is an Assistant Professor of English at Ohio State University with a courtesy appointment in Theatre. She is an Assistant Editor of the New Oxford Shakespeare (2016), for which she edited five plays in both old and modern-spelling editions, as well as an Associate Coordinating Editor of the Digital Renaissance Editions. Her essays on Renaissance drama, textual scholarship and digital editing have appeared in Shakespeare, Shakespearean International Yearbook, Variants, Textual Cultures and Notes and Queries. She is finishing a monograph on herbals that demonstrates

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

xi

the ways printers and booksellers enabled the construction of scientific and medical authority in early modern England. Lori Humphrey Newcomb is Associate Professor of English at the University of Illinois. She has published Reading Popular Romance in Early Modern England (2002) and contributed to Ballads and Performance: The Multimodal Stage in Early Modern England (ed. Patricia Fumerton) (2018), the Cambridge Guide to the Worlds of Shakespeare (gen. ed. Bruce R. Smith) (2017), the Oxford History of Popular Print Culture, vol. 1 (ed. Joad Raymond) (2011), the Cambridge Companion to Early Modern Women’s Writing (ed. Laura Knoppers) (2009) and Staging Early Modern Romance (ed. Mary Ellen Lamb and Valerie Wayne) (2009). Helen Smith is Professor of Renaissance Literature and Head of the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York. She is author of the double prize-winning monograph, ‘Grossly Material Things’: Women and Book Production in Early Modern England (2012), and co-editor of Renaissance Paratexts (2011, with Louise Wilson), The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in Early Modern England (2015, with Kevin Killeen and Rachel Willie) and Conversions: Gender and Religious Change in Early Modern Europe (2017, with Simon Ditchfield). She is co-founder of Thin Ice Press, the University of York’s onsite letterpress printing studio. Sarah Wall-Randell is Associate Professor of English at Wellesley College. She is the author of The Immaterial Book: Reading and Romance in Early Modern England (2013), which examined scenes of reading in Spenser, Shakespeare and Wroth. Her essays on early modern literature and book studies have appeared in Renaissance Quarterly, SEL and Marlowe Studies, and in edited collections including Christopher Marlowe, Theatrical Commerce, and the Book Trade (2018), Gathering Force: Early Modern British Literature in Transition, 1557–1623 (2019) and Rethinking Theatrical Documents in Shakespeare’s England (The Arden Shakespeare, 2019). Valerie Wayne is Professor Emerita of English at the University of Hawai‘i at Ma¯noa. She has edited Cymbeline for The Arden Shakespeare Third Series (2017), A Trick to Catch the Old One in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works (2007), for which she

xii

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

also served as Associate General Editor, and Edmund Tilney’s The Flower of Friendship (1992). She is co-editor of the collection Staging Early Modern Romance (2009, with Mary Ellen Lamb) and editor of The Matter of Difference: Materialist Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare (1991). In 2000 she was President of the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women. Molly G. Yarn is an independent scholar who received her doctorate from the University of Cambridge in 2019. She serves as an Associate Editor for the forthcoming revised edition of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Complete Works. Her work recently appeared in Notes & Queries, and she is currently preparing a monograph on women editors of Shakespeare in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She began her professional life in theatre and remains actively involved in various theatrical pursuits, including dramaturgical work for groups such as Theatre for a New Audience and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. Georgianna Ziegler is the Thalheimer Associate Librarian and Head of Reference Emerita at the Folger Shakespeare Library, where she curated a number of exhibitions, including Elizabeth I and Shakespeare’s Sisters: Voices of English and European Women Writers, 1500–1700. Her publications include the catalogue for Elizabeth I and articles on ‘Shakespeare and the Book’ and on early modern women, including Elizabeth of Bohemia, Esther Inglis and Lady Anne Clifford. Her continuing scholarship includes article and book projects on Esther Inglis, a revised online bibliography of the Inglis manuscripts, and updating women owners of STC and Wing books at the Folger.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The large room was packed when the seminar on ‘Women, Gender, and Book History’ met at LA’s Bonaventure Hotel as part of the Shakespeare Association of America conference on 30 March 2018. Most contributors to this volume were around the table, and there were so many auditors there was no place for everyone to sit. It seemed that the time for including more women into early modern book history had arrived, and perhaps was overdue. Even before we met, the papers written for the seminar were so excellent that a collection appeared likely to evolve from them. I was then and have remained throughout this book’s production exceedingly grateful to each of the contributors for their innovative, imaginative and exciting work. It has been an honour to shepherd their essays into this volume. Those who participated in the seminar but could not for various reasons be included here were Claire M. L. Bourne, Cait Coker, Adam G. Hooks, Catherine Loomis, Tara L. Lyons, Sarah Werner and Deanne Williams, each of whom contributed to our understanding of how women can be seen as more fully a part of book history, and why that matters. Those who assessed this book’s original proposal and the anonymous reviewer of the full manuscript helped me see it through new eyes. I hope their influence is evident in the pages that follow. Mark Dudgeon at The Arden Shakespeare has been encouraging from the very beginning and offered wise guidance throughout. I am grateful to Margaret Bartley for her support along the way, and to Lara Bateman for managing the practical side of things. Ian Buck on Bloomsbury’s production side, Merv Honeywood, production manager for RefineCatch Ltd., and Juliet Gardner, an accomplished copy-editor, have been helpful and flexible as the book moved through its various stages. Frederika Bain’s extensive work on the index has been crucial and visionary. David Forest Hitchcock and April Ching ably assisted us. xiii

xiv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Collaboration is a key word in this collection’s introduction, as it has been throughout its development. I have learned from each essay, and the contributors have encouraged each other as we worked together to locate the occluded histories of women. For good counsel on the book and its introduction, I am grateful to Alan B. Farmer, Martine van Elk, Sarah Neville, Lori Humphrey Newcomb and Helen Smith. For my work on Jacqueline Vautrollier Field, I am indebted to Meaghan J. Brown, Peter W. M. Blayney, Adam G. Hooks, and to Micol Barengo, Librarian at the Huguenot Library, London. My colleagues in the Early Modern Forum at the University of Hawai‘i at Ma¯noa provided helpful responses to the introduction, especially Derrick Higginbotham and Frederika Bain. It has been easier to see collaboration between married couples in book history because I experience that each day with Richard Tillotson, with whom I share a love of books and by whom I’m reminded of the wider worlds in which they circulate. He and the rest of my blest, reading family rock my worlds in the best of senses.

NOTE ON TEXTS

Unless otherwise noted, all references to Shakespeare’s works are to editions in the Arden Shakespeare Third Series.

xv

ABBREVIATIONS

EEBO Early English Books Online, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/ eebogroup. ESTC

English Short-Title Catalogue, estc.ucr.edu/estcpublic. html.

ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, www. oxforddnb.com. OED

Oxford English Dictionary, www.oed.com.

STC

A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, and Ireland and of English Books Printed Abroad, 1475–1640, A. W. Pollard and G. R. Redgrave (eds), rev. W. A. Jackson, F. S. Ferguson, and Katharine F. Pantzer (eds), 3 vols. 2nd ed. London: Bibliographical Society, 1976–91.

USTC

Universal Short-Title Catalogue, www.ustc.ac.uk.

xvi

1 Introduction: Locating women’s labour Valerie Wayne

On the cover of this book is Jan de Bray’s 1663 painting of the Dutch printer Abraham Casteleyn, the official printer for the city of Haarlem, together with his wife, Margaretha van Bancken. When Abraham died in 1681, Margaretha continued to print under her own name and became Haarlem’s official printer, managing the business and its bookshop until her death in 1693. Art historians tell us that their clasped hands were meant to symbolize marital fidelity, yet centuries later one might also read this portrait as figuring the couple’s collaborative engagement in their printing business, with Margaretha casting her eyes on the books stacked just beyond Abraham’s right hand. A fuller account of this painting appears in Martine van Elk’s essay in this volume, which compares the work of women stationers in Amsterdam to that of those in London. This collection reveals women’s labours in making early modern books by publishing and printing them, making texts by writing and editing them, and marking books by annotating, inscribing and observing their contents, as in the injunction to ‘ernestly and diligently marke wel that [one] redeth’.1 The women who engaged in that work range from those who raked rags from rubbish piles and begged door-to-door to receive a pittance for them to those who ran printing houses and financed the production of books, sold them, wrote them, edited, owned, read and shared them. Those women 1

2

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

include Joan Sturgis Kingston Robinson Orwin, who is credited with printing more than sixty editions and whose press averaged over 340 edition-sheets a year when she was operating it independently. They include Isabella Whitney, who consulted books sold in the shop of her publisher, Richard Jones, in order to find models for her poetry, and Frances Wolfreston, who gathered, maintained and annotated a collection of more than 200 books, including Shakespeare’s two narrative poems, that she willed to her descendants on the condition they be kept together. There are also lesser-known women like Anne Griffin, an entrepreneurial printer who published sixty-eight editions and participated in a network of women publishers in the 1630s; and Elizabeth Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon, who bequeathed five manuscript miscellanies to her family. Through their work as rag-women, publishers, printers, authors, editors, owners, readers and collectors, these and other women in this volume accomplished impressive work in book history and were active participants in the cultural life of early modern England. An emphasis on women’s labour situates this collection in a field that is not ordinarily associated with book history but aligns well with scholarship by feminist historians and critics of the early modern period. Focusing on women’s work enables the recognition of the various forms of labour – textual and social as well as material and commercial – in which women of different social classes participated. Those considered here include the very poor, the middling sort2 who were active in the book trade, and the elite women authors and readers who participated in literary communities. In order to recover their work, this volume’s contributors combine methods of analytical bibliography with literary studies, historical research, art history and recent research in book history. They look at rare books and other archival materials in major research libraries, and consult the musty bibliographies compiled in the early twentieth century along with internet archives, electronic databases and the foundational three volumes of the revised STC. Finding women in these old and new resources can be difficult given the frequency with which women’s lives are overwritten by their male relatives. Yet these scholars do find them, and they speculate responsibly about the work that women accomplished based on the evidence they unearth, locating their contributions to print culture in a considerable range of texts and activities.

INTRODUCTION

3

Attention to early modern women’s labour more generally began in 1919 with Alice Clark’s Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century, which explores the crafts, trades and professions in which women worked, their collaborations with men, and the guild system of apprenticeships and licensing. Clark’s findings have been revised in the ensuing century, but her book remains formative for acknowledging women as significant economic and cultural agents. In 1998, the historians Sara Mendelson and Patricia Crawford, writing in Women in Early Modern England, 1550–1720, give more extended consideration to all the stages of women’s lives, their social roles and occupational identities. Michelle M. Dowd’s 2009 monograph, Women’s Work in Early Modern English Literature and Culture, combines historical awareness with attention to narrative and dramatic texts to consider servants, midwives, wet nurses and female educators. Two years later in Labours Lost: Women’s Work and the Early Modern Stage, Natasha Korda acknowledges ‘the elision, devaluation, stigmatization, moral condemnation, trivialization, and sexualization of women’s work’ while offering compelling counter-narratives of women who created costumes and stage props, collected entrance fees, sold merchandise at performances, and provided credit and capital for theatrical shows (2011: 213). This collection builds on these and other works to identify other aspects of women’s labour, including their participation in the book trades. Writing and reading are crucial to women’s labours in book history, and both have been underestimated. When Laurie Ellinghausen considers those she refers to as ‘laboring authors’, she remarks that ‘labor is that specter of material contingency that troubles ambitions toward “eternity” ’ for aspiring poets (2008: 7). Laureate authorship was not framed as a form of work, but in Labor and Writing in Early Modern England, 1567–1667, Ellinghausen connects early moderns’ use of the metaphor of writing as labour to changing conceptions of authors resulting from print capitalism. Writers like Isabella Whitney and Ben Jonson embraced a ‘self-conscious marginality’ that situated their agency in a material context: ‘the sense of owning one’s work is bound up in the way the work is bought and sold.’ Print even comes to constitute authors’ ‘senses of themselves as authors’, and Ellinghausen says Whitney ‘frames her writing as a wage labor’ (ibid., 6–8, 13). Women writers did not have a tradition of laureate authorship of

4

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

their own to draw upon, and their labours in reading and writing, collection and annotation were often situated within their own families and communities. The essays here on the Countess of Pembroke, the Countess of Huntingdon, Frances Wolfreston and Isabella Whitney, as well as the overview of women book owners, show how engaged they were in acts of selecting, documenting, composing, editing, annotating, making and sharing books and mentoring others. Their labours had an impact on the material history of the book and on the developing literary canon. The recovery of women writers has been a major development in early modern English literature over the last forty years, one that has changed curricula and redefined the canon. Reading was a practice akin to but frequently learned apart from writing; it was often communal, and its didactic function was repeatedly stressed in early modern conduct literature. Writing was encouraged insofar as women were advised to copy out passages, commit them to memory, and sometimes annotate them. Important scholarship over the last decades has clarified the social and religious contexts in which women read and wrote. Wendy Wall’s The Imprint of Gender: Authorship and Publication in the English Renaissance (1993) gives thoughtful consideration to the gendered anxieties of publication and the masculinization of authorship. Margaret W. Ferguson’s Dido’s Daughters: Literacy, Gender, and Empire in Early Modern England and France (2003) links various modes of literacy to gender and the emergence of imperial nations. Heidi Brayman Hackel’s Reading Material in Early Modern England: Print, Gender, and Literacy (2005) provides a material history of reading that has revised our sense of women’s engagement with their books. The collection Women’s Bookscapes in Early Modern Britain: Reading, Ownership, Circulation (2018), edited by Leah Knight, Micheline White and Elizabeth Sauer, explores case studies of women and their books, their reading communities and contemporary archives that include women’s collections.3 Helen Smith’s ground-breaking 2012 book, ‘Grossly Material Things’: Women and Book Production in Early Modern England, consolidates the research of her predecessors while recovering many more women stationers and relating women authors and readers to the business of books. Her impressive archival work is foundational to essays in this collection, and it is appropriate that she has authored its Afterword. Peter W. M. Blayney’s major two-volume

INTRODUCTION

5

work of 2013, The Stationers’ Company and the Printers of London, 1501–1557, details the operations, persons and places of an institution central to the book trade, and he extends what is known about six early women printers. All of this research, combined with essays and books by Maureen Bell, Marcus Nevitt, Paula McDowell, Lisa Maruca and many others, provides an increasingly rich picture of early modern women’s participation in book culture. The essays here draw on that work to make the labour of women in publishing, writing and reading more visible than it has been to date. They also undo some long-standing assumptions: that a woman’s printing house could never be as productive as a man’s; that the books women owned and shared had little influence on what others read and valued; and that only a handful of women edited Shakespeare’s plays before 1950 – when it turns out that by that date, at least sixty-five women had been editing his works for women, children and working-class readers.

The labours of Jacqueline du Thuit Vautrollier Field Locating women’s labours in the book trades can be difficult, for even if women actively collaborated with their spouses, they rarely became visible in the archival records until after their husbands had died, and they frequently disappeared again when they remarried. The following account of Jacqueline Vautrollier Field conveys some of the problems and advantages of identifying the work of a bookwoman. She is one of fifty-one widow publishers working in London between 1540 and 1640 identified in the appendix to Alan B. Farmer’s essay in this volume, which distinguishes between conservative and entrepreneurial publishers and, for the first time, identifies a network of widow stationers who collaborated with one another in the 1630s. In mid-sixteenth-century France, the persecution of Protestants was increasing: a printer was burned alive in 1546 and a bookseller suffered the same fate in Paris in 1560. Stationers were fleeing the country to avoid having their goods confiscated (Clair 1970: 116–17). Thomas Vautrollier was a Huguenot refugee who left Troyes in Champagne for London, where his letters of denization

6

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

were granted on 9 March 1562.4 His wife Jacqueline was also French, and her birth name was du Thuit.5 She may well have travelled with him but her presence is not recorded, and we do not know when they married. Their first child was born in England by 1568 (Kirk and Kirk 1900: 1.392), and Thomas’s will names four surviving children, all sons (Plomer 1903: 27–8). Thomas was admitted as a ‘brother’ to the Stationers’ Company in 1564 (Arber 1875–94: 1.279), which gave him limited rights as a foreigner. He worked as a bookbinder and bookseller until he set up as a printer. His first English publication, a writing book by John de Beauchesne that reproduces diverse sorts of hands in ample script accompanied by large capitals and florid ornamentation, was licensed in 1570 (STC 6445.5). In 1573 he was given a ten-year patent to print two Latin texts, and the next year he received another ten-year patent to print seven more titles, including Latin school books by Cicero and Ovid (Arber 1875–94: 2.15, 746, 886; STC 3.200–1). Some of his books clearly furthered the Protestant cause, especially editions of Calvin’s Institution of Christian Religion in Latin and English (STC 4414, 4417–91) and English editions of Martin Luther’s commentary on Galatians (STC 16965– 9). Thomas Vautrollier printed ‘some 150 books’ in all (Pettegree 2004: 56.215), and McKerrow says he ‘ranks above most of his contemporaries, both for the beauty of his types and the excellence of his press work’ (1910: 273). In 1581, the Stationers’ Company granted Jacqueline Vautrollier permission to complete an edition of Cicero’s Epistles when Thomas was in Edinburgh (STC 5298.5; Greg and Boswell 1930: 11). She also maintained the business after he returned to Scotland in 1584 and during part of 1585.6 He died in July 1587, and on 4 March 1588 his wife was prohibited by the Stationers’ Court from printing any more books because her husband was ‘noe prynter’ at the time of his death (Greg and Boswell 1930: 26). He had never been a freeman in the Company, and both of his patents had by then expired.7 New decrees of the Star Chamber of 1 June 1586 had recently limited the number of printers and presses within the city of London. However, some time before 13 May 1588, Jacqueline Vautrollier was allowed to finish a leaf of the 16° Greek New Testament (STC 2793), which was difficult work,8 along with Luther’s commentary on Galatians, a text of more than 600 pages (STC 16968–9), provided that she ‘medle not with the printinge of

INTRODUCTION

7

any thinge els vntill shee procure her self to be chosen and alowed to prynt accordinge to the decrees of the starchamber’ (Greg and Boswell 1930: 26; Smith 2012: 121–3). But meddle she did, for in the summer and autumn of 1588, Jacqueline Vautrollier printed three English editions (STC 15412– 15413.5) and two French editions (STC 15414.2–4.3 and 15414.4) of a pamphlet by William Cecil, Lord Burghley, which was designed to make English Catholics more loyal to England and provide proof that the Spanish Armada had failed in its attempt to invade the country. Composed in its first two parts as a letter and postscript supposedly from an English priest named Richard Leigh, it was called The Copie of a Letter sent out of England to Don Bernardin Mendoza (CoL). She also printed three editions of another news pamphlet entitled Certaine Advertisements Ovt of Ireland, Concerning the Losses and Distresses Happened to the Spanish Nauie (CA). Some copies of Certaine Advertisements were issued as the final part of CoL, but as Meaghan J. Brown has shown, other copies were issued separately as independent publications.9 All eight of these editions had been provoked by William Allen’s earlier Catholic pamphlet describing the impressive scope of the Spanish forces that were about to invade England, together with later fake news that claimed victory for the Spanish side. Cecil was angered even more by another pro-Catholic pamphlet that he described as ‘a rorying hellish Bull’, which had been printed in 12,000 copies in Antwerp, where it could easily be circulated throughout England (Brown 2014: 94–6). The pseudonymous CoL therefore attempts ‘to spread news of the Spanish defeat, to delegitimize Catholic news sources, and to dissuade Catholic support for another attempted invasion’ (Brown 2015: 108). Although Jacqueline Vautrollier had been prohibited from printing earlier in 1588, her work on these editions appears to have been authorized by Cecil himself, who was by then Queen Elizabeth’s Lord High Treasurer.10 Four years earlier in 1584, the Vautrollier house had printed Latin and French editions of another pamphlet by Cecil, The Execution of Justice in England (STC 4904, 4906), which defended the execution of Edmund Campion and other Catholics (Brown 2015: 117–18). Jacqueline is likely to have overseen the printing of those works, since Thomas was in Edinburgh for most of 1584. In 1588, Cecil turned again to Vautrollier’s Protestant printing house to produce English

8

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

propaganda in French and English. One Catholic source said of CoL that Cecil ‘sent a great number of copies to France’ (Brown 2014: 97), so Vautrollier’s printing house may have had considerable work on its hands from August to October of 1588. That same year she not only completed printing but also published the commentary to Galatians (STC 16968) and probably co-published its other issue with William Norton (STC 16969). Jacqueline’s second husband was Richard Field, Shakespeare’s contemporary from Stratford and the printer of his first published works. Field worked with the Vautrolliers for six of his seven-year apprenticeship and was made free of the Stationers’ Company in February 1587. He and Jacqueline collaborated as publisher and printer on the 1588 pamphlets: the title-page imprint on the first edition of CoL reads, ‘Imprinted at London by I. Vautrollier for Richard Field. 1588’ (see Figure 1.1). This is probably the very first time either of their names appeared in an imprint, although hers is marked only with the initial ‘I’, which was interchangeable with ‘J’.11 They were married several months later on 12 January 1589 when he was about twenty-seven, and they baptized their son the next year in December (Kathman 2004: 19. 485–6). This marriage has fuelled the stereotype of the printer’s widow as a highly desirable catch for a young stationer and was adduced in Edward Arber’s narrative of how a ‘raw country lad’ might reach ‘the highest object of [his] ambition’ to become a Master Printer.12 However, Alan B. Farmer has found only four marriages between a stationer’s widow and her apprentice in the English book trade between 1540 and 1640, making their marriage exceptional, not conventional. Farmer says the ‘infrequency with which men acquired printing houses and bookshops by marrying widows argues against the belief that these marriages were motivated by the “wealth and riches” of the widows. Instead, these marriages seem to testify to the desire of a few widows to continue in the book trade’ (p. 53). Helen Smith also notes that ‘marriages between print workers and printers’ widows may have been mutually advantageous, allowing a woman to continue working’ (2012: 107). Given her considerable expertise, Jacqueline Vautrollier probably wanted to continue to exercise her trade at her Blackfriars printing house after she was widowed, and the Court’s earlier restrictions on her printing may well have made remarriage her best option. Her alternative was to proceed according to the judgement issued to

INTRODUCTION

9

FIGURE 1.1 Title-page imprint for The Copie of a Letter sent out of England to Don Bernardin Mendoza [by William Cecil, Lord Burghley] (1588). This is probably the first time that the names of either Jacqueline Vautrollier or Richard Field appeared in an imprint. Used by permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library, call number STC 15412, copy 1.

another woman in the case of Jane Middleton on 4 March 1588: the Star Chamber decree required that the master, both wardens and at least four assistants of the Stationers’ Company present Middleton’s name before six or more members of the High Commission, including either the Bishop of London or the Archbishop of Canterbury (Greg and Boswell 1930: 26; Smith 2012: 121).13 If Jacqueline Vautrollier wanted to carry on with the work at which she was already skilled, marriage to Richard Field was a surer way to do so. However, when we assign motives to marital alliances, it is worth acknowledging that people are often blind to what prompts their own choices. While their marriage enabled Jacqueline to keep working and permitted Richard to acquire the Vautrollier business, that does not preclude their having affection for one another before and during their union. Their differences in age, origin and experience may even have enhanced their desire. Richard Field went on to a distinguished career as a very successful printer. He and Jacqueline resided at what had been the Vautrolliers’ printing house, at ‘the Blackfriars by Ludgate’, until at least 1602. Like many of those in the book trade, the couple’s dwelling was probably also their workplace.14 After printing and publishing George Puttenham’s Arte of English Poesie in 1589 (with a dedication to Lord Burghley signed ‘R.F.’, STC 20519– 20519.5), Sir John Harington’s translation of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso in 1591 (STC 746), and a range of works on secular and religious topics in English and French, in 1593 Field registered and

10

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

printed the first edition of Shakespeare’s first printed work, Venus and Adonis (STC 22354). Adam Hooks has argued that this ‘wildly popular poem’ established Shakespeare’s reputation as a poet even before he was fully recognized as a playwright.15 The only copy of its first edition that is still extant was owned at one time by Frances Wolfreston, who inscribed its title page with her own name (see Figure  12.1, p.  244). Wolfreston’s book collection and her annotations are discussed in Lori Humphrey Newcomb’s essay in this volume. Given Jacqueline Vautrollier’s accomplishments in the book trade before her second marriage, it is likely that she continued in the business, just as other women stationers did.16 The archival records are silent about her connection with Venus and Adonis, which was printed in three more editions in 1594–6, and the first edition of The Rape of Lucrece in 1594 – all of which bore Field’s imprint as printer. Yet we know she completed the printing of Vautrollier’s books when he was unavailable, and she collaborated with Field on the 1588 pamphlets, so Jacqueline and Richard probably continued to work together. In 1593 and 1594, she had substantially more experience in the book trade than he did, and he stood to benefit considerably from her expertise. It is likely that Jacqueline Vautrollier Field had a hand in many of the books that came out of their Blackfriars printing house, including Shakespeare’s narrative poems as well as other editions that appeared under the sole name of Field. She lived on at least through the first decade of the seventeenth century.17 This account of the work of Jacqueline Vautrollier Field engages in what Rebecca Olson has called ‘responsible speculation’, which is ‘grounded in the archives’ yet ‘offers a more activist approach to book history because it requires that we ask What if? early and often to expose the biases inherent in more dominant methodologies’ (2019: 298–9). Research on women in book history has moved well beyond assumptions of their invisibility to ‘imagine equally plausible alternatives’ for them (ibid., 311). Near the end of the twentieth century, Maureen Bell observed that the ‘episodic and irregular pattern of the records of women’s involvement in the [book] trade . . . must not prevent us looking beyond it in order to discern the routine (and therefore “hidden”) work of women day to day’ (1996: 16). More recently, Helen Smith suggested it ‘is implausible that women played no part in the trade while their husbands were alive,

INTRODUCTION

11

but were able to take over and run the business’, sometimes for many years, after they were widowed. ‘We would do better to assume that a business, as well as marital, partnership suffered the loss of one of its key players than that women suddenly found themselves members of an unfamiliar trade’ (2012: 109). Neither Bell nor Smith allows the prevalence of the patronymic in imprints and archives to obscure women’s work, and the essays in this collection are indebted to their approaches and findings. By carefully mining the archives, integrating information from other sources and thinking with vision about plausible alternatives, the essays in this collection speculate about women’s labours in book history without being entirely confined to certainties.18 My claims for Jacqueline’s hand in the books from the printing house she shared with Vautrollier and with Field participate in that project.

Making books Other ways of identifying and assessing women’s work in the book trade appear in the first section of this collection. Sarah Neville’s essay resists accepting an absence of evidence as evidence of women’s absence by proposing a quantitative methodology to uncover some of women’s uncredited bibliographic history. She traces the business patterns of printing and publishing houses associated with the same female agent and the kinds and quantities of works they published. Alice Bailey Charlewood Roberts and Joan Sturgis Kingston Robinson Orwin both transferred their considerable business acumen to their ‘second-plus’ husbands and successfully maintained their shops’ previous clientele. Assessing the output of printing houses not by titles or editions but by editionsheets, the number of printed sheets that went into a single copy of a book, provides a scalable metric for computing the output of a printing press. This means of quantifying the presswork helps Neville determine that the ‘Widow Orwin’ ran a printing house which rivalled any of her former husbands’ in its productivity. The methods that Neville develops can usefully be applied to other women’s work as well. Erika Boeckeler asserts the agency of women stationers by considering the iconographic choices that three women printers

12

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

made in their use of printers’ devices and title-page compartments, to register both their own work and their collaboration with their spouses. When printing books independently, Joan Jugge used a compartment with figures and devices that were especially appropriate for The birth of Mankynde, otherwyse named the womans booke (STC 21159). Alice Bailey Charlewood Roberts chose a compartment that figured Lucretia leaning out of the border of the medallion’s frame when she printed a sermon that Edward Dering preached before Queen Elizabeth (STC 6707). The Widow Orwin inherited several devices from her husband Thomas, including a classic symbol of two hands emerging from clouds to grasp a caduceus and cornucopia, which she selected when printing on her own. This choice emphasized the fruitful collaboration she had achieved with Thomas, but after his death and the end of her mourning period, she cut away the ‘TO’ of his initials and used the altered device to print seventeen works on her own. When Martine van Elk compares seventeenth-century women stationers in England to those in the Dutch Republic, she finds that Dutch women, unlike the remarkable publisher, printer and playwright Katharina Lescailje, usually referred to themselves as widows in their imprints to emphasize the continuity of their businesses, whereas English women did so infrequently but sometimes used their names or initials. Van Elk finds there were more women printers and sectarian book traders among the English, but the Dutch were working in multiple languages and more oriented toward an international audience. Van Elk’s essay includes an appendix of fifty-eight women stationers who worked in seventeenth-century Amsterdam. Together with Farmer’s appendix on widow publishers in London from 1540 to 1640, this collection provides students and scholars with information that can be used to further extend our knowledge of women in book history.19

Making texts and marking books The essays in the second and third sections of this book concern women as authors, editors, owners, readers, collectors and annotators. It was largely in their own homes that women read books privately and with other members of their household, and where they had space in which to write. Helen Smith describes

INTRODUCTION

13

writing as ‘an embodied act, structured by the physical environment of writing’; it ‘undermines any easy distinction between literary content and material form, the working of the intellect and the situation of inscription’ (2012: 20). Connections between the content, form and locations of women’s labour are repeatedly affirmed in this collection. To highlight the different spaces in which they worked and their social diversity, this account of the remaining essays moves from women of high status to those of the middling sort and then on to the poor. An attention to class as well as gender enables a fuller vision of women’s industry in book-making along with their active book-sharing and mentoring. The collaboration between Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, and her brother, Philip Sidney, occurred largely at her home at Wilton House. Sarah Wall-Randell highlights the scene of writing of the Arcadia, pointing out that Pembroke was present when her brother wrote the romance and that she received its pages as they were finished. When it came time to publish the work in print, Pembroke, having been present and involved in its composition, regarded it as hers to reshape and frame. At what point does the physical possession of a text become the creative ownership of it? Re-examining in detail the paratextual material in both earliest editions, Wall-Randell speculates about the authorship of the 1593 preface to the reader and Pembroke’s role in the entire book: not only as its muse, dedicatee and patron, first reader, promoter and editor, but as its co-author. Elizabeth Stanley Hastings, the Countess of Huntingdon (1588– 1633), was the addressee of poems by John Donne and John Fletcher. She came from a highly literate family and had estates at Donington House and in Ashby-de-la-Zouch. Elizabeth Zeman Kolkovich shows how her example controverts the notion that religious women were largely passive and submissive in their reading and writing. Hastings was a bookish woman who loved intellectual discussion and actively shaped local literary culture in her role as mentor. Her reading was eclectic, pragmatic and discerning, and it enabled her to engage in dialogue with some of the best-known religious writers of her time. Her family archive includes her five devotional manuscripts, forty-six letters, and her husband’s household inventory, as well as the dedications and poems written about her. Kolkovich reveals Hastings as a maker of miscellanies who also served as an example for others in her community.

14

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

As a gentlewoman, Frances Wolfreston was of the middling sort, but from her family home at Statfold, near Lichfield, she managed to gather and maintain a remarkable collection of more than 200 books that included two editions of Venus and Adonis, a copy of The Rape of Lucrece, and ten of Shakespeare’s plays in quarto texts as well as those by Ben Jonson, John Webster, James Shirley and others. Lori Humphrey Newcomb shows that Wolfreston shared the pleasures of those books with her family, willing them to one son on the condition that his siblings be permitted to read them at any time, and on the further condition that each book be returned to its place and they all be kept together. She saw gathering and organizing her collection as a form of familial labour, while her annotations were literary labours that reflected her love of reading. She often inscribed books with her name, registered their provenance, offered an assessment, provided plot summaries or copied verses into them from another work. Newcomb concludes that these annotations showed Wolfreston valued readership over ownership, affective experience over literary production and intertextual linkages over authorial attribution. Georgianna Ziegler has identified more than 500 books in the Folger Shakespeare Library that were owned by over 600 different women at some point between 1500 and 1700. These were often women of the middling sort who are not known to us in other respects. More than half of their books were on religious topics, and another large category was literary books, especially those by Boccaccio, Cervantes, Chaucer, Donne, Herbert, Lyly, Shakespeare, Sidney, Spenser and Wroth, plus Anna Weamys’s continuation of the Arcadia and a take-off on Cervantes. Women also owned poetry by Cowley, Herrick, Milton and Waller. As Ziegler points out, the physical evidence of the books they owned shows that women exercised their agency in a wide range of reading choices and resisted the more restrictive early modern requirements that they avoid certain kinds of texts. In her appreciative account of their subject matter, owners, signatures and annotations, Ziegler sees books as ‘carrier[s] of relationships’ that have left behind something of those who read and marked them. The textual labour of editing is the subject of Molly G. Yarn’s account of Katharine Lee Bates, who represents a generation of American women in the nineteenth century who edited Shakespeare for non-elite audiences. Although she grew up in slightly straitened

INTRODUCTION

15

circumstances due to the death of her father, a minister, Bates attended Wellesley College and eventually became a professor of English there. She was also a poet and a war correspondent for the New York Times, as well as the author of the song ‘America the Beautiful’. She edited student editions of The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and As You Like It for a Boston-based series of English classics. Bates’s textual notes encouraged students to make their own discoveries about the text by providing them with options from the quarto and folio texts. Rather than creating a definitive edition as eighteenth-century editors had done, she offered students alternatives to engage them in textual problems. Her introductions and notes received high praise from Horace Howard Furness, founder of the Shakespeare Variorum editions. Yarn’s discussion of Bates demonstrates that the editor deserved that praise, even though, like others who prepared the vast corpus of student editions of Shakespeare, her work has been largely excluded from editorial history. A stable residence or a good job made it much more possible to purchase and own books, but many women were not so fortunate. Isabella Whitney’s family was of the minor gentry, and she was placed as a maidservant in London at a young age. When she was fired from one of her positions, she tried to earn money from her writing. In her best-known work, ‘Will and Testament’, Whitney directs attention to ‘all . . . Bookebinders by Paulles’ and wills her friends to buy books from her printer and publisher, Richard Jones. In his chapter, Kirk Melnikoff demonstrates that she was better versed in the Elizabethan book trade than has been recognized. He establishes connections between the titles available in Jones’s bookshop and the poetry that Whitney wrote, suggesting she probably spent considerable time there in the late 1560s and early 1570s, reading contemporary works and discovering models for her own writing. This essay shows how close the relationship between an author and a publisher could be. Whitney wrote poetry about losing her employment, but other women struggled to enter the labour market at all. Heidi Craig’s essay brings to light the itinerant women who collected rags off the streets or solicited them at the doors of homes in order to eke out a bare living, acts that made them objects of suspicion and legal complaint. Their work was important to the production of rag paper and the texts printed on it, but rag-women were derided in their own day and have been largely overlooked since. Craig is able to trace

16

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

their labours to the very paper on which the first quarto of Ben Jonson’s Sejanus was printed in 1605, due to a complaint issued to Spilman, the local papermaker: the mayor and aldermen of Dartford in Kent objected to the girls and vagrant women who were ranging abroad in their streets to collect rags for Spilman’s business. Craig also finds allusions to rag-women in two anonymous, midseventeenth-century plays, The New Brawl and The Gossips’ Brawl. Rag-pickers are evoked in poems, plays, sermons and prose works of the period, and the evidence indicates that most of them were women.

Additional labours Extending accounts of book history to include book-making by means beyond print is a way to recognize other women’s contributions. The miscellanies created by the Countess of Huntingdon and described by Elizabeth Kolkovich adapted and restructured passages from Hastings’s contemporaries to further her religious observance and engage intellectually with their conflicting interpretations. Women in the seventeenth-century community of Little Gidding produced ‘harmonies’ by cutting up and reassembling different parts of the four Gospels to create a single chronology of Christ’s life for devotional purposes. In discussing their work, Whitney Trettien advocates an approach to textual cultures that is ‘capacious enough to include the cut-and-paste harmonies’ and other ways of defining and making books.20 The Little Gidding women also created fine bindings in ‘gold-tooled velvet, leather, or vellum’ (Tidcombe 2004: 283), while the accomplished calligrapher Esther Inglis produced astonishingly small and beautiful books by recycling printed texts back into manuscripts, which Inglis sometimes decorated with embroidered bindings (Ziegler 2000). Women also engaged in other areas of the book trade that are not directly addressed in this volume. In ‘Grossly Material Things’, Helen Smith considers those who worked as scribes and amanuenses; she approaches translation as a form of collaboration when discussing Margaret More Roper, Elizabeth Tudor, Anne Cooke (Bacon), Margaret Tyler and other translators (2012: 16–40, 191). Women frequently sold books, not only in bookshops but also as hawkers who retailed news books on the streets and as mercuries, who wholesaled books from the presses. Those forms of employment

INTRODUCTION

17

could be tenuous and occasionally ‘crossed into the murkier world of seditious, illicit, or otherwise “scandalous” texts’.21 Bookbinding required sewing printed, folded sheets with a needle and thread, and references to women binders go back to ‘Dionisia le Bokebyndere’ who worked in ‘Flete Street’ in the fourteenth century (Tidcombe 2004: 282). Smith mentions a Scottish embroiderer named Helen Ross, whose ‘magnificent bookbindings’ included ‘a binding and cloth bag for James V’s personal Bible in 1538’.22 This collection demonstrates that an absence of evidence is far from definitive in determining who did what in book history, which makes it worth considering what other histories may have been occluded as well. Scholars of critical race studies like Kim F. Hall, Ayanna Thompson and Ian Smith identify both the similarities and the differences between our current categories of race and those that circulated in early modern England by analysing racial discourses in literary texts, performances and objects. The lack of any mention of race in the essays here may prompt the inference that all those who participated in the English book trade were white Europeans, but critical race scholars show how misleading that inference may be. The records of black people that Imtiaz Habib so carefully compiled in Black Lives in the English Archives, 1500– 1677 reveal that people of colour were present in many places in early modern London. The archives he examined do not appear to identify any black person who participated in the book trade,23 yet they may have been more engaged in that work than we know. What does it mean that Henry and William Kirkham and one or two others sold books at the sign of the ‘Black Boy’ in a shop adjoining St Paul’s?24 And that other publishers’ shop signs were called the Saracen’s Head and the Turk’s Head (STC 3.238, 239)? The book trade was not disengaged from racial and religious discourses, any more than the books it produced were. Two London booksellers in the 1590s and 1618–58 were named, respectively, William Blackman and Edward Blackmore (STC 3.22–3), names that Habib reads in the archives as racial signifiers. Whether or not their names reflect their origins, they afford yet another way to resist assumptions of an authentic or pure ‘whiteness’ in early modern English culture.25 Elizabeth Spiller’s Reading and the History of Race in the Renaissance (2011) provides another intersection between print culture and critical race studies by demonstrating how early modern constructions of reading as an

18

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

embodied experience influenced racialized identity formations for readers of Heliodorus, Ariosto, Sidney, Wroth and other romance writers. Many of those readers were women. National identities also played a complex role in the transnational book trade. The Continent was the source of most paper and type, along with many highly skilled labourers: Clair notes that ‘nearly all the early printers in England, with the exception of William Caxton, were foreigners’ (1970: 115). After Thomas Vautrollier was given a patent to print seven books in 1574, he was permitted to hire six Frenchmen or Dutchmen ‘or suche lyke’ for ten years (Arber 1875–94: 2.746). Yet his French origins prevented him from being a freeman in the Stationers’ Company, and English stationers may have resented the privileges that enabled him to run his printing house (Blayney 1997b: 24). While Jacqueline Vautrollier’s marriage to Richard Field gave her an English husband, Park Honan claims that ‘[h]er own French Protestant Church tolerated marriages with Catholic émigrés more easily than it condoned its members marrying Londoners who were not of French descent’.26 The refugees and ‘strangers’ who settled in London had to deal with the expectations of their own immigrant communities as well as restrictions in their adopted land. Approaching book history as an exclusively national phenomenon may prompt us to overlook people like the Vautrolliers by imposing an artificial boundary on the subject, whereas the book trade’s boundaries were highly permeable: it was far easier for the foreign Armada pamphlets to invade England than it was for the Spanish navy to breach the country’s borders. Two essays in this collection extend beyond the English perimeter to assert the relevance of fifty-eight Dutch women and an American to the history of the book in England. What this volume most fully demonstrates is that the labours of women, which included their collecting rags for paper production, investing in books and overseeing the presses on which they were printed, were important to the creation and consumption of early modern books. Women’s work in the composition, selection, collection and annotation of books had an impact on what their contemporaries read and wrote and on the literary canon that was developing for later generations. Their labours in printing and publishing were largely material and commercial, while by writing, reading alone and with others, and sharing their books, women’s work acquired textual and social significance. In addition to

INTRODUCTION

19

practical skills, women who worked within their own homes, printing houses and bookshops had to exercise considerable emotional and creative intelligence, especially when they inhabited spaces where the personal and professional became almost indistinguishable. Wendy Wall points out that in the early modern period, ‘the family unit was at the nerve center of economic production’ and the household had not been withdrawn ‘from economic life or from some yet unborn public sphere’ (Wall 2002: 9). The cooperative nature of book production permitted and even obliged some women to be active agents in sustaining their family’s livelihood. Another glance at the cover painting of the Haarlem printers – with their joined hands and Margaretha’s left hand extended out in a balancing gesture – suggests what a collaborative enterprise that could be. Responsible speculation helps contributors to this volume move beyond assumptions of women’s irrelevance and the limitations of the archive to envision larger possibilities for the commercial, literary and cultural influence of the work that early modern women accomplished. A co-author of Sidney’s pastoral romance, a poet consulting her publisher’s supply of books, a collector of Shakespeare’s poems and plays, and fifty publishers of 400 editions: the women presented here were active participants in shaping early modern English culture. Helen Smith observes in her Afterword that ‘[t]he more we look for women in the historical record, the more we discover them; the more we are willing to speculate in responsible but provocative ways, the more we realise that it is the idea of the anomaly which is anomalous’ (p. 275). While the women in these essays may appear to be exceptional, there is little that is anomalous about them. Their labours and their collaborations with others were integral to the making, marking and marketing of the old books that we still value.

Notes 1

OED ‘mark’, v. I, II and III. The OED cites the quotation for the third meaning from Caxton’s 1481 translation of The History of Reynard the Fox, where the original uses ‘he’ instead of ‘one’.

2

This term has been used from the early modern period to the present to refer to a heterogeneous group of people who were at the time

20

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

neither among the poor nor among the wealthy or landed aristocracy. Theodore Leinwand admits ‘it is not easy to describe the middling sort’ and reviews the term’s early applications (1993: 289). ‘Those whom Mulcaster, Dalton, Prynne, and Corbet seem to have had in mind were ratepayers: householders, independent craftsmen, and yeomen. They were men, mostly, who were neither rentiers nor investors, on one hand, nor hired laborers, on the other’ (ibid., 291–2). Leinwand cites Keith Wrightson as believing ‘that the term middling sort was of “urban, even metropolitan, origin” ’ (ibid., 285 n. 4), which is applicable to its use in this essay. 3

For a fuller account of recent scholarship on women’s reading, see notes 3–6 and 20 in ‘The Bookscape’, the introduction to Women’s Bookscapes (Knight et al. 2018: 2–4, 18).

4

For information on Thomas Vautrollier, I have consulted the essays by LeFanu (1958–64) and Clair (1960), and Pettegree’s ODNB entry (2004). When one of these sources provides information that the others do not, I cite it directly. Original documents are cited when I was able to consult them.

5

Kirk and Kirk 1900: 1.415. This 1571 entry in Returns refers to ‘Thomas Vowtrullie, bokebynder, a denison, and his wife, Frenche borne, in England viii yeares, and in the said warde [Blackfriars] sixe yeares’. Clair (1960: 224) does not give a source for Jacqueline’s birth name, but an entry in Williams’ Index of Dedications and Commendatory Verses reads ‘Vautrollier (du Thuit), Jaklin’ (1962: 188). My thanks to Meaghan J. Brown for the latter reference.

6

The reasons for Thomas Vautrollier’s departure for Scotland are not fully clear. In a private communication, Peter W. M. Blayney has questioned the eighteenth-century evidence that attributed his departure to his supposed printing of a work by Giordano Bruno, which is not extant. However, Blayney acknowledges that Vautrollier was in Scotland in 1581, when he received £31 for books for the use of James VI, as well as for a substantial part of 1584, when he printed five books, and part of 1585, when he printed one. See also Smith 2012: 111–12.

7

This is Peter Blayney’s explanation for the Court’s account of Thomas as ‘noe prynter’ in 1587: he was neither a Stationer nor any longer the holder of a patent.

8

Blayney points out regarding the exception the Court made for Jacqueline Vautrollier’s overseeing this work on a 16° Greek text that comparatively few London printing houses would have owned Greek type, and there would have been almost no demand at all for sizes small enough to be practical for a book in sixteens.

INTRODUCTION

9

21

Meaghan J. Brown’s extensive work on these pamphlets appears in Brown 2014 and Brown 2015. The latter is a detailed bibliographical description of the Armada pamphlets along with other translations and related works that circulated through Europe in 1588 and beyond. After examining 212 different copies of those texts, Brown distinguishes bibliographically between CoL and CA although the Revised STC conflates them, and she corrects some information in the STC’s entries for 15412–15414.6. The eight editions identified above as having been printed by Jacqueline Vautrollier reflect Brown’s published research and our private correspondence. Brown also considers it likely that Jacqueline authored the ‘Printer to the Reader’, the third part of CoL, which presents information about the losses of Spanish ships that came to the printer’s attention in October of 1588 while the pamphlet was in press (2015: 117–18). I am indebted to Meaghan Brown for revising the complex bibliographical history of these texts, and to Alan B. Farmer for clarifying the edition-count and correlations to existing STC numbers after conferring with us. Peter W. M. Blayney has determined on the basis of the cartouche factotum on A2r in the Houghton Library copy that one edition of CA conjectured to have been printed by Thomas Orwin (see STC 15412) was instead printed by Robert Robinson. Given its serial compression, this was a later edition of 1588 or 1589, but its imprint also identified Jacqueline Vautrollier as its printer and Richard Field as its publisher. I am grateful to Peter Blayney for this identification and for his advice on the other matters addressed in notes 6–10 and 13.

10 Peter Blayney sees no reason to question that the CoL texts were published with Cecil’s active participation. 11 See Brown 2015: 118–21, for an account of the interlaced production history of STC 15412 and 15414.2. She determined that the English text, 15412, was begun first and thought to be finished; then the French text, 15414.2, was fully printed after news of the shipwrecks off the Irish coast came in; after that, more sections were added to 15412. 12 Arber 1875–94: 5.xxix. In adducing this example, Arber misidentifies Field’s future wife as Vautrollier’s daughter. Plomer corrects the error at 28, note 1, but sustains the myth that ‘every printer’s widow [became] a rich matrimonial prize that gave rise to keen rivalry’ (iv). Essays by Neville and Farmer in this volume critique this assumption further. 13 Peter Blayney points out that Jane Middleton was much better connected within the Stationers’ Company through her family than Jacqueline Vautrollier ever was. Jane Middleton chose remarriage to a pewterer and sold Henry Middleton’s printing equipment to Robert Robinson, who printed an edition of CA (see note 9).

22

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

14 STC 3.63, 173, 250–1, 254. Field lists a new location on Wood Street, which was within Cripplegate, in books from 1613 to 1624 (STC 3.250). In ODNB 2004: 19.486, David Kathman connects the move to Wood Street with Field’s marriage to his second wife, Jane, with whom he had five children. For locations of businesses in the book trade, see Blayney 1990 and Blayney 2013. See also Cait Coker (2018), ‘Gendered Spheres: Theorizing Space in the English Printing House’. 15 Hooks 2016: 58–9. At 42–9, Hooks proposes that the publisher John Harrison was more important than Field in launching the careers of both Shakespeare and Field. 16 For other women stationers who continued to work after they were widowed, see the essays in this volume by Alan B. Farmer, Sarah Neville, Erika Boeckeler and Martine van Elk. 17 Kathman, ODNB 19. 486, says Jacqueline ‘died sometime before 1614’ and ‘may be the “Mr Feilds wife” who was buried on 9 March 1611 in St Anne Blackfriars (parish register)’. See also note 14. 18 Olson (2019: 299) adds that ‘when we privilege our own comfort by keeping our theories too closely tied to what we perceive to be evidence, we run the risk of being even more wrong, of failing to account for overlooked early modern readers’, and, I would add, overlooked printers, publishers, authors and editors. Yet it is worth indicating what the grounds for speculation are, as Olson effectively does, so that readers can come to their own conclusions. 19 In his influential essay, ‘The Publication of Playbooks’ (1997a: 418 n.20), Peter Blayney notes that ‘[a]lthough stationers’ widows were automatically free of both company and city in their own right, and some had very successful careers, between 1541 and 1666 no women were either apprenticed or freed as stationers’. Of the 371 plays he analysed for this essay, only four were published by women. However, that number refers only to the publication of playbooks and does not reflect women’s publishing or printing in other genres. I am grateful to Sarah Neville for this observation. 20 Trettien 2018: 1136; in the same place she cites as other expansions of textual culture Susan Frye’s approach to women’s needlework as texts in Pens and Needles (2010) and Wendy Wall’s account of receipt books in Recipes for Thought (2015). See also Juliet Fleming (2015), ‘The Renaissance Collage: Signcutting and Signsewing’ and other essays in the special issue of The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies on ‘The Renaissance Collage: Toward a New History of Reading’. 21 Smith 2012: 157–62, 166–71, quotation at 158.

INTRODUCTION

23

22 Smith 2012: 97–8, 148, 154–6 and 167, quotation at 155. 23 Habib says ‘[T]here is not a single record in the Elizabethan period that shows an African in an independent professional capacity’ (2008: 78). His ‘Chronological Index of Records of Black People, 1500– 1677’ does not appear to identify anyone in the book trade, but this ninety-four-page index merits further study. 24 STC 3:100 and 233. For the shop’s location, see Blayney 1990: 82, 87. 25 I am grateful to Alan B. Farmer and Derrick Higginbotham for helping me think through these issues. 26 Honan 1998: 322. He observes that ‘an unusual number of those in Shakespeare’s circle, whether friends, associates, or casual acquaintances, were of Dutch, Flemish, or French origin. Coincidence does not quite account for this. Apparently, he found himself comfortable with “strangers”, and the respect he had for London’s émigrés was to be returned’, ibid.

References Arber, E. (ed.) (1875–94), A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London, 1554–1640 A. D., 5 vols. London: privately printed. Bell, M. (1996), ‘Women in the Early English Book Trade 1557–1700’, Leipziger Jahrbuch zur Buchgeschichte 6: 13–45. Blayney, P. W. M. (1990), The Bookshops in Paul’s Cross Churchyard, London: Occasional Papers of the Bibliographical Society, 5. Blayney, P. W. M. (1997a), ‘The Publication of Playbooks’, in J. D. Cox and D. S. Kastan (eds), A New History of English Drama, New York: Columbia University Press, 383–422. Blayney, P. W. M. (1997b), ‘William Cecil and the Stationers’, in R. Myers and M. Harris (eds), The Stationers’ Company and the Book Trade, 1550–1900, New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 11–34. Blayney, P. W. M. (2013), The Stationers’ Company and the Printers of London, 1501–1557, 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brayman Hackel, H. (2005), Reading Material in Early Modern England: Print, Gender, and Literacy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brown, M. J. (2014), ‘ “The Hearts of All Sorts of People Were Enflamed”: Manipulating Readers of Spanish Armada News’, Book History 17: 94–116. Brown, M. J. (2015), ‘The Fragmented Armada: The Transmission of an Armada News Pamphlet’, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada 53 (1): 107–30.

24

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

Clair, C. (1960), ‘Thomas Vautrollier’, Gutenberg-Jahrbuch 1960: 223–8. Clair, C. (1970), ‘Refugee Printers and Publishers in Britain during the Tudor Period’, Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of London 21: 115–26. Clark, A. (1919), Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century, London: Routledge; 2nd ed. 1982; 3rd ed. 1992. Coker, C. (2018), ‘Gendered Spheres: Theorizing Space in the English Printing House’, The Seventeenth Century 33 (3): 323–36. Dowd, M. M. (2009), Women’s Work in Early Modern English Literature and Culture, Basingstoke: Palgrave. Ellinghausen, L. (2008), Labor and Writing in Early Modern England, 1567–1667, Aldershot: Ashgate. Ferguson, M. W. (2003), Dido’s Daughters: Literacy, Gender, and Empire in Early Modern England and France, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Fleming, J. (2015), ‘The Renaissance Collage: Signcutting and Signsewing’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 45 (3): 443–56. Frye, S. (2010), Pens and Needles: Women’s Textualities in Early Modern England, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Greg, W. W. and E. Boswell (eds) (1930), Records of the Court of the Stationers’ Company, 1576 to 1602, from Register B, London: Bibliographical Society. Habib, I. (2008), Black Lives in the English Archives, 1500–1677, Aldershot: Ashgate. Hall, K. F. (1995), Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Honan, P. (1998), Shakespeare: A Life, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hooks, A. G. (2016), Selling Shakespeare: Biography, Bibliography, and the Book Trade, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kathman, D. (2004), ‘Field [Feild], Richard (bap. 1561, d. 1624)’, ODNB 19. 485–6. Kirk, R. E. G. and E. F. Kirk (eds) (1900), Returns of Aliens dwelling in the city and suburbs of London from the Reign of Henry VIII. to that of James I, Part 1. 1523–71, Aberdeen: University Press. Knight, L., M. White and E. Sauer (eds) (2018), Women’s Bookscapes in Early Modern Britain: Reading, Ownership, Circulation, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Korda, N. (2011), Labors Lost: Women’s Work and the Early Modern English Stage, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. LeFanu, W. R. (1958–64), ‘Thomas Vautrollier, printer and bookseller’, Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of London 20: 12–25. Leinwand, T. B. (1993), ‘Shakespeare and the Middling Sort’, Shakespeare Quarterly 44 (3): 284–303.

INTRODUCTION

25

Maruca, L. (2007), The Work of Print: Authorship and the English Text Trades, 1660–1760, Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press. McDowell, P. (1998), The Women of Grub Street: Press, Politics and Gender in the London Literary Marketplace, 1678–1730, Oxford: Clarendon Press. McKerrow, R. B. (1910), A Dictionary of Printers and Booksellers in England, Scotland and Ireland, and of Foreign Printers of English Books 1557–1640, London: Bibliographical Society. Mendelson, S. and P. Crawford (1998), Women in Early Modern England, 1550–1720, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Nevitt, M. (2016), Women and the Pamphlet Culture of Revolutionary England, 1640–1660, London: Routledge. Olson, R. (2019), ‘The Continuing Adventures of Blanchardyn and Eglantine: Responsible Speculation about Early Modern Fan Fiction’, PMLA 134 (2): 298–314. Pettegree, A. (2004), ‘Vautrollier, Thomas (d. 1587)’, ODNB 56. 215–17. Plomer, H. R. (ed.) (1903), Abstracts from the Wills of English Printers and Stationers from 1492 to 1630, London: Bibliographical Society. Smith, H. (2012), ‘Grossly Material Things’: Women and Book Production in Early Modern England, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Smith, I. (2013), ‘Othello’s Black Handkerchief’, Shakespeare Quarterly 64 (1): 1–25. Spiller, E. (2011), Reading and the History of Race in the Renaissance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thompson, A. (2011), Passing Strange: Shakespeare, Race, and Contemporary America, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tidcombe, M. (2004), ‘Women Bookbinders in Britain before the First World War’, in M. Foot (ed.), Eloquent Witnesses: Bookbindings and Their History, London: Bibliographical Society, 282–303. Trettien, W. (2018), ‘Media, Materiality, and Time in the History of Reading: The Case of the Little Gidding Harmonies’, PMLA 133 (5): 1135–51. Wall, W. (1993), The Imprint of Gender: Authorship and Publication in the English Renaissance, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Wall, W. (2002), Staging Domesticity: Household Work and English Identity in Early Modern Drama, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wall, W. (2015), Recipes for Thought: Knowledge and Taste in the Early Modern English Kitchen, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Williams, F. B., Jr. (1962), Index of Dedications and Commendatory Verses in English before 1641, London: Bibliographical Society.

26

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

Ziegler, G. (2000), ‘Hand-Ma[i]de Books: The Manuscripts of Esther Inglis, Early-Modern Precursors of the Artists’ Book’, in P. Beal and M. J. M. Ezell (eds), English Manuscript Studies 1100–1700, Vol. 9: Writings by Early Modern Women, London: British Library, 73–87.

PART I

Making books: Paper, publishers, printers

27

28

2 English rag-women and early modern paper production Heidi Craig

Joseph Jérôme Lefrançois de Lalande’s l’Art de faire le papier (1761), the earliest technical account of the art of papermaking in Europe, features several engravings of different steps in the process of making paper. The first is a cheerful depiction of six well-dressed women sorting rags, the raw material for paper before the invention of woodpulp paper in the nineteenth century (see Figure  2.1). Subsequent engravings depict men forming the sheets; women reappear in later illustrations hanging sheets to dry, inspecting and removing damaged ones, and gathering sheets into quires. Lalande does not comment on the gendered divisions of labour in the mill; as Chloe Wigston Smith notes, ‘Never in his manual does De Lalande explain why women oversaw the sorting stage, or why men dominated the subsequent posts in the paper mill’ (2013: 50). The lack of commentary suggests that the assignment of particular tasks along gender lines was wellestablished, perhaps dating back centuries. Because there are few detailed accounts (and fewer still illustrations) of papermaking in the early modern period, early modern scholars frequently extrapolate from later descriptions (Barrett 2018). While rag sorting is the earliest stage of papermaking illustrated in L’Art de faire le papier, Lalande describes an earlier one: ‘Les 29

30

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

FIGURE 2.1 Copperplate engraving of workers in a French paper-mill, from Joseph Jérôme Lefrançois de Lalande’s Art de faire le papier (1761). The top image shows women engaged in sorting rags. The bottom image depicts the fermentation stage and cutting of rags by a male gouverneur. From the Newberry Library, Chicago, Case Wing oversize TS1165 .L34 1762.

pattieres, chiffonnieres, ou drapelieres, qui parcourent les villages ramassent une quantité de pattes ou de chiffons, quelquefois dans les ordures des rues, souvent avec quelques aiguilles, qu’elles donnent à des domestique ou à des pauvres qui ne sauroient que faire de ce chiffon’ (The [rag-pickers] travel throughout villages picking up masses of cloth or rags, sometimes from garbage in the streets, often with a few needles, which they trade to female servants

ENGLISH RAG-WOMEN AND EARLY MODERN PAPER

31

or the poor who don’t know what to do with such rags) (1761: 5–6, translation mine).1 This passage offers an evocative glimpse of ragcollection: itinerant women working with and around rubbish while gathering more rags from domestic servants and the poor in exchange for small items like needles. Through the feminine suffix ‘ere’ attached to each of the different regional names for the ragpicker (pattieres, chiffonnieres, drapelieres), Lalande makes it clear that the task of rag-collection fell to women. The gender of ragpickers is made even clearer in the index, where Lalande refers to ‘Chiffonnieres, pattieres, drapelieres, femmes qui vont dans les Provinces ramasser le chiffon’ ([Rag-pickers], women who go to the Provinces to collect rags) (1761: 143). Here he again conveys the mobility of rag-pickers, who do not merely collect rags in the French provinces, but go (vont) there from elsewhere in order to gather them. As with his description of women’s other activities in the mill, Lalande does not explain why it was women who collected rags. Unlike their fellow female workers in the paper-mill, however, ragpickers are not visually depicted in l’Art de faire le papier: they are only described textually, with the clearest reference to their gendered identity relegated to an index at the back of the book. Lalande’s representation of rag-pickers – female, itinerant and consigned to the background – encapsulates the identity, activity and cultural status of rag-collectors in Europe in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the eighteenth century. Women clearly represented a significant portion of those engaged in this work. They were involved in collecting and sorting rags in medieval and early modern Fabriano, a centre for papermaking in present-day Italy (Albro 2016: 75). An early seventeenth-century Spanish novel refers to an ‘old woman who gather’d [rags] twice a week about the Streets, as the rag-women do for the paper-mills’ (de Quevedo 1707: 262). In Nuremberg, where the first paper-mill north of the Alps was established in 1390, one early twentieth-century commentator notes more explicitly that ‘collecting rags from early days [was] the prerogative of women’ (Bock 1926). Rag-collection represented the low end of the textile trades, a broad range of already low-prestige tasks related to the manufacture, upkeep and reuse of cloth and clothing which often fell to women (Korda 2011: 3–5, 25–53, 102). Rag-picking was obviously low-status work, but it was vital for the papermaking industry.2 Before the invention of wood-pulp

32

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

paper, fine white paper for printing and writing was made from recycled white linen rags. It was not economical to attempt to make paper out of the strong, tough fibres of raw flax, or white linen clothing or sheets that were still usable as such. Flax was much more valuable to the spinning industry; before the invention of chlorine bleach, white linen clothing and sheets were time- and labour-intensive to make, and they would be worn and used, laundered and repaired, over and over again. Eventually clothing and sheets would be made into household wiping rags, again to be repeatedly used and laundered. Once old rags were no longer useful in the household, they were ideal for papermaking, since tattered, weak, and tender rags would ferment more easily, respond more readily to beating and grinding, and drain more quickly than the tough, strong fibres of raw flax or new linen. After household rags were worn out, as Lalande indicates, they would be collected by female rag-pickers from female servants and housewives in exchange for items such as pins, needles or thimbles.3 Modern critical accounts of early papermaking tend to begin with rags already at the mill, eliding the labour involved in getting them there. In his account of the papermaking process, Philip Gaskell alludes first to the purchase of rags, then describes in detail the various processes undertaken by the papermaker and his ‘team at the vat’, starting with the sorting and washing of rags, which were ‘then put by in a damp heap for four or five days to rot’. The rotten rags were cut up into little pieces, pounded to a pulp (or stuff) and transferred to a vat. The papermaker (or vatman), assisted by the coucher and layer, would dip a mould into the vat, shaking the mould with care to ensure even distribution of the stuff. The resultant sheets were placed on alternating layers of felt, pressed to remove the excess water from them, and hung to dry. Referring to the vatman’s manoeuvring of the mould, Gaskell notes that ‘great skill was required to produce sheets of uniform texture and strength’ (2007: 57–8). Though it remains unsaid, sorting rags according to colour and quality also required considerable skill: fine white paper for printing and writing is made from high-quality white linen rags, and the inclusion of one dissimilar rag in an otherwise uniform collection could render the entire vat of the pulp unusable. Gaskell does acknowledge the work of acquiring, sorting and washing rags, but he focuses on the processes more than the people involved in them.

ENGLISH RAG-WOMEN AND EARLY MODERN PAPER

33

The obscurity of rag-collectors in accounts of papermaking can be traced back to the early modern period itself. Despite their importance to early modern textual production – and therefore, to the book trade – rag-pickers were marginalized from society as well as from the very texts they helped to produce. In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the ‘vagrant women and girls’ who collected rags for a paper-mill in Kent were seen as a nuisance, yet they contributed to the production of a canonical text of English Renaissance drama, Ben Jonson’s Sejanus (1605). In early modern England and Europe, rag-gatherers were stigmatized through their interactions with filth, death and disease. In early modern English discourse, ‘rag-picker’ and its variants rag-raker, -collector, -gatherer and so forth, were watchwords for repellent indigence. Rag-women were simultaneously sexualized and defeminized by their labour, their unsavoury associations obscuring their importance in the production of early modern books. This essay seeks to acknowledge the low-status women who picked rags for the early papermaking industry, partly by focusing on isolated historical references to rag-women and their rags in early modern England. Inattention to women’s contributions to the book trade has a long history; when class and stigmatized work are added to gender as causes of marginalization, it is not surprising that book history has mostly been mute on the matter of ragcollection. By retrieving signs of rag-women’s forgotten contributions to textual production, this essay adds to scholarship on women’s labour in the early modern English book trade by moving even further down the social hierarchy. Other essays in this collection highlight the middle-class and elite women who financed, printed, collected, read and annotated books; this is often achieved through ingenious extrapolation from gaps and partial evidence in the historical record. For example, Sarah Neville theorizes the effect of women stationers by analysing both their own outputs and those of their first and ‘second-plus’ husbands. My work is complicated because rag-pickers have generally left even fewer traces than the already-obscure subjects of others’ scholarship. In the early modern period, little attention (and exceedingly little positive attention) was paid to these low-status workers, and, because they were largely illiterate, they left no textual records themselves. Another complication is the mobility of the rags themselves. As Margreta de Grazia and Peter Stallybrass explain, rags were ‘the heterogeneous

34

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

products of an international capitalist industry . . . collected from all over Europe to be processed in the great papermaking industries of France and Italy’ (1993: 281). The diverse provenance of rags makes it difficult to trace the raw materials of any given book to a particular country, let alone to a particular group of gatherers.4 No wonder Lalande begins his illustrations with an idealized illustration of happy French female rag sorters, rather than with a motley army of impoverished rag-pickers ranging across Europe, begging at doors and picking through garbage heaps. Despite the lack of early modern historical documents, we can infer from early modern discourse and literary representations that rag-pickers contributed – in fact and in the cultural imagination – to the production of early modern English books. For example, while many English rag-women picked off-white rags and scraps of rope and canvas which were turned into rough brown wrapping paper, there was a transference of association between pickers of lower-quality rags and pickers of the finer sort used to make paper for writing and printing, such that even pickers of low-quality rags were imagined to contribute to textual production. Although it is usually impossible, both in the early modern period and now, to connect a particular rag or individual rag-picker to a particular book, the possible and imagined material connections between a rag, a picker and a text had a reciprocal influence on the cultural meanings attributed to them. By examining how rag-pickers were represented in (or absented from) early modern discourse, we can better appreciate their contributions to early modern cultural production.

The historical rag-picker in early modern England Due to foreign competition, England lacked a fine white paper industry until the late seventeenth century. Early modern English books were printed on paper imported from Italy, the Netherlands, Germany and especially France (Bidwell 2002: 583). Hence Lalande’s illustrations of activities in a French paper-mill could represent how paper used for early modern English books was made. Without a local industry for fine white printing and writing

ENGLISH RAG-WOMEN AND EARLY MODERN PAPER

35

paper, many early modern English rag women would instead have been picking lower-quality rags that were turned into lower-grade, brown and wrapping paper of the sort used to wrap groceries and other household items, and for manifold culinary and medicinal uses. Although the limited English papermaking industry generally made lower-grade paper for purposes other than printing or writing, from the complaints of aspiring English papermakers we also know that fine white linen rags were exported from England to Continental paper-mills.5 We can therefore say with some confidence that some early modern books were printed on paper made from rags that had been picked in England as well as elsewhere in Europe. Early efforts to establish mills for writing and printing paper in late fifteenthand sixteenth-century England were largely abortive (Smith 2017: 20–2). In 1588, John Spilman, jeweller to Queen Elizabeth, established a successful paper-mill in Dartford, Kent, having acquired a monopoly on rag-collection and the production of paper. Like many papermakers, Spilman faced local resistance for bringing indigents into the area to work in and around his mill. A letter of complaint about Spilman dated 21 May 1601, written by the Lord Mayor William Rider and the Aldermen to the Privy Council, is a rare historical reference to rag-pickers in early modern England. The complaint vividly captures the activities associated with ragcollection and its cultural status. The authorities allege: [John Spilman] began to offer wrong to the charters of the city by authorizing great numbers of poor people, especially girls and vagrant women, to collect rags, etc. within the city and liberties, who under pretence of that service, ranged abroad in every street, begging at men’s doors, whereby the discipline of the city was weakened (the said poor people sometimes assaying to steal small things from houses and stalls), and thinking it more convenient for the city in the gathering of such refuse stuff, to employ rather our own poor, otherwise idle: it was thought meet by a common counscile to take order that none should be suffered to walk abroad for collecting such stuff unless licensed by the Governors of Bridewell. Rider 1601: SP 12/279 f.165 Rag-collection is here presented as itinerant and largely female, which confirms impressions gleaned from Lalande and elsewhere.

36

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

To these associations are added those of vagrancy, poverty, beggary, thievery and, in the specification that women begged at ‘men’s doors’, insinuations of prostitution. Given that the fabrication, alteration, repair and management of textiles largely fell to women, it is more likely that rag-women would have gathered rags from the housewives and female domestics who lived and worked at those locations rather than directly from men. As I explain below, the association between rag-women and prostitution is tied to their identities as women who worked outside the home. Thanks to the Spilman complaint, we can connect English ragwomen to the production of an early modern play: Ben Jonson’s Sejanus, whose first quarto was printed by George Eld for the publisher Thomas Thorpe in 1605. By studying the watermarks on the pages of hundreds of early modern texts, Thomas Calhoun and Thomas Gravell determined that Spilman’s mill produced the paper on which Sejanus was printed (1993: 13–64). For most of the seventeenth century, Continental paper would have been less expensive and more readily available than English paper, and it was not necessarily of lesser quality. In 1636, in a petition to the Privy Council, residents of Buckingham and Middlesex lodged a series of grievances against another English paper-mill, including complaints about the quality and cost of the paper it fabricated. The petition states ‘that the paper made is so unuseful that it will bear no ink on one side, and is sold at dearer rates than formerly’ (‘Petition’ 1636– 7: SP 16/344 f.76). To be fair, it should be noted that the paper-mill was probably making wrapping-grade paper, not white paper for printing or writing (Bidwell 2002: 586). Having compared the Folger Shakespeare Library’s copy of Sejanus with two Folger copies of Jonson’s Volpone (1607), also printed by George Eld for Thomas Thorpe, the Sejanus paper feels to me flimsier; the ink from the printed marginal notes on sig. I2r has also left traces on its facing page of sig. Iv. Calhoun and Gravell claim that the use of more expensive (and potentially lower-quality) English paper in this instance was politically motivated by the ‘atmosphere of national paranoia’ that followed the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot, the failed plan to blow up the English Parliament on 5 November 1605 (1993: 60). They argue that the printing of Sejanus on English paper (with the royal watermark IR-AR-HP, abbreviations for Iacobus Rex, Anna Regina and Henricus Princeps, i.e. King James I, Queen Anne and Prince Henry) along with sheets marked IAR (Iacobus

ENGLISH RAG-WOMEN AND EARLY MODERN PAPER

37

Anglorum Rex) was a calculated display of patriotism. This display was particularly important for Jonson, who was seen by some to be complicit with the plot’s Catholic conspirators (ibid., 24–6). As Calhoun and Gravell explain, ‘[w]e can understand the selection of paper stock for Sejanus in light of the intense patriotism called for immediately after the Gunpowder episode. What better way to assure the loyalty of poet, press, and publisher than to “buy British” and print on paper that Spilman manufactured for the king’s letterhead?’ (ibid., 26). Hence it appears that the same indigent, itinerant rag-women and girls who faced harassment from local authorities for gathering rags in and around Dartford in Kent were responsible for producing the ‘king’s letterhead’ on which Jonson’s classicizing, literary play was printed. Sejanus is a rare example of an early modern English text whose production can be traced directly to English paper-mills and to a particular group of rag-collectors, the ‘girls and vagrant women’ employed by the papermaker John Spilman at the turn of the seventeenth century. In addition to the actual, historical personages, rag-women also figured in early modern English discourse and literary representation. As we shall see in the following section, such references and representations supplement gaps in the historical record, illuminating the cultural meanings of rag-women and their labour in early modern England.

Rag-women in early modern English discourse One prevalent meaning of ‘rag’ in early modern English discourse was ‘a disreputable or contemptible person; a person of a low social class’ (OED, n2. 11). Under this definition, The OED cites a passage from The Merry Wives of Windsor: ‘You witch, you rag, you baggage’ (4.2.174–5), in which the citizen Ford lambasts Falstaff, who is disguised as an old woman. In the anonymous dialogue Poor Robin’s Character of France (1666: 5), the ‘Englishman’ comments that it is not worthwhile to execute the poor, as ‘it would have been unprofitable to the Executioner, their Clothes being onely fit for the Rag-woman’ (1666: 5). The remark envisions a matrix of impoverished, defiled characters involved in the circulation of old

38

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

textiles, including the poor (who wore rags), the rag-woman (who gathered rags), and the executioner (who was partly paid with the clothing from the people he executed). Although clothing that was still wearable was generally not used to make paper, an exception might have been made for clothing from plague victims (fears of infection would make their cast-offs undesirable) and the poor (whose clothing, as Poor Robin’s Englishman comments, was likely to be shabby in the first place). Poor Robin’s Englishman makes it clear that a rag-woman would receive the dead’s tattered scraps from the executioner. The passage exemplifies how rag-collection was regarded as a predominantly female occupation in the early modern England. To be sure, men also gathered rags. Henry Goodcole’s Heavens Speedie Hue and Cry reports the final words of the convicted criminal Elizabeth Evans, advising ‘poore simple women’ ‘to marry an honest man, though but a Ragge-gatherer, rather then a lewd man or a Theefe’ (1615: C2v). The context marks this ‘rag-gatherer’ as male. Many references to rag-pickers in early modern England are similarly neuter, so that even scholars attuned to the implications of gendered language – and the ways in which linguistic conventions have been used to erase women’s contributions – might assume that ‘rag-gatherers’ were predominantly male. Upon closer inspection, however, many seemingly neuter terms for rag-pickers and related terms in early modern English discourse refer more specifically to women; the evidence likewise suggests that the female associations of ‘rag’ would be clear. In Merry Wives, Ford reaches for ‘rag’, ‘witch’, ‘baggage’, ‘polecat’ and ‘runnion’ as terms of abuse for an old woman. As Sarah Neville points out in her New Oxford Shakespeare edition of Merry Wives, the association of ‘rag’ with menstrual cloths is already an insult (4.2.146), a matter I discuss in more detail below. John Taylor’s A Iuniper Lecture features a woman who complains that her old, unfashionable clothing makes her appear ‘like a very drudge, nay, almost as bad as a dung-hill-raker’ (1639: 62). In Two Treatises, Jeremiah Burroughs describes the preference of worldly pleasures above God as comparable to a decision ‘to leave a Queen, or Empress that were the beautifullest woman upon the earth, and to have the heart cleave to a base dunghil-raker’ (1649: 22), where the rag-rakers represent basest humanity. The Earl of Rochester’s notorious poem ‘A Ramble in St. James’s Park’ (1681) describes how women of all classes congregate for sexual assignations in the park: ‘Whores of

ENGLISH RAG-WOMEN AND EARLY MODERN PAPER

39

the bulk, and the Alcove, / Great ladies, chamber-maids, drudges, / The rag-picker, and heiress trudges’ (1681). In Richard Ames’s The folly of love, or, An essay upon satyr against woman, rakers likewise represent the lowest of society: ‘Be just, spare neither Quality nor Age, / From Girl, just fit for Man, to Matron sage; / From Dunghillraker, up to Lady fine’ (1691: 4). In each of these cases, the context reveals that the seemingly neuter term refers to a woman. The writers use the terms as if their female associations were understood. When we encounter a ‘rag-picker’ in early modern English discourse, then, we can reasonably assume that the person is a woman. The rag-picker is at the bottom of the social hierarchy, where she can serve as a foil to the well-dressed woman, to a ‘queen’, ‘heiress’ and ‘Lady fine’. Deprived of fine clothes and status, the extreme opposite of the ‘beautifullest woman upon the earth’, the female ‘dunghillraker’ lacks the conventional markers of femininity, with the neuter terminology capturing how she is also defeminized by her labour.6 The neuter descriptions of the female ‘rag-gatherer’ distinguish her from the early modern women whose occupations specified their gender, such as fishwives, oyster wenches, butter-women and so forth. Many texts nevertheless group female rag-pickers with other low-status working women. Visits from Shades (1704) refers to a woman so disreputable that even ‘rag-gatherers, cynderwomen and oyster wenches wou’d disclaim her acquaintance’. Cinderwomen and oyster wenches are obviously women, while the gender of ‘rag-gatherers’ is evident from their association with these other female labourers. In early modern England, market women who engaged in daily contact with the public were often labelled as voluble (the better to hawk their wares), verbally abusive (to discourage customers from purchasing from their rivals) and sexually available (Buis et al. 2015: 177–202). These associations likewise attached to female rag-pickers, so that, although they were defeminized by their labour, rag-pickers were still subject to the same degrading moral and sexual stereotypes associated with other lower-status working women. Rag-pickers also figure in two short anonymous plays printed after the closure of the theatres in 1642, The New Brawl (1654) and The Gossips’ Brawl (1655).7 In both cases, the rag-pickers are women, and the plays embed these rag-women within a wider labour force of marginalized women. The Gossips’ Brawl portrays

40

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

its working-class female characters – the rag-raker Jone Ruggles, the fishwife Doll Crabbe, the tub-woman Megg Lant-Ale and the hostess Bess Bunghole – as vulgar, drunk and quarrelsome. The New Brawl is a dialogue between the ‘ragg-woman’ Doll Do-Little and her husband, John Hold-my-Staff, a rope-maker. An atmosphere of material – especially textile – scarcity pervades the two plays: both suggest that the resourceful use of cloth was specifically tasked to women. In The New Brawl, John accuses Doll of drinking away all that he earns in the alehouse, where she ‘quarrels with her neighbors, and so goes to Law, pawnes Gown, Petticoat, Smock and all’ (1654: 4). In The Gossips’ Brawl, another Doll (here a fishwife) accuses the hostess Bess Bunghole of ingratitude after the former rescues the latter from irresponsible spending habits: ‘is this the thanks I have for lending you money to redeem your Husbands cloake, when you had pawned it to be drunk withal[?]’ (1655: 6). The women of The Gossips’ Brawl refer to the lending of clothing, the times that they brought ‘clouts’ (probably rags used to absorb menstrual blood) to each other in ‘the cages’ that functioned as local prisons. The thrifty use and reuse of textiles were quotidian tasks for early modern women of all classes, due not least to the need to make menstrual cloths, which in the early modern period were often simply called ‘rags’ (OED, ‘rag’ n2. 4a). This meaning of the word reinforces the gendered associations of rags themselves as well as long-standing, widespread taboos surrounding menstruation, including its associations with impurity and pollution. The first OED citation under ‘rag’ n2. 4a derives from Richard Field’s Of Church: ‘The Prophet Esay pronounceth, that all our righteousnesse is like the polluted and filthy ragges of a menstruous woman’, a reference to Isaiah 64.6. The New Brawl and The Gossips’ Brawl depict low-status women who do not embody the feminine ideals of chastity, temperance, silence and obedience as outlined in many early modern conduct manuals for women. The alternate title of The Gossips’ Brawl, ‘The Women Wear the Breeches’, refers to an undesirable inversion of traditional gender roles. Frances E. Dolan argues that breeches were an emblem of the ‘economy of scarcity’ in early modern marriages and households, in which ‘mastery is figured as a single pair of pants which only one can wear’ (2008: 3). Both power and material resources were seen as limited: Linda Woodbridge notes that ‘breeches are so predominant a figure for marital

ENGLISH RAG-WOMEN AND EARLY MODERN PAPER

41

sovereignty that it is often hard to tell whether literal or figurative breeches are at issue’ (1984: 217). If actual breeches were indeed at issue in some early modern English marriages, then this might suggest how material scarcity both limited women’s participation in public life (because the single pair of breeches was reserved for the dominant, male partner) and stimulated it: the reality of limited material resources created a viable market for labour like ragcollection. Despite the intended misogyny and classism of the two Brawl plays, they invite us to consider the centrality of early modern women’s low-status labour to the English economy. Of the five named characters to appear in The Gossips’ Brawl, four are working women; the fifth, the tapster Nick, is financially supported by the women’s drinking habits, although at the end of the play the women avoid paying the bill and threaten him with violence. Despite her name, Doll Do-Little of The New Brawl makes a case for the significance of women’s participation in the labour force: ‘Well, well, let men say what they will, tis we women that cause trading, your poor citts [citizens] would be in a failing condition else, did not wee women hold up their occupations.’ Even if the lines are meant to be humorous, the play suggests that there is truth to her assertions: the representations of rag-women and other female labourers in The Gossips’ Brawl and The New Brawl confirm in spite of themselves that early modern English women performed important work throughout society, yet their labour was often unvalued, derided or overlooked. This essay has recovered a few of English rag-women’s many contributions to early modern textual production. References to the international rag trade indicate that English rag-pickers and their Continental counterparts gathered materials that were made into the paper onto which canonical early modern texts were printed. Though historical documents mostly ignore the lowly early modern English rag-picker, an isolated reference in the State Papers to the ‘vagrant woman and girls’ who worked for the papermaker John Spilman in early seventeenth-century Kent hints at a considerable presence of rag-women in the town. We can connect those employed by Spilman and maligned as vagrant thieves to the 1605 publication of Jonson’s Sejanus. In addition to the links between this one edition and the rag-collectors who provided the material from which its paper was made, the imagined connections between

42

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

rag-women and textual production had as much or more influence on the cultural meanings of early modern books. When rag-pickers were evoked in poems, plays, sermons and other prose works of the period, it is worth recognizing that many, perhaps most, of those seemingly ungendered gatherers were in the event women, even though they were frequently defeminized and erased through their menial work. It is worth acknowledging these undervalued women who engaged in labour that, for all its wretchedness, was nevertheless crucial to the production of early modern texts. They gathered the materials from which early modern paper was made and from which books were printed, bound, sold, read and read again in our own time, due in large part to the remarkable endurance of rag paper.8

Notes 1 Lalande explains how the different regions have different names for the ‘first matter’ of rags: ‘En Auvergne on donne le nom de pattes à ces mattieres premieres; ailleurs on les appelle chiffons, vieux linges, vieux drapeaux, guenillons; en quelque endroits du Limousin & du Poitou leur nom est la peille’ (1761: 5). These different regional names inform the various regional names for collectors, as noted above. 2 For a further discussion of rag-picking, see my essay ‘Rags, ragpickers and early modern papermaking’ (2019). 3 Many thanks to Tim Barrett from the Iowa Center for the Book for sharing his expertise about the papermaking process; his online resource, Paper through Time: Nondestructive Analysis of 14ththrough 19th-Century Papers, is an excellent resource on early papermaking. See http://paper.lib.uiowa.edu. Other useful resources include Werner (2019: esp. 26–33) and Gaskell (2007: 57–77). 4 Michael Witmore, Julie Segre and their respective teams from the Folger Shakespeare Library and National Institutes of Health have traced the origins of book bindings to different varieties of livestock and their locations though their DNA; their work is promising for similar work on the origins of paper. See Shakespeare & Beyond (2019). 5 In 1585, Richard Tottel complained about the dominance of French mills and the export of English rags; he accused the French of buying up ‘all our ragges’; bringing in ‘greate aboundaunce of paper’ and undermining local efforts to establish a local paper industry (1585: SP 12/185 f.172).

ENGLISH RAG-WOMEN AND EARLY MODERN PAPER

43

6 Jonathan Senchyne similarly notes that, in Herman Melville’s ‘The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids’ (1866), the women sorting rags in a paper-mill are ‘brutalized and defeminized by the labor’ (2018: 70). 7 The New Brawl and The Gossips’ Brawl were printed after the closure of the theatres in 1642, so it is difficult to say whether they were performed or are closet plays. Their short length (thirteen and eight pages, respectively) could lend itself to amateur or illegal performance. The two Brawl plays were, however, probably written by the same person: they feature many verbal and thematic parallels: a preoccupation with female drunkenness, references to women pawning their clothes to buy alcohol, similar titles and character names and references to the sexual and procreative activities that occur in the ‘cages’ that functioned as local prisons for the poor. These parallels are evident in the following passages: ‘No marvel your whoreship should tell me of a bastard in the cage, when you have lain in with no less than three in the same place yourself; did I not bring you clouts you whore, lend ye money to pay for the washing of your lowly smock, and bring you a posset with a pox to ye, and bread for your whores hide?’ (Gossips’ Brawl 1654: 6). ‘When you lay Inn in the Cage on Towerhill with three Bastards in less than three years; when one brought ye clowts, another a cawdle, and a third a smocke to shift your whores hide’ (New Brawl 1655: 7). 8 The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the Newberry Library, where she researched material for this essay as a short-term fellow; thank you in particular to Jill Gage and Suzanne Karr Schmidt of the Newberry for productive conversations on rags and papermaking.

References Albro, S. (2016), Fabriano: City of Medieval and Renaissance Papermaking, New Castle, Delaware: Oak Knoll Press; Washington, DC: The Library of Congress. Barrett, T. (2018), ‘European Papermaking Techniques 1300–1800’, Paper through Time: Nondestructive Analysis of 14th- through 19th-Century Papers, University of Iowa. Last modified 31 July 2018. Available online: http://paper.lib.uiowa.edu /european.php (accessed 19 August 2018). Bidwell, J. (2002), ‘French Paper in English Books’, in J. Barnard and D. F. McKenzie (eds), The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, Vol. 4 (1557–1695), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 583–601.

44

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

Bock, E. (1926), Alte Berufe Niedersachsens, Hannover: Neudruck der Ausgabe. Buis, A., C. Spain-Savage and M. E. Wright (2015), ‘Attending to Fishwives: Views from Seventeenth-Century London and Amsterdam’, in M. E. Wiesner-Hanks (ed.), Mapping Gendered Routes and Spaces in the Early Modern World, Farnham, Surrey and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 177–202. Burroughs, J. (1649), Two Treatises of Mr. Jeremiah Burroughs, London: Peter Cole. Calhoun, T. O. and T. L. Gravell (1993), ‘Paper and Printing in Ben Jonson’s Sejanus (1605)’, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 87 (1): 13–64. Craig, H. (2019), ‘Rags, ragpickers, and early modern papermaking’, Literature Compass (16): 1–11. Crawford, P. (1993), Women and Religion in England, 1500–1720, London: Routledge. Crawford, P. (2004), Blood, Bodies and Families in Early Modern England, Harlow: Pearson Education. Dolan, F. E. (2008), Marriage and Violence: The Early Modern Legacy, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Gaskell, P. ([1972], 2007), A New Introduction to Bibliography, New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press. Goodcole, H. (1615), Heavens Speedie Hue and Cry, London: N. & I. Okes. The Gossips braule, or the women weare the breeches (1654), London: n.p. De Grazia, M. and P. Stallybrass (1993), ‘The Materiality of the Shakespearean Text’, Shakespeare Quarterly 44 (3): 255–83. Jonson, B. (1605), Sejanus his Fall, London: G. Eld for Thomas Thorpe, Folger Shakespeare Library copy, STC 14782. Jonson, B. (1607), Volpone: or the Foxe, [G. Eld] for Thomas Thorpe. Folger Shakespeare Library STC 14783 copy 1 and copy 2. Korda, N. (2011), Labors Lost: Women’s Work and the Early Modern Stage, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Lalande, J. J. L. (1761), L’Art de faire le papier, Paris: Saillant et Nyon. The New Brawl or, Turnmill-street against Rosemary Lane (1655), London: Nan Quiet. ‘Petition of Inhabitants of cos. Buckingham and Middlesex to the Justices of Peace, the writers of the preceding letter’ (1636–7), Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the reign of Charles I, June 1636– April 1637, preserved in the State Paper Department of Her Majesty’s Public Record Office: SP 16/344 f.76. The National Archives of the UK, State Papers Online. Available online: http://go.galegroup.com. srv-proxy2.library.tamu.edu/mss/i.do?id=GALE|MC4324701821&v=

ENGLISH RAG-WOMEN AND EARLY MODERN PAPER

45

2.1&u=txshracd2898&it=r&p=SPOL&sw=w&viewtype=Calendar (accessed 29 March 2019). Poor Robin’s Character of France (1666), London: n.p. Quevedo, F. (1707), The comical works of Don Francisco de Quevedo, trans. J. Stevens. London: John Morphew. Rider, Sir, W. Lord Mayor, and nine aldermen of London (1601), ‘Sir Wm. Rider, Lord Mayor, and nine aldermen of London, to the Privy Council [May 21 1601]’. In Secretaries of State: State Papers Domestic, Elizabeth I: SP 12/279 f.165. The National Archives of the UK, State Papers Online. Available online: http://go.galegroup.com.srv-proxy2. library.tamu.edu/mss/i.do?id=GALE|MC4304600104&v=2.1&u= txshracd2898&it=r&p=SPOL&sw=w&viewtype=Calendar (accessed 28 March 28 2019). Senchyne, J. (2018), ‘Vibrant Material Textuality: New Materialism, Book History and the Archive in Paper’, Studies in Romanticism 57 (1): 67–85. Shakespeare, W. (2000), The Merry Wives of Windsor, London: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare. Shakespeare, W. (2016), The Merry Wives of Windsor, in G. Taylor, J. Jowett, T. Bourus and G. Egan (gen. eds), The New Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1757–1824. Shakespeare & Beyond (2019), ‘In the News: In Rare Books, CenturiesOld Proteins Can Reveal the Past’, 4 January. Available online: https://shakespeareandbeyond.folger.edu/2019/01/04/new-discoveriesin-rare-books-centuries-old-proteins-can-reveal-the-past/. Smith, C. W. (2013), Women, Work, and Clothes in the EighteenthCentury Novel, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Smith, H. (2017), ‘ “A unique instance of art”: The Proliferating Surfaces of Early Modern Paper’, Journal of the Northern Renaissance (8): 1–53. Taylor. J. (1639), A Iuniper Lecture With the description of all sorts of women, good, and bad, London: I. O. for William Ley. Tottel, R. (1585), ‘Richard Tottyll to [Lord Burghley?]. Details his endeavors to introduce the art of papermaking in England, by the erection of a paper mill, which was impeded by the French manufacturers, who bought up all the English rags.’ In Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the Reign of Elizabeth, 1581–1590: SP 12/185 f.172. The National Archives of the UK, State Papers Online. Available online: http://go.galegroup.com.srv-proxy2.library. tamu.edu/mss/i.do?id=GALE|MC4304202918&v=2.1&u=txshracd 2898&it=r&p=SPOL&sw=w&viewtype=Calendar (accessed 26 March 2019).

46

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

Visits from Shades (1704), London: n.p. Werner, S. (2019), Studying Early Printed Books, 1450–1800: A Practical Guide, Hoboken: Wiley and Sons. Wilmot, J., Earl of Rochester (1962), ‘A Ramble in St James’s Park’, in D. M. Vieth (ed.), The Complete Poems of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, New Haven: Yale University Press. Woodbridge, L. (1984), Women and the English Renaissance: Literature and the Nature of Womankind, 1540–1620, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

3 Widow publishers in London, 1540–1640 Alan B. Farmer

In 1634, the ninth edition of Jean Calvin’s The Institution of Christian Religion (STC 4425) became available for sale in London bookshops. The edition was published by Joyce Norton and Richard Whitaker, two booksellers who jointly operated the King’s Arms bookshop in St Paul’s Churchyard and who regularly published together. The volume had been printed by Anne Griffin, one of two printers who owned the printing house at Eliot’s Court, which was located in the Little Old Bailey just outside Newgate. This translation of Calvin’s Institutio Christianae Religionis had originally been printed in London in 1561, but when Norton and Whitaker decided to bring out a new edition, it had not been published since 1611. At 232 edition-sheets, the volume would have been among the longest books available for sale in bookshops. It represented a significant print job for Griffin, a sizeable investment for Norton and Whitaker and an expensive purchase for book buyers. Although it had been printed eight times previously, deciding to republish it in 1634, after a hiatus of over two decades, was riskier than many reprints would have been. If it failed to find a ready audience among readers, Norton and Whitaker stood to lose a lot of money. What makes this edition particularly noteworthy is the collaboration of Anne Griffin and Joyce Norton, two widow stationers (see Figure  3.1). Griffin’s husband had died in 1621, 47

48

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

FIGURE 3.1 Title-page imprint for Jean Calvin, The Institution of Christian Religion (1634), STC 4425. Used by permission of the Harry Ransom Center, the University of Texas at Austin, call number BX 9420 I65 1634 Copy 1.

leaving her with more than £800 in debts she had to take on, whereas Norton’s husband, John Norton 1, had died in 1612 as one of the richest and most powerful stationers in London.1 When Griffin and Norton chose to work together, it marked only the second time in the recorded history of the London book trade that two widow stationers had collaborated in the production of a new edition, and it marked the beginning of a five-year period, from 1634 to 1638, in which widow printers and booksellers worked together with unprecedented frequency.2 The emergence of this network of widow stationers has never before been noted by scholars. In order to understand why this network is so remarkable, it is necessary to look at the longer history of women publishing in the London book trade during the preceding century, from 1540 to 1640. My attempt to trace this longer history is indebted to the pioneering work of Maureen Bell and especially Helen Smith, whose foundational study of women in the English book trade, ‘Grossly Material Things’: Women and Book Production in Early Modern England (2012), demonstrates the extent to which women were enmeshed in the day-to-day activities of the sixteenth- and

WIDOW PUBLISHERS IN LONDON, 1540–1640

49

seventeenth-century London book trade. Despite the impressive scope of her research, however, Smith admits that ‘The extent of women’s business engagements is difficult to determine’ (2012: 90). She is right – it can indeed be challenging to determine both the precise arrangements underlying the publication of an edition and even the terms that should be used to describe women stationers and publishing in this period. Nevertheless, that is exactly what this essay aims to do. The term ‘widow’ acknowledges that all of the women who have been identified as publishers appeared in the imprints of books only after the deaths of their husbands.3 Focusing on imprints, though, occludes the fact that before their husbands died, and after the women remarried (if they did remarry), stationers’ wives were routinely involved in the printing, publishing and selling of books. As a result, looking only at the editions published by women when they were widows does not account for earlier and later books they may have helped to publish without being named in an imprint.4 This essay is also concerned only with stationers in the London book trade, even though there were women on the Continent and elsewhere in the British Isles who were printing and publishing books intended for sale in the English market. The terms ‘publisher’ and ‘publish’ are likewise vexed. Although the words were in use in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, ‘publisher’ and ‘publish’ did not describe a separate profession within the early modern book trade, as they do now. Rather, ‘publishers’ were those stationers who decided to incur the costs that came with printing and selling an edition, in the hopes that readers would buy enough copies of the resulting printed volume for it to be a profitable investment. In the end, it was publishers who had the most to gain or lose from the sales of an edition, which is why they are the central focus of this essay.5 Despite the challenges that come with researching widow publishers, it is possible to begin to determine the kinds of business engagements they pursued. The information listed in the imprints of early modern books, which typically identify some combination of an edition’s printer, publisher and wholesaling bookseller, combined with the information found in records from the Stationers’ Registers, from the Court of the Stationers’ Company, and from other documentary sources, provide enough evidence to begin to piece together the careers of early modern stationers, both women and

50

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

men. The careers of women stationers do present some specific challenges, as I discuss later, but the surviving records nonetheless allow us to analyse the careers and economic decisions of widow publishers. Doing so allows us to consider such questions as: How many editions did widow stationers publish? What kinds of books did they tend to bring out? What strategies do they seem to have pursued in their publications? Who were the other stationers with whom they typically worked? These are questions that scholars have not yet attempted to explore comprehensively, which helps to explain why the emergence of collaborating widow stationers in the mid-1630s has been overlooked. Rather than dissect every decision that each individual stationer made, therefore, this essay attempts to provide an overview of various approaches to publishing that widow stationers pursued. My goal is not only to identify what kinds of books widow stationers published and why, but also to come to a better understanding of the place of widows within the larger economy of the early modern London book trade.

Wealth and riches: Marriage and stationer widows Previous studies of women stationers have usually been built on popular (and misogynistic) myths about widows that have circulated for well over a century. Arguably the most influential account of widow stationers was put forward by Edward Arber in 1894. In the introduction to the fifth and final volume of his monumental Transcript of the Stationers’ Registers, Arber attempts ‘to trace the career of a London stationer from his boyhood to his death’ (1875–94: 5.xxix). A pressing challenge that a young stationer would have faced, according to Arber, was the difficulty of acquiring a printing house. The number of printing houses was regulated by the crown and by the Stationers’ Company, so if a stationer wished to ‘come to a printing business of his own’, his avenues for doing so were limited. Arber thus suggested that an apprentice could marry the daughter of the master printer for whom he worked, and thereby ‘succeed his Master’,6 but if that did not work out, the young stationer could opt to ‘marry a Printer’s Widow’:

WIDOW PUBLISHERS IN LONDON, 1540–1640

51

It must have been a lively time among eligible young Printers when it was known that a master Printer was dying. Whom would the Widow take next? Every man must have calculated his chances with her. There are not wanting instances . . . of a Widow having three husbands in succession. 5.xxix This passage has had an extraordinarily long-lasting influence. As Sarah Neville recounts in her essay in this volume, a version of it appears in Henry Plomer’s introduction to his edition of wills of English stationers. But it has also been repeated in the most important studies of women stationers, including those by Pearl Hogrefe, who surmises that ‘even the ugliest and most vile-tempered woman in London could have found an ambitious man ready to take her – and her print shop’ (1975: 49), by Maureen Bell, who makes the more tempered observation that ‘Many men did, indeed, acquire businesses through marriage’ (1996: 14), and by Helen Smith, who explains that ‘marriage to a master printer’s widow was a desirable mechanism by which a printer might ascend from the ranks of apprentices and journeymen, and widows were “highly sought-after commodities on the marriage market” ’ (2012: 107).7 In this narrative, widow stationers were prized for the property they owned and for their ability to advance the careers of their second (and third) husbands. But the fundamental problem with this story is that very few stationers – and no apprentices – became master printers by marrying a widow. Through 1640, 184 men are known to have owned a printing house either independently or partially. Only eleven of these master printers acquired their printing business by marrying a widow: none before 1547; two from 1547 to 1556, one of whom was not a stationer and never identified himself as a printer;8 nine from 1576 to 1604;9 and then none afterwards until 1642. The narrative put forward by Arber, and by those who have followed his lead, mischaracterizes a rare event as one that was supposedly common. Very few men, and even fewer young men, acquired printing businesses by marrying a widow. Stationers who became master printers overwhelmingly did so by purchasing a printing house and its equipment or by inheriting them, either directly from the previous owner or through his widow. And what was rare among printers was even

52

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

more unusual among booksellers. The STC lists close to 650 booksellers active in London through 1640; only five of those are known to have obtained a bookshop by marrying a bookseller’s widow.10 Because this narrative about men often obtaining printing houses by marrying widows is wrong, scholars have misunderstood why these widows probably chose to remarry other stationers. It seems less the case that the widows of printers were considered ‘rich matrimonial prizes’ (Plomer 1903: iv) than that remarriage enabled widow printers to remain active in the book trade and to continue to be involved in running a printing house. There are two main pieces of evidence underlying this claim. First, relatively few widows of printers are known to have printed or published an edition following the death of their husband, only sixteen in total through 1640.11 Most widows of printers instead appear to have left the trade. Second, those sixteen widow printers include almost all of the printers’ widows who remarried other stationers and thereby advanced their new husband to the position of a master printer: Margery Berthelet, Alice Charlewood, Elizabeth Middleton, Joan Robinson Orwin, Emma Short, Frances Simson and Jacqueline Vautrollier. Only two widows who ‘came with a printing house’ when they remarried another stationer, the widows of Robert Robinson and Thomas Colwell, did so without also having printed an edition while unmarried (at least so far as bibliographers have been able to determine). Those widow printers who remarried other stationers are thus almost always among the women who printed and published editions themselves. This group also includes two of the widows famous for having ‘three husbands in succession’: Joan Orwin, who was married to John Kingston, to George Robinson and then to Thomas Orwin, and Frances Simson, who was married to Gabriel Simson, to Richard Read and finally to George Eld. Both of these widows, it turns out, worked as master printers after the deaths of a husband, or, in the case of Joan Orwin, after the deaths of two husbands.12 The few marriages that resulted in a stationer acquiring a printing house, therefore, seem as if they came about more by the desire of several widows to remain printers rather than by the ambition of ‘many men’ to become master printers.13 Widow printers, moreover, did not inevitably marry young men. When Alice Charlewood married James Roberts, and Emma Short

WIDOW PUBLISHERS IN LONDON, 1540–1640

53

married Humphrey Lownes 1, both Roberts and Lownes were already well established as booksellers. They were not young men looking to get ahead through an advantageous marriage; Roberts was around fifty-three years old and Lownes around forty-one. Nor was Richard Bradock young; he was probably forty-five when he married the widow of Robert Robinson. Frances Simson’s second husband, Richard Read, was probably forty-five when they married and was three years older than her first husband, Gabriel Simson. Likewise, only one bookseller widow is known to have married three stationers successively: Alice Waterson, whose first husband was Richard Waterson. When she remarried, it was to older men who had long been stationers, Francis Coldock (probably fifty years old) and Isaac Bing (probably fifty-five), neither of whom took over the bookshop of her previous husband. A related, and even more misleading narrative, concerns the prevalence of widows marrying former apprentices, which, following generations of earlier scholars, Bell calls ‘not uncommon’ (1996: 14) and Smith refers to as ‘a common pattern’ (2003: 178). This type of marriage almost never happened. I have found only four examples before 1640, by which point more than 3,000 apprentices had been freed by the Stationers’ Company.14 Simply put, marrying a stationer’s widow in order to get ahead in the London book trade was unusual and infrequent. The narrative of a ‘lively’ competition among ‘eligible young Printers’ comes out of a fantasy of lusty widows being pursued for their wealth, a fantasy that also animated the notorious misogynist Joseph Swetnam in 1615, when he wrote: ‘It is seldome or neuer seene that a man marrieth with a widowe for her beauty nor for her personage, but only for her wealth and riches’ (1615: sig. I2r).15 As does Swetnam, Arber relies on the assumption that a printer’s widow was desirable solely for her ‘wealth and riches’. Not only does this characterization of widows reduce them to mere vehicles in the transfer of property between men, but it also obscures their own agency, both in deciding when and whom to remarry and in choosing to continue to be involved in the book trade. The infrequency with which men acquired printing houses and bookshops by marrying widows argues against the belief that these marriages were motivated by the ‘wealth and riches’ of the widows. Instead, these marriages seem to testify to the desire of a few widows to continue in the book trade.

54

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

Two kinds of publishers: Conservative and entrepreneurial If we put aside the narrative of frisky widows enticing eligible young stationers with promises of printing houses and bookshops, then how else might we think about widow publishers? When a widow’s husband died, she had to decide whether to remain active in the book trade, which meant deciding whether to continue to run the printing house or bookshop she and her deceased partner had previously operated. On the one hand, she had the opportunity to exercise greater independence, but that also meant doing so without her former business partner. And it turns out that few stationer widows did choose to stay in the trade, at least insofar as the surviving records indicate. As can be seen in Appendix 3.1, most widow stationers were active as printers or booksellers only briefly, usually for a year or two.16 The actual careers of some widow stationers may have been a bit longer, especially if they were booksellers who ceased to publish new editions but continued to own a bookshop, but very few widows had long careers as stationers.17 If they did decide to remain in the book trade, they could then weigh whether they wanted to publish an edition. From 1540 to 1640, fifty-one widows did, and most of these published only a few editions, usually one to three.18 Altogether, widow stationers in London published or sold around 400 speculative editions from 1540 to 1640, which represents about 1.4 per cent of all the surviving editions published by London stationers in this period.19 Despite their short careers, at least as widows, these women stationers should not be seen as ‘passive figures’ or as merely ‘nominal owners’ of printing houses or bookshops, as has sometimes been suggested, a point also stressed by Bell (1996: 13, 19–20) and Smith (2012: 87–134). Publishing any work meant having the ability to finance an edition and having the acumen to assess whether there would be enough interest among book buyers to justify printing around 750–1,500 new copies of a work. Even an apparently safe reprint entailed the risk of the edition selling poorly, a risk faced by Joyce Norton and Richard Whitaker in 1634 when they republished Calvin’s The Institution of Christian Religion. This risk would have been magnified by the death of a husband,

WIDOW PUBLISHERS IN LONDON, 1540–1640

55

who had previously shared the responsibilities of running the printing or bookselling business. Publishing stationers, moreover, were a relatively uncommon demographic within the larger book trade, once the many other unnamed figures who worked in printing houses, in book shops, in warehouses, in bookbinderies, in the regional book trade and as itinerant hawkers are taken into account. Most apprentices freed by stationers, for example, never became printers or booksellers with their own business, much less ones with enough resources and enough connections to publish an edition. Those editions published by widow stationers testify to their relative prominence in the book trade, both their economic status and their knowledge of the trade. Widows’ understanding of the demand for books can be seen in the types of works they published. Publications by widows generally look like those that were being brought out in the rest of the English book trade.20 Where widows were distinctive, however, was in the steps they took to minimize the risk they faced in bringing out a new edition. Most widows favoured publishing works that were likely to sell well instead of taking chances on risky, unknown titles, which sounds like an obvious choice but in fact illustrates a shrewd approach to publishing. (These widows are identified in Appendix 3.1 as ‘conservative’.) Widows tended to bring out fewer editions than their husbands had, and the titles they did publish were often reprints of works that had been published previously by their deceased husbands.21 This approach was smart. Whereas about 20 per cent of first editions were reprinted within twenty years, the reprint rate for second-plus editions was much higher, around 75 per cent, so publishing reprints was almost always a safer choice than bringing out a work that had never before been tested with readers.22 Widow stationers also frequently shared the investment in a new edition with another stationer, someone who either co-published it with her or acted as the wholesaler (or for whom she acted as the wholesaler); over one-quarter of extant editions published by widows involved at least one other stationer as a publisher or a bookseller.23 Joyce Norton, for instance, always published with Richard Whitaker, as Hannah Barrett had done earlier in the 1620s. Joan Newbery 2 often used Samuel Enderby to wholesale the books she published, while both Anne Vincent and Katherine Vincent always teamed up with a bookseller to wholesale their editions. The printers Elizabeth Allde, Mary Dawson, Anne Griffin and Elizabeth

56

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

Purslowe likewise regularly employed booksellers to wholesale the editions they published. Focusing on reprints and collaborating with other stationers were not distinctive to widows – male stationers used these methods, too – but they were used often enough by widows to suggest they were part of a deliberate strategy to lessen the risks associated with publishing. The widow stationer who perhaps best exemplifies this conservative approach is Joyce Macham, one of the most active widow publishers in this period, who brought out twenty-two editions from 1615 to 1625, or about two per year. Her deceased husband, Samuel Macham 1, had published about six editions per year before he died in 1615, so her rate of publication was clearly less than his. She focused exclusively on republishing a handful of works that her husband had brought out, each of which can plausibly be called a best-seller: a religious treatise by John Brinsley, a sermon by Samuel Ward, a religious treatise by William Bradshaw and three works by Samuel Hieron: a catechism, a prayer book, and a collection of sermons. Further, Macham predominately worked with three printers, two of whom had earlier printed books for her husband (Edward Griffin 1 and Humphrey Lownes 1). The third was John Beale, whom she used most often (fourteen editions). Although her husband had never worked with Beale, he did use William Hall and John Pindley as printers, each of whom had been business partners with Beale from 1611 to 1613. Overall, Macham was a particularly active widow publisher, but a very conservative one, specializing in reprints of best-sellers her husband had brought out and frequently working with the same printers and printing houses that her husband had used. This type of conservatism was a judicious approach to publishing. Being a widow had certain advantages, as Macham surely recognized. Widows could inherit the right to publish lucrative titles, rather than having to pay to acquire them. They could also continue to use stationer networks that they and their deceased husbands had set up earlier. And in reprinting the same works and using the same networks, widows could maintain the same identity for their printing house or bookshop. Compared to a stationer at the beginning of his career, widow stationers occupied an enviable position within the book trade, a position that some widows found advantageous. And, of course, the type of continuity seen in the career of Macham also suggests that she may have played a central

WIDOW PUBLISHERS IN LONDON, 1540–1640

57

role in selecting the titles and the printers for those editions that list only her husband in their imprints. Not all widow stationers, however, were quite so conservative in their publishing. A few used an entrepreneurial approach, in which they published more frequently than their husband had, brought out new works by different authors, and worked with different groups of stationers. There were fewer of these entrepreneurial publishers, but they include some of the most active widows in the book trade: Elizabeth Adams, Hannah Barrett, Anne Boler, Joan Broome, Anne Griffin, Anne Helme, Katherine Herford, Joan Butter Newbery 1, Elizabeth Toy and Margery Trundle. Joan Broome is arguably the paradigmatic entrepreneurial stationer. She published seventeen editions from 1591 to 1601, a much higher rate of publication than her husband, William Broome; in the last five years of his career, William brought out only three editions, two immediately before his death in February 1591. Joan Broome, in addition, was the wholesaler for twenty-one editions, usually as the London distributor for editions published in Oxford by Joseph Barnes. None of the books she published had been associated with her husband, nor did she use any of the printers her husband had. She was a conspicuously more active publisher than her husband had been, which extended to setting up a new network of stationers separate from the ones her husband had used.

Widow stationers in the 1630s The most prolific widow publisher from 1540 to 1640 was Anne Griffin, who brought out a total of sixty-eight editions from 1622 to 1640. Like Broome, Griffin had an entrepreneurial approach to publishing, but her career also captures some of the complexities that come with reconstructing the business engagements of widow stationers. In the first phase of her career, from 1621 to 1632, she was a silent partner in the publishing and printing of editions with John Haviland. Griffin initially took on Haviland as a business partner in 1621 at the Eliot’s Court Press because of the debts she had to assume when her husband died. Although the STC is understandably cautious in stating that Griffin began printing in 1633 – she was never named in the imprint of any book before then – she was almost certainly involved in printing from the

58

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

moment she assumed control of the Eliot’s Court Press, as multiple records from the period attest.24 Among the most compelling pieces of evidence is an entrance in the Stationers’ Registers on 15 January 1629, in which Haviland transferred a title to George Edwards 2, provided that the work and another title already owned by Edwards ‘shall be allwaies printed by the said Master Havilond and mistress Griffin and the longer liver of them’ (Arber 1875–94: 4.207). This entry would make little sense if Griffin were not already an experienced printer. But if that is the case, then why does only Haviland’s name appear in imprints before 1633? It seems likely that they were using his name to stand in for both of them, as a way of identifying their shared printing business, a practice other stationers also followed. As M. A. Shaaber observed in 1944, when two stationers were partners in the same printing house or bookshop, often only one would be named in an imprint, leading him to conclude, ‘it can hardly be doubted that the imprint is the signature of the partnership even though only one partner is named’ (123). And, in fact, Haviland’s name was not invariably used in imprints. More than 150 editions published from 1621 to 1632 are identified in the STC as having been entirely or partially printed at the Eliot’s Court Press with neither Haviland nor Griffin being named in their imprint, and there is every reason to suppose that Griffin was involved in printing many of these volumes. In addition to printing in this period, Griffin published several works as a silent partner with Haviland. These editions resulted from titles that they entered together in the Stationers’ Registers, but when the works were printed, only Haviland was named in the imprint. Griffin published seventeen such ‘silent editions’ with Haviland from 1622 to 1634.25 This same kind of arrangement would lead her to bring out a further eight silent editions from 1638 to 1640, when she partnered both with her son, Edward Griffin 2, and with the printer Richard Bishop. As before, she entered the titles, but when the works were published, only Edward or Bishop was named in the imprint, not her. She was also certainly printing during this period, too, and she undoubtedly published many editions that are now lost, that is, editions for which there are no surviving copies, many of which were single-leaf ballads.26 Lost editions are, of course, endemic to the early modern book trade, the records for which, like all historical evidence, are incomplete and

WIDOW PUBLISHERS IN LONDON, 1540–1640

59

somewhat messy. The evidence found in the imprints of editions that do survive, therefore, needs to be interpreted with some awareness of their limitations, in terms of both what they reveal and what they obscure. The intractable problem of lost editions and the existence of silent editions, however, should not lead to the mistaken belief that ‘The evidence of imprints . . . is unreliable’ (Smith 2012: 100). The information found in any imprint did not necessarily provide all the details of who was involved in a book’s printing, publication or wholesaling, but the early modern English book trade depended on imprints to provide reliable information – to other stationers, to readers and to the government – about who printed, published and sold that book. What lost editions and silent editions demonstrate is that other forms of documentary evidence can occasionally supplement what is reported in imprints, not that imprints themselves are fictitious and untrustworthy.27 Besides publishing more editions than any other widow, Griffin was instrumental in the formation of a loose network of widows who printed and published together from 1634 to 1638. Before this period, widow stationers had only once or twice joined together in the publication of an edition.28 During these five years, though, widows regularly did so. Widow printers were hiring widow booksellers to distribute volumes the printers had published, while at the same time widow booksellers were hiring widow printers to produce the editions the booksellers had decided to bring out. This network was composed of the printers Mary Dawson, Anne Griffin and Elizabeth Purslowe (but not Elizabeth Allde), and the booksellers Anne Boler, Anne Moore, Joan Newbery 2, Joyce Norton, Anne Vincent and Joan Man (but not Mary Allott). All together, they collaborated in the publication of twenty-six editions from 1634 to 1638, eighteen of which involved Griffin.29 The degree of their collaboration is striking. Joyce Norton and Richard Whitaker hired Anne Griffin to print ten editions and her son Edward Griffin 2 to print another two, more than half the editions Norton and Whitaker brought out during these five years. Joan Newbery 2 hired the widows Dawson, Griffin and Purslowe to print six of the seven editions she published, with the seventh printed by the son of Mary Dawson. Eight of the fourteen editions published or sold by Anne Boler were printed by Griffin, Dawson or Purslowe, plus two more by Edward Griffin 2. And half of the editions published or sold by Anne Vincent and Anne Moore were printed by Griffin or Dawson.30

60

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

There had never before been this degree of collaboration among widow printers and booksellers. One reason this kind of collaboration was possible is that more widow stationers were active in the London book trade than ever before, an average of eight per year from 1634 to 1638 (compared to three to five per year in earlier decades). Corresponding to this increase in widow publishers was an increase in the total number of editions they published. The 1630s saw the greatest number of editions published by widow stationers, both in absolute terms – 126 extant editions from 1630 to 1640 – and as a percentage of the overall London book trade. From the 1580s to the 1620s, widows published a little more than 1 per cent of all the editions brought out by London stationers, but that figure rose to 5.5 per cent of London editions from 1634 to 1638, and to 7.8 per cent just in 1636 and 1637, evidence that widow publishers were becoming a clear economic force in the book trade. The increased prevalence of widows, nonetheless, does not explain why they began to collaborate. While it is impossible to know with absolute certainty what led them to begin working together, it must be the case that these widows found it to their economic and/or social advantage to collaborate, that doing so in some way furthered their publishing efforts. Let me end by explaining why this was the case. According to the STC, there were on average around 200 stationers per year who owned printing houses or bookshops in London during the 1630s, so this network of widow stationers was by no means inevitable. There were lots of others stationers with whom each widow could have chosen to print, publish and sell books. Nor do these widows appear to have been bound by distinct ideological or religious ties. Anne Boler and Anne Griffin were publishing the future royalists Richard Baker and Thomas Bedford, among other potentially royalist works. But Griffin was also linked to the printing of two works that ran afoul of ecclesiastical press licensers because of their supposed links to radical Puritanism: Thomas Becon’s The Displaying of the Popish Masse (STC 1719) and John Williams’s The Holy Table, Name and Thing, seven editions of which were surreptitiously printed in 1637 (Smith 2012: 118–19). Joan Newbery 2 was overtly specializing in editions of godly authors such as Paul Baynes, Clement Cotton and John Rogers. Religion therefore does not evidently link these widow stationers together. Nor does their geographical location. These

WIDOW PUBLISHERS IN LONDON, 1540–1640

61

widows were spread out across London and were not clustered together in a single neighbourhood, which might in theory have led them to work together more easily. Nor did these widows tend to work with the same male stationers; they were not members of a larger group of stationers who regularly printed and published together. Finally, the deceased husbands of these widows had not typically worked together when they were alive. Without a clear political or religious ideology bringing them together, nor a common geographical location, nor a larger community of male stationers, nor pre-existing relationships already established by their deceased husbands, these widow printers and widow booksellers seem to have decided to collaborate because of their shared social and economic identity as widow stationers. Widow booksellers wanted to hire widow printers to produce editions for them, and widow printers, in turn, wanted to have widow booksellers distribute the editions they themselves published. It has been argued that ‘sex is unlikely to have been the most significant category of identity’ for female stationers in the early modern period (Smith 2012: 91), and they did not have ‘selfconsciously female’ group identity (Smith 2003: 178). For most of 1540 to 1640, this statement is true. But in the mid-1630s, at least for a brief period, widows do seem to have begun to develop this sort of economic group identity, during the same time that widow stationers were publishing more and more editions, thereby moving from the margins of the trade to a more central position. Ultimately, the editions produced by this network of widows in the 1630s offers us a more compelling way to understand their place in the London book trade. Far from being the targets of ambitious young male stationers looking to acquire printing houses and bookshops, these widows instead came to view one another as the best way to further their own publishing careers.31

62

Appendix 3.1: Widow publishers in the Stationers’ Company of London, 1540–1640 Editions Published or Sold Widow Stationers

Type of Stationer

Years Active*

Total Editions

Named in Imprint

Silent Editions

Adams, Elizabeth

Bookseller

1620–5

2

2

(1?)

Allde, Elizabeth

Printer

1627–36†

18

18

Allde, Margaret

Bookseller

1584?–1603

4

3

(1?)

Allott, Mary

Bookseller

1635–6

6

3

3

Barrett, Hannah

Bookseller

1624–6

10

9

Bishop, Elizabeth

Bookseller

1618–20

4

2

2

Conservative

Boler, Anne

Bookseller

1635–8†

14

12

2

Entrepreneurial

1591–1601†

38

17

21

Entrepreneurial

Broome, Joan Bookseller

Probable Lost Editions

Publishing Strategy Entrepreneurial Conservative

1

Conservative Conservative

1

Entrepreneurial

Browne, Alice Bookseller

1622–5

2

2

Conservative

Burby, Elizabeth

Bookseller

1607–9

12

12

Conservative

Charlewood, Alice

Printer

1593

2

2

Conservative

Cooke, Joan

Bookseller

1607–8

2

Dawson, Mary

Printer

1634–7

7

7

Conservative

East, Lucretia Bookseller

1608–10 (1631†)

1

1

Conservative

Fairbeard, Sarah

1636

1

1

Conservative

Gosson, Alice Bookseller

1599(?)–1622 2

1

Greene, Joan

Bookseller

1630–4

2

2

Griffin, Anne

Printer

1621–46

68

19

25

Helme, Anne

Bookseller

1616–27

9

7

2

Bookseller

2

Conservative

1

Conservative Conservative 24

Entrepreneurial Entrepreneurial

63

64

Editions Published or Sold Widow Stationers

Type of Stationer

Years Active*

Total Editions

Named in Imprint

Herford, Katherine

Printer

1549?–50

3

3

Jaggard, Dorothy

Printer

1627

1

Jaggard, Elizabeth

Bookseller

1623–6

3

2

Jugge, Joan

Printer

1577–88†

4

3

Macham, Joyce

Bookseller

1615–28

22

21

Man, Joan, assignees of

Publisher

1635–7

7

7

Middleton, Elizabeth

Printer

1555–6

2

Middleton, Jane

Publisher

1587–8 (1589)

1

Silent Editions

Probable Lost Editions

Entrepreneurial 1

Conservative 1

1

Conservative Conservative

1

Conservative Conservative

2 1

Publishing Strategy

Conservative Conservative

Millington, Joan

Bookseller

1603–4

1

1

Moore, Anne Bookseller

1633–6

3

2

Newbery, Joan 2

1636–8 (1658†?)

7

7

1590–4, 1603–17 at least

5

3

1593–4

2

2

Conservative

Bookseller

Newbery, Bookseller Joan Butter 1 Newman, E. (widow of Thomas Newman)

Bookseller

Conservative 1

Conservative Conservative 2

Entrepreneurial

Norton, Joyce Bookseller

1632–8 (1642) 27

27

Conservative

Oliver, Mary

Printseller

1609

1

unknown

Orwin, Joan Robinson

Printer

1587, 1593–7 11 (1605)

11

Conservative

1592–3

1

Conservative

Perrin, Widow Bookseller

1

1

65

66

Editions Published or Sold Widow Stationers

Type of Stationer

Years Active*

Total Editions

Named in Imprint

Silent Editions

Pickering Redman, Elizabeth

Printer

1540–1

14

10

4

Purslowe, Elizabeth

Printer

1632–46

11

10

Short, Emma

Printer

1603–4

3

3

Conservative

Taunton, Sarah

Bookseller

1638

1

1

Conservative

Toy, Elizabeth Bookseller

1556–9 (1565†)

32

Trundle, Margery

Bookseller

1626–9†

7

Vautrollier, Jacqueline

Printer

1587–8

2

1633–7

5

Vincent, Anne Publisher

Probable Lost Editions

Conservative

1

2

30

7

Conservative

Entrepreneurial Entrepreneurial

2 2

Publishing Strategy

Conservative 3

Conservative

Vincent, Katherine

Publisher

1617–18

1

1

Conservative

White, Sara

Bookseller

1613–15†

8

4

Wilson, Anne Bookseller

1639–40

1

1

Wolfe, Alice

Publisher

1601–12 (1618?†)

1

Wolfe, Joan

Bookseller

1573–4†

1

1

Conservative

Woutneel, Widow

Bookseller

1608

1

1

Conservative

Yetsweirt, Jane

PrinterPatentee

1595–7

12

12

Conservative

4

Conservative Conservative

1

Conservative

* The ‘Years Active’ of these stationers derives from volume 3 of the STC, but in several cases I have moved their first year earlier to correspond with the death of a husband, when a widow stationer would have assumed control of a printing house or bookshop. Final years in parentheses refer to records, including deaths, that suggest a widow may have continued in the trade after the final year listed in the STC. I have corrected the STC’s final year of Anne Griffin’s career to match the date of her final publications in 1646.

67

68

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

Notes 1

Arber 1875–94: 3.704; Plomer 1903: 45–7; Barnard 2002: 400–1. Unless otherwise noted, all of the biographical information on stationers in this essay derives from volume 3 of the STC, including the spelling of their names and their designation as 1 or 2, e.g. John Norton 1.

2

The only previous instance occurred almost four decades earlier, in 1596, when Joan Orwin printed a book for Joan Broome (STC 25082). Another edition from 1596 (STC 23670) was printed by Orwin and sold by Broome, but it was published by Richard Ockould, who likely organized the edition’s printing and distribution.

3

See also Smith 2012: 102. The only exception is Mary Oliver, about whom nothing is known.

4

See Sarah Neville’s essay in this volume; Bell 1996: 15, 17; Smith 2012: 109–14.

5

For a lucid overview of the terms ‘printer’, ‘publisher’, (wholesale) ‘distributor’ and (retail) ‘bookseller’, see Blayney 2013: 30–2.

6

It is worth pointing out that no stationer succeeded to a printing house by marrying the daughter of a master printer. The sole example mentioned by Arber, Richard Field marrying Jacqueline Vautrollier, was predicated on his erroneous belief that she was Thomas Vautrollier’s daughter, whereas she was actually his wife.

7

The phrase in quotation marks in the passage from Smith 2012 appears in Korda 2004, a different essay from the one mistakenly cited by Smith (I thank Helen Smith for this clarification). Korda’s essay does not specifically discuss widow printers or stationers.

8

William Powell married Elizabeth Middleton (c. 1547) (Blayney 2013: 613–14), and Richard Payne married Margery Berthelet (1556). On Payne’s complicated career as a printer, which involved his using ‘front men’ for his printing business, see Blayney 2013: 788–93.

9

Hugh Jackson married the widow of Thomas Colwell (c. 1576); George Robinson married Joan Kingston (c. 1585), and then Thomas Orwin married her (1587); Richard Field married Jacqueline Vautrollier (1589); James Roberts married Alice Charlewood (1593); Richard Bradock married the widow of Robert Robinson (c. 1598); Richard Read married Frances Simson (c. 1601), and then George Eld married her (c. 1604); and Humphrey Lownes 1 married Emma Short (c. 1604).

10 Laurence Lisle married Joan Cooke (c. 1608); Richard Whitaker married Anne Norton (c. 1619); Henry Overton married Elizabeth

WIDOW PUBLISHERS IN LONDON, 1540–1640

69

Sheffard (1629); Joseph Hurlock married Elizabeth Tapp (c. 1631); and Nicholas Vavasour married Alice Becket (1633). In addition, Edward Gosson married the widow of John Surbut (1612) and took over his yeomanry share, but it is not clear if he took over Surbut’s bookshop (Jackson 1957: 55). 11 See the fourteen widow printers listed in Appendix 3.1, to which can be added Margery Berthelet and Frances Simson, both of whom are known to have printed books but not to have published any editions. Alice Norton could perhaps be added, too. Her first husband, John Norton 2, died some time in 1640, and although her initials would not appear in imprints until 1641, she may have started printing in late 1640. 12 She printed one edition as ‘viduae Georgii Robinsoni’ (‘the widow of George Robinson’) (STC 5266.5). 13 I do not mean to discount other reasons these widows may have chosen to remarry, such as love and affection. But whatever else may have drawn these couples together, remarrying stationers enabled these widows to maintain their connection to a printing house (see also Smith 2012: 107). 14 Joan Kingston married George Robinson (c. 1585); Jacqueline Vautrollier married Richard Field (1589); the widow of Manassas Blond married George Edwards 1 (1608), without Edwards taking over Blond’s shop; and Elizabeth Sheffard married Henry Overton (1629). For the total number of apprentices, see Arber 1875–94; McKenzie 1961. It has sometimes been claimed that Alice Charlewood married one of her husband’s former apprentices, James Roberts, in 1593. Roberts, however, had not been an apprentice of John Charlewood’s. Roberts was freed by the Stationers’ Company in June 1564 (Arber 1875–94: 1.240), whereas Charlewood was still a member of the Grocers’ Company that year and would not be translated to the Stationers’ Company until c. 1574 (Arber 1875–94: 2.85). Any apprentice freed by Charlewood before 1574 would therefore have been a Grocer, not a Stationer. 15 On the various myths surrounding early modern widows, see also Carlton 1978. 16 See also Hogrefe 1975: 48; Bell 1996: 16; Smith 2012: 90. 17 Among all London stationers whose careers began between 1540 and 1640, about 20 per cent are identified in the STC as having been active for one or two years. Short careers were more common among widows, but they were hardly unusual among men. 18 I am conflating here both widows for whom an edition was printed and those by whom it was to be sold, i.e. both publishers and

70

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

wholesaler distributors since both roles entailed taking on a degree of economic risk connected to the sales of an edition. The total number of widow publishers does not include several women listed in the STC who were not stationers or never published an edition, including Margaret Hodgets, Hester Ogden and Frances Simson. The Cambridge bookseller Joan Greene is included because she and her deceased husband, Leonard, were members of the Stationers’ Company of London and because both of the editions she published were brought out with a London bookseller, James Boler 1. 19 This total comprises 331 extant speculative editions, plus another sixty-eight probable lost editions. These totals are only for the editions published by widow stationers; widow printers are also identified in the STC as having been involved in the printing of another 354 editions for other stationers through 1640. In addition, there are 528 extant editions printed at the Eliot’s Court Press from 1621 to 1640 that are not attributed to Anne Griffin in either their imprints or the STC; she may have been involved in the printing of some or all of these editions (see note 24 below). The term ‘speculative editions’ refers to books that were intended for retail sale to customers. The publication statistics in this essay are derived from an analysis of all the entries in the STC, supplemented when necessary by Blayney 2013, EEBO and ESTC. 20 The percentage of editions widows published in different print genres is very close to those in the entire book trade from 1540 to 1640 except for news publications, which widows tended to bring out slightly less often. For an overview of these print genres, see Farmer and Lesser 2013. 21 From 1540 to 1640, 62 per cent of extant editions published by widows are reprints, whereas 42 per cent of extant editions in the entire book trade are reprints. See also Smith 2003, though she conflates printing and publishing: ‘Most of the books that women printed [sic] were consistently popular texts, guaranteed to sell, and often published several times before, either by their husbands or by other printers’ (177). 22 On the reprinting of first editions within twenty years, see Farmer and Lesser 2013: 27–8. The reprint rate for second-plus editions is based on analysis of all the second-plus editions published from 1540 to 1630 that were subsequently reprinted at any point before 1640 (rather than within twenty years). 23 See also Smith 2012: 114–17. 24 For other documents that attest to Griffin working as a printer in this period, see McKenzie 1961: 16; Jackson 1957: 161, 168; Greg 1967: 259–60, and Arber 1875–94: 3.700–4.

WIDOW PUBLISHERS IN LONDON, 1540–1640

71

25 As was the case with Haviland and Griffin, John Walley often published with Elizabeth Toy as his silent partner. There were several other reasons for silent editions. One occurred when a husband died before the printing of an edition was complete; it could then fall upon his widow to complete the print job and bring the publication to market. In these cases, it was often the deceased husband’s name that appeared in the imprint, not the widow’s, as occurred with silent editions brought out by Elizabeth Middleton, Jacqueline Vautrollier, and Dorothy Jaggard. Similarly, a widow might reissue or reprint a work shortly after her husband’s death and keep his name in the imprint, as Elizabeth Pickering Redman, Alice Wolfe and Anne Boler all did. Or she might even omit any imprint at all in a reprint, as Joan Jugge did. Silent editions also occurred when a widow owned a partial share in a title that was brought out by a small group of stationers; when these works were printed, not all of the stationers who owned shares in the work would necessarily be listed in the imprint, as happened with editions that involved Elizabeth Bishop and Anne Moore. A more problematic silent partnership occurred when a stationer was ordered by the Court of the Stationers to deliver retroactively a certain number of copies to a widow stationer because he had infringed upon a claim the widow had to that title. Both Joan Cooke and Alice Gosson were affected by these kinds of cases. The final type of silent publication was generally the most prevalent. It occurred when an imprint identified a bookshop where copies of that book could be purchased but did not name the bookseller who owned the shop, as happened with multiple editions sold by Joan Broome and by Mary Allott. 26 In addition to Anne Griffin, nine other widow stationers probably published editions that are now lost (see Appendix 3.1). Most of these lost editions were in genres with high loss rates (see Farmer 2016), specifically ballads (which account for fifty-eight of the sixty-eight probable lost editions published by widows), prayer books, a catechism and a religious table. 27 For more on the relationship between the primary evidence found in books and other types of records from the book trade, and the importance of not ‘rejecting a large body of bibliographical evidence’ in studies of book history, see Tanselle 1991: 91. 28 See note 2 above. The Eliot’s Court Press also printed seven editions in 1625 and 1626 for Hannah Barrett and Richard Whitaker. Three name John Haviland as printer, but Anne Griffin may also have been involved in the printing of each of these editions, though she is not named in their imprints.

72

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

29 Another edition published by Ralph Harford was printed by Elizabeth Purslowe and Anne Griffin, as well as John Haviland, in 1634 (STC 3255). 30 Edward Griffin 2 also printed two other editions for Anne Boler, and Anne Griffin printed one edition for the assigns of Joan Man. The degree to which Man was involved in the publication of this and other editions brought out by her assigns is difficult to ascertain, but the numerous court records in which she appears during the 1630s suggest she might have been directly involved. See Jackson 1957: 217, 257–9, 260; Arber 1875–94: 4.344–5. 31 I would like to thank Christopher Highley, Sarah Neville, Martine van Elk, and especially Valerie Wayne for their generous comments on earlier versions of this essay, and Aaron Pratt for arranging the reproduction of the image in Figure 3.1.

References Arber, E. (ed.) (1875–94), A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London, 1554–1640 A. D., 5 vols. London: privately printed. Barnard, J. (2002), ‘Politics, Profits and ?Idealism: John Norton, the Stationers’ Company and Sir Thomas Bodley’, Bodleian Library Record 17: 385–408. Bell, M. (1996), ‘Women in the Early English Book Trade 1557–1700’, Leipziger Jahrbuch zur Buchgeschichte, 6: 13–45. Blayney, P. W. M. (2013), The Stationers’ Company and the Printers of London, 1501–1557, 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Carlton, C. (1978), ‘The Widow’s Tale: Male Myths and Female Reality in 16th and 17th Century England’, Albion 10: 118–29. Farmer, A. B. (2016), ‘Playbooks and the Question of Ephemerality’, in H. Brayman, J. M. Lander and Z. Lesser (eds), The Book in History, The Book as History: New Intersections of the Material Text: Essays in Honor of David Scott Kastan, New Haven and London: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, 87–125. Farmer, A. B. and Z. Lesser (2013), ‘What is Print Popularity? A Map of the Elizabethan Book Trade’, in A. Kesson and E. Smith (eds), The Elizabethan Top Ten: Defining Print Popularity in Early Modern England, Farnham: Ashgate, 19–54. Greg, W. W. (ed.) (1967), A Companion to Arber: Being a Calendar of Documents in Edward Arber’s Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London 1554–1640, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

WIDOW PUBLISHERS IN LONDON, 1540–1640

73

Hogrefe, P. (1975), Tudor Women: Commoners and Queens, Ames: Iowa State University Press. Jackson, W. A. (ed.) (1957), Records of the Court of the Stationers’ Company 1602 to 1640, London: Bibliographical Society. Korda, N. (2004), ‘Labours Lost: Women’s Work and Early Modern Theatrical Commerce’, in P. Holland and S. Orgel (eds), From Script to Stage in Early Modern England, Houndmills, Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 195–230. McKenzie, D. F. (ed.) (1961), Stationers’ Company Apprentices 1605– 1640, Charlottesville, VA: Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia. Plomer, H. R. (ed.) (1903), Abstracts from the Wills of English Printers and Stationers from 1492 to 1630, London: Bibliographical Society. Shaaber, M. A. (1944), ‘The Meaning of the Imprint in Early Printed Books’, The Library, 4th series, 24: 120–41. Smith, H. (2003), ‘ “Print[ing] your royal father off”: Early Modern Female Stationers and the Gendering of the British Book Trades’, Text 15: 163–86. Smith, Helen (2012), ‘Grossly Material Things’: Women and Book Production in Early Modern England, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Swetnam, J. (1615), The Araignment of Lewd, Idle, Froward, and Unconstant Women, STC 23533, London. (EEBO) Tanselle, G. T. (1991), ‘Textual Criticism and Literary Sociology’, Studies in Bibliography 44: 83–143.

74

4 Female stationers and their second-plus husbands Sarah Neville

Ford I think if your husbands were dead you two would marry. Mistress Page Be sure of that – two other husbands. The Merry Wives of Windsor, 3.2.13–15 The above exchange between Master Ford and Mistress Page occurs before the Wives have played even a single trick on Falstaff, but Ford’s antics as Master Brooke have already begun. Bemoaning ‘the hell of having a false woman’ (2.2.276), Ford has set into motion his plot to uncover his wife’s supposed treachery, and Mistress Page’s flippant remarks about wives’ easy substitution of one man for another strike at the heart of what the jealous Ford most fears: women’s capacity for enacting choices of their own making. In his soliloquies throughout the play, Ford repeatedly situates his suspicions in direct contrast with those of Master Page, who he believes is ‘an ass, a secure ass’ specifically because Page ‘will trust his wife, he will not be jealous’ (2.2.284–5). Ford is concerned even with the most basic features of women’s agency: ‘she plots, then she ruminates, then she devises; and what they think in their hearts they may effect – they will break their hearts but they will effect’ (2.2.289–92). At its root, Mistress Page’s insistence that ‘Wives may be merry and yet honest too’ (4.2.100) articulates the play’s general 75

76

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

celebration of a female agency in which women solve problems independently of male interference. As Parson Evans notes of their efforts, ‘ ’Tis one of the best discretions of a ’oman as ever I did look upon’ (4.4.1–2). Phyllis Rackin has noted that modern critical assumptions about early modern English attitudes towards female agency are distorted by the fact that the canonical plays we tend to emphasize in our analyses, such as The Taming of the Shrew, are the ones that focus on submission (Rackin 2005). ‘It is interesting to speculate,’ she writes, ‘how different our conception of Shakespeare’s view of women’s place in marriage might have been if we had focused on The Merry Wives of Windsor.’ She suggests that ‘[t]he appeal to history, while initially called into service as a platform for the discrediting of feminist readings’, might instead be used to supply ‘the materials for supporting them’ (Rackin 2016: 13). Unfortunately, scholars have not always been ready to locate representative examples of early modern women’s agency, even when presented with documentary evidence. Old habits of analysis have a way of dominating even the most dedicated research. The following essay will explore how the efforts of some early modern women can be located in the products that they, and their husbands, produced and sold. My method, however, confirms Master Ford’s worst assumptions: in marriage, one man can easily replace another. Fortunately, feminist scholars can use this phenomenon to analytic advantage. By theorizing women’s ‘effect’ through an examination of both the materials women produced as well as the outputs of what I call their ‘second-plus husbands’, bibliographers can uncover the hidden labours of female stationers whose work can be otherwise overlooked.1 This work is necessary because elisions of women’s contributions to the book trade have a long history. In his account of the wills of English stationers, bibliographer H. R. Plomer asserts that such documents reveal ‘the close association of the printers and booksellers as a guild or brotherhood. Not only did they intermarry, and every printer’s widow became a rich matrimonial prize that gave rise to keen rivalry, but they acted as executors, overseers and witnesses to each others’ wills’ (Plomer 1903: iv). Yet despite his abstracting the wills of three women in his volume, Plomer’s account nonetheless universalizes members of the book trade as male, characterizing them as much by their bonds to each other as by their

STATIONERS AND THEIR SECOND-PLUS HUSBANDS

77

shared membership in the Stationers’ Company of London, the craft association that regulated English printing. Plomer’s phrasing demonstrates a revealing and enduring suppression of the female agency that lies behind early modern English marriage bonds as well as a City of London custom that left widows (rather than sons) in possession of their husband’s business affairs upon a man’s death. Elision of female agency is likewise behind Plomer’s figuring of stationer widows not as economic agents in their own right, but as ‘rich matrimonial prize[s]’ – vectors of the printing stuff and rights to copy for which men could compete. In this economic framework, women are a means by which men could achieve financial security, while, with the exception of ‘one or two instances’, early modern women stationers appear to have achieved almost nothing at all. Plomer’s bias, coming as it did twenty-five years before Englishwomen obtained full suffrage, is perhaps not surprising, but his notion that women’s contributions to the economy were mostly ancillary or subordinate to men’s more authentic labour is persistent. The records upon which this historical narrative depend condition scholars to view the mere existence of this evidence in a positivistic way, for those who leave the greatest number of records are those who garner the greatest amount of attention from historians. The very fact of having one’s name chronicled in records that will later survive can be seen not as an indication of a larger ethos working within a particular record-keeping society (with its subsequent and reinforcing value systems), but is instead interpreted as the successful process of intentional, externalized self-fashioning.2 To borrow Natasha Korda’s phrase, such accounts engage in a ‘paradigm of absence–presence, which fails to account for work that is present, yet unacknowledged – because unremunerated, unrecorded, stigmatized, or otherwise placed under erasure’ (Korda 2009: 463). But it is important to recognize that such erasure is often constructed post hoc. A historian’s internalized bias towards certain types of records can cause them to occlude important details, like the fact that, for all of Plomer’s pretentions to Stationers’ fraternity and brotherhood, they largely believed their wives to be socially and fiscally competent. According to Barbara Todd’s study of widows in Abingdon between 1540 and 1720, the vast majority (89 per cent) were assigned by their husbands as executors or administrators of their wills. This number begins to drop significantly after 1660, but the earlier figures suggest that early modern Englishwomen were

78

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

regularly considered not only capable of administering the financial and social burdens of closing out an estate, but they were the preferred candidates to do so. This preference makes sense – after all, the home was the primary place of business for most crafts, the place where the mistress traditionally ruled, and a man’s trade was often shared by both his wife and his children. Edward Arber records a 1514 deposition of bookseller Thomas Simonds, whose testimony confirms the normalcy of a husband and wife labouring side by side in their bookstall (Arber 1875–94: 3.19). The evidence suggests that early modern Englishmen were more inclined to be of Master Page’s persuasion than Master Ford’s. The majority of stationers whose wills are abstracted by Plomer likewise named their wives executors. Though John Awdley, dying in 1575, bequeathed his son Sampson and his son-in-law John Simson his print shop ‘to be equally praised [appraised] and devided between them’, he named his wife, Elizabeth, as executrix, and ‘the same workehowse to remaine in my wyves hand and disposition till she shall see the one of them able to rule and occupy it’ (Plomer 1903: 23). The care of the shop was Elizabeth’s until she deemed her son and son-in-law capable of handling the business, and thus the decision to print and publish Edward Bushe’s sermon from Trinity Sunday 1576 (STC 4183) was hers irrespective of her dead husband’s name on its title page. Printer-bookseller Reyner Wolfe’s wife Joan was likewise her husband’s executrix after he died in 1573. Although her name appears only once on a 1574 title page (STC 4417), her will of the same year survives, and in it she identifies the business at the Brazen Serpent as ‘my prynting howse’ and ‘my shoppe’ (Plomer 1903: 20, emphasis added).3 Surviving evidence makes it clear that stationer wives were generally seen as competent business owners capable of carrying on the business of a printing house or bookshop after their husbands had died. Though the documentary records are sparse, the ones that survive indicate that previously married women were regularly central players in determining the strategic social and economic directions taken by their households, which provides an additional context for Falstaff’s adulterous motivations in Merry Wives: ‘she has all the rule of her husband’s purse’ (1.3.49–50). Steve Rappaport offers several accounts of widows who were so committed to their businesses that they refused marriages to men outside of their trade, which would have required them to give up economic advantages like trade-related

STATIONERS AND THEIR SECOND-PLUS HUSBANDS

79

patents as well as their apprentices who were contracted within the craft; those women would not marry unless their would-be husbands themselves transferred, or ‘translated’, companies (Rappaport 1989: 40–1).4 Peter W. M. Blayney’s account of Elizabeth Pickering Jackson Redman Cholmeley Cholmeley, a woman printer instrumental in the incorporation of the Stationers’ Company in 1557, finds that her third husband, one of the City’s common pleaders, had himself made free of the Stationers largely so that his wife could maintain her company affiliation (Blayney 2013: 419).5 Given the extensive and active engagement of both widows and wives in the records of the Stationers’ Company, the notion that women were absent from the trade prior to their husbands’ deaths is implausible, as Helen Smith and Maureen Bell have pointed out. Bell maintains that ‘the episodic and irregular pattern of the records of women’s involvement in the trade . . . must not prevent us looking beyond it in order to discern the routine (and therefore “hidden”) work of women day to day’ (Bell 1996: 16). The appearance of their names in the records of the Stationers’ Company confirms that women made contributions to the material and business practices of early modern book-making and bookselling. But when it comes to synthesizing the information contained in title-page imprints, early modern women largely disappear. As women remarried, their rights to property were transferred to their new husbands, and their old names were overwritten with new ones, conditions that now mask women’s presence. Because bibliographies like the Short-Title Catalogue organize printers and booksellers largely on the basis of title-page data, the arrangement of STC ’s evidence effectively elides women’s historical activities by privileging a type of information that women married to living men could not leave behind. Though the STC offers an extremely valuable resource for quantitative historical work, Helen Smith notes that it is ‘misleading to the extent that it suggests women were only involved in the trade during their widowhood’ (Smith 2012: 109). To remedy this problem, scholars have begun to reclaim women’s contributions by considering other data besides imprints as an evidentiary source. I agree with Bell and Smith’s observations, but I also believe that imprint data and other bibliographic analysis can offer a valuable source of information about women stationers even in the absence of female names on title pages. Working from Bell’s assertion that ‘the assumption of the man’s precedence in business should be

80

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

questioned’ (Bell 1996: 25), I propose a more comprehensive approach to the products of the book trade that more effectively locates women’s elided labour. This chapter traces its origins to a passing remark made by Peter W. M. Blayney in his august study of Nathaniel Butter, publisher of the 1608 quarto of Shakespeare’s King Lear (STC 22292): ‘Nathaniel Butter’s priorities and motives are as much a part of the printing-house context as are compositors, pressmen, ink, paper and type’ (Blayney 1982: 84). After identifying the ‘priorities and motives’ of male printers and booksellers, it is my contention that these figures were often more influenced by the women who shared (and sometimes commanded) their houses than traditional and literal approaches to imprint data have led us to believe. The extant publication history of Joan Butter Newbery, Nathaniel Butter’s mother, provides an illustrative example. In the 1620s and 1630s, long after his publication of King Lear, Nathaniel Butter became infamous as a publisher of ‘corantos’, or news books. Over the course of his publishing career (he died in 1664), Butter produced more than 700 news books, but even by 1625 news had made Butter so notorious that Ben Jonson could satirize both him and his ephemeral products in The Staple of News. Butter’s investment in this genre, however, was a family affair: the first book of news wholesaled from the Butter family shop in Watling Street near St Austin’s Gate was published by his father when Nathaniel was two years old. In 1585, Thomas Butter had John Wolfe print for him a short octavo pamphlet about an English-Spanish sea battle (STC 6180). Thomas Butter died in early 1590, and his wife Joan, mother then to at least two children, assumed the management of the Watling Street shop (McKerrow 1910: 59). Likely concerned more with retail sales than with wholesale publishing, Joan published only two works under her name as ‘the widow of Thomas Butter’ / ‘Widow Butter’, but both were short quarto news pamphlets (STC 20889.7, 11214.7) that indicate her attention to this burgeoning ephemeral genre. Joan remarried in 1600, and her new husband, the bookseller John Newbery, was a tentative speculator. Though he had inherited a number of titles from his eminent bookselling cousin Ralph Newbery in 1594, there is no evidence that John published any books before his marriage to Joan, and he only published a handful of books before he died in 1603. Joan’s particular influence upon

STATIONERS AND THEIR SECOND-PLUS HUSBANDS

81

her second husband becomes evident in 1602, when John Newbery published two short quarto news books concerning sea battles and the war with Spain (STC 6910.4, 17259). The 1602 appearance of a genre invested in both by his wife and by his wife’s first husband is a conspicuous addition to John Newbery’s output that permits us to identify Joan’s role in the family bookshop.6 Joan did not publish again after John’s 1603 death, but she remained active as a bookseller for at least another decade, freeing and binding apprentices in March and October of 1612 (McKenzie 1961: 101). Bibliographers have long recognized Nathaniel Butter as a ‘pioneer’ in the nascent field of English journalism, but less attention has been paid to the role news played in the publications of his mother and her husbands (Baron 2008). While Thomas Butter experimented with publishing news only once, his widow Joan published two news books under her own name and her second husband also issued a pair of news books, thereby continuing the household’s speculation in the genre. Joan and her son Nathaniel were both active members of the Stationers’ Company at least until 1617 (when she disappears from the records). The career of Joan Butter Newbery enables us to ask the question: to what extent were Nathaniel Butter’s ‘priorities and motives’ about news books transferred along the matrilineal line? In the remainder of this chapter I use similar quantitative bibliographic analysis to demonstrate methods for exploring the work of two more female members of the English book trade: Alice Bailey Charlewood Roberts and Joan Sturgis Kingston Robinson Orwin. By investigating not only women’s own publications but the outputs of the men with whom they shared both their businesses and their homes, bibliographers can use the evidence available in extant books to recover the influence women exercised in early modern printing and publishing.

Alice Bailey Charlewood Roberts On 20 January 1589, printer and bookseller John Charlewood married Alice Bailey (Baylie) at St. Giles Cripplegate, the parish shared by many members of the London book trade.7 John died in early 1593; he was certainly dead by 23 April of that year when William Jaggard attempted to obtain Charlewood’s patent to print

82

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

playbills. The Stationers’ court noted that ‘if he can get the said Charlewood his widow’s consent hereunto or if she die, or marry out of the company. That then the company will have consideration to prefer him in this suit before another’ (Greg and Boswell: 46). Jaggard was ultimately unsuccessful in this attempt because Alice remarried later in 1593, and her new husband, the bookseller James Roberts, took up both printing in the Charlewoods’ Barbican house and the Charlewoods’ patent for playbills. During those months that she was widowed, Alice’s name (as ‘the Widow Charlewood’) appeared in the imprints of five books, and bibliographers have identified her as the printer of three more (STC 3.40).8 Although she was responsible for both the printing and publishing of two of these titles (reprints of sermons that had been previously printed and published by her late husband John), the bulk of her work was as a printer for other booksellers. A conservative estimate therefore totals Alice Charlewood’s contributions to the English book trade at a mere eight titles, hardly a ripple in the influx of books of the 1590s. But if we consider Alice’s books not as titles, but instead as edition-sheets – the unit of measurement that most concerns printers – we get a different estimate of her productivity during her widowhood. A four-page (two leaf) folio, an eight-page (four leaf) quarto and a sixteen-page (eight leaf) octavo gathering are all created from one sheet of paper. The ‘printed sheets in a single copy of the book are counted as so many edition-sheets’, which gives bibliographers a scalable metric for understanding the work of a press (Blayney 2013: 938). While the Short-Title Catalogue provides format information about individual editions, reissues and variants, it does not provide collation information that can supply a granular analysis of printing-house output. In the STC , a single-page proclamation against unlicensed preachers (STC 8183) and the 210 pages of John Udall’s Commentary upon the Lamentations of Jeremy (STC 24494) are recorded as equivalent productions for printers Thomas and Joan Orwin: both texts are given a single title and a single STC number; however, the edition-sheet totals for these works, at 1 and 26.5 respectively, provide a much better basis for comparison of the amount of labour required to bring works of various lengths and formats into being.9 A printing press’s output is limited by its presswork rather than by its composition: while a wealthy printing house might have a

STATIONERS AND THEIR SECOND-PLUS HUSBANDS

83

large amount of type that can be set and locked in chases waiting for imposition, there is a finite speed at which people can move paper through a press. Over the course of the five to nine months of her widowhood, Alice’s press produced at least 69.5 edition-sheets of printed material. Peter W. M. Blayney estimates that a single full press operating with two pressman could print a maximum capacity of about 250 sheets per year; a ‘half press’ operated by a solitary pressman could produce a maximum of roughly 150 sheets (Blayney 1982: 42). The Charlewood house at the Half-Eagle and Key owned two presses and could (given adequate type) theoretically produce up to 500 sheets a year, though the house under John’s mastery never achieved anything close to such numbers (Arber 1875–94: 1.248). While John was alive, the Charlewood printing house produced, on average, a little more than 150 sheets per year.10 Alice’s output during her short widowhood was thus well within the average output of the house, especially given the necessary drop in productivity caused by the loss of a master printer (not to mention the trauma of losing a spouse).11 She evidently had no difficulty keeping her pressmen reasonably busy. The Widow Charlewood was well aware that with rent to pay on her Barbican printing house and with apprentices to feed, an idle press was effectively wasting money.12 Alice therefore sought to invest in another publication that could employ her workers between commissions from other publishers, and in 1593 she found one in Thomas Nashe’s Christ’s Tears over Jerusalem. Her choice was timely and designed to turn a quick profit because Nashe’s name in the early 1590s was a hot commodity. Nashe’s prose satire Pierce Penniless had already gone through three editions in 1592 and received a fourth in 1593. The first edition (STC 18371) had been printed by John Charlewood for Richard Jones. Alice’s decision to protect what would have been her own third publication by paying sixpence to enter the rights to copy Christ’s Tears into the Stationers’ Registers on 8 September 1593 (Arber 1875–94: 2.635) indicates her awareness of what was going on in her husband’s shop in 1592. But because Alice married James Roberts the day after she registered the copy, what eventually became STC 18366 has his name rather than hers on its title page, despite Alice being the driving force behind the publication.13 The books that Alice printed provide additional evidence that she was a particularly adept manager of her printing house. One of

84

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

those she printed in 1593 was the fourth edition of Robert Parson’s The Second Part of the Book of Christian Exercise (STC 19382), a duodecimo religious treatise published by Simon Waterson, which had thrice been printed by John Charlewood. Though they share the same STC number (19382) and imprint date of 1592, further comparison has revealed that there were actually two distinct Charlewood house editions, one of which was printed in 1593, after John’s death.14 While it is possible that James Roberts may have printed the second Charlewood house edition after he married Alice, it is unlikely that had he done so Roberts would have allowed John Charlewood’s name to remain on the title page. (Roberts’s name does appear on the title page of Waterson’s 1594 edition of the text, STC 19383.) It is much more likely that the printing of the second impression of STC 19382 was overseen by Alice herself. Her edition of Christian Exercise is remarkable for being a more efficient publication that uses 1.5 fewer sheets of paper per copy than the editions of the text that John had previously printed, resulting in a cumulative savings for her client, the publisher Waterson. It is easier for compositors to copy previously printed books of the same format, but the duodecimo sheets of earlier editions of Parson’s text could no longer serve this purpose for Alice’s compositors in the edition that used less paper; to achieve that goal, the text of the latter edition needed to be carefully cast off and recomposed entirely, an effort that would need an expert’s correction and oversight. Alice’s experiment was successful enough that the house followed this copy for the subsequent editions it issued under John Roberts’s name in 1594 and 1598. The case of the 1593 edition of Parson’s Christian Exercise testifies to Alice’s knowledge of printing, and this supposition is bolstered by the evidence of the five books she was hired to print for other booksellers who had previously employed the Charlewood house.15 Four of the five texts Alice printed were first editions, which, because they were printed from manuscript copy, required considerably more labour and skill in composition and correction to set into type than works that could be copied from an earlier printed edition. The other work that Alice printed as the Widow Charlewood had been previously printed (it was the tenth edition of a scientific treatise), but the work was nonetheless complicated to compose, as its title suggests: A Litle Treatise, Conteyning Many Proper Tables and Rules (STC 12160). Though it may be tempting

STATIONERS AND THEIR SECOND-PLUS HUSBANDS

85

to surmise that John Charlewood’s fellow stationers simply took pity on his widow by offering her easily fulfilled contracts, the extant evidence reveals that the Charlewood shop under Alice took on challenging and substantial projects that required a master printer’s careful attention. Alice’s manifest skill as a master printer is all the more likely because the man who eventually became the master of her printing house in the Barbican was a bookseller rather than a printer. As a bookseller, James Roberts was not in the habit of printing a variety of texts for a variety of booksellers, but instead made his money through a shrewd early investment that enabled him to monopolize a popular, and ephemeral, textual product. Roberts presumably learned the basics of the printing trade prior to being freed as a Stationer in June 1564 (Arber 1875–94: 1.240), but since 1571 he had made his living by sharing the profitable almanac patent with the printer-bookseller Richard Watkins. His first appearance on a title page occurred in 1569/70, and by the time that Roberts married Alice in September 1593, he had more than five dozen of these ephemeral items in print. Almanacs were often the product of shared printing, and the degree to which Watkins and Roberts themselves printed the works they published is uncertain; what is clear, however, is that prior to 1593, Roberts had not owned a printing house.16 Upon his arrival at the Charlewood printing house with ten children and an apprentice in tow, James Roberts therefore faced a steep learning curve.17 Not only did he have to assume responsibility for an entirely new business, he also had to assume responsibility for an entirely new business model, for he had moved from a mode of profit-making based in wholesale speculation (and which could for expediency’s sake contract out the manufacture of one’s books) to one that coupled bookselling with printing, both for the family shop as well as for other booksellers. While booksellers did not necessarily need to employ journeymen to work in their retail shops, printers did require additional and skilled labourers like pressmen and compositors. It is therefore reasonable to expect that someone moving from the role of bookseller to printer would benefit from a resident expert’s guiding hand. Fortunately for Roberts, Alice was both wellplaced and well-equipped to share her knowledge of the trade. The extant evidence of the first five years of Roberts’s career as a printer reveals that he seems to have followed much of John’s – and

86

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

Alice’s – business behaviours and their clientele. As David Kathman has noted, Charlewood had often been hired to print poetry (Kathman 2006), which continued under Roberts’s tenure: Simon Waterson continued his relationship with the household by employing Roberts to print his augmented versions of Samuel Daniel’s Delia in 1594 and 1595. John Busby also employed the new master in 1594, hiring Roberts to print Michael Drayton’s Endimion and Phoebe. Thomas Adams and John Wolfe, other stationers who had previously hired both Charlewoods, entered into business relationships with the new master Roberts, suggesting that these booksellers trusted in the one consistent presence in the shop to justify their continued investment: Alice. While it is certainly possible to view Roberts’s assumption of the Barbican printing house in September 1593 as a fait accompli for a shrewd bookseller simply biding his time before the right printer’s widow came along, doing so overlooks the lasting and measurable effects of a known and accomplished female agent.18 Comparing the nature of the output of James Roberts and John Charlewood shows continuities that can best be attributed to the experienced, knowledgeable and savvy female stationer whom they both came to marry. When figured in terms of titles, Alice Charlewood Roberts’s publication record is slight, yet the evidence of her extant edition-sheets reveals a highly competent and astute master printer. Alice’s contributions to the trade may be masked by her husbands’ longer careers, but a granular analysis of the similarities in output between the two men reveals her lasting professional influence.

Joan Sturgis Kingston Robinson Orwin The acumen of widow stationers can likewise be seen in an analysis of the career of Joan Sturgis Kingston Robinson Orwin that considers both her own behaviour as a widow printer as well as her second-plus husbands’ printing outputs and shared clientele. Joan’s printing and bookselling career spanned at least twenty-four years from 1573 to 1597, during which time she had three husbands, each of whom she outlived in turn: John Kingston (died 1584), George Robinson (died 1587) and Thomas Orwin (died 1593).19 By far the majority of her work was credited to the ‘Widow Orwin’, which she used as her name on the title pages of nearly fifty books.20 Joan

STATIONERS AND THEIR SECOND-PLUS HUSBANDS

87

printed only one item as the Widow Robinson, in 1587, a fourth edition of Cicero’s De Officiis that had been previously printed and published by her first husband (STC 5266.5), and she printed nothing as the Widow Kingston. As well as the books she printed for others, Joan also published ten books at her own expense, four of which had been previously produced by one or more of her late husbands. Two of her publications, however, were first editions of medical or quasi-medical treatises that suggest her interest in these works. She was the first to publish an English translation of Aristotle’s Problems, with other Philosophers and Physicians (STC 762), a text that went through five editions through 1640, and although the title page of Henry Holland’s The Christian Exercise of Fasting, Private and Public (STC 13586) reads that it was printed by Joan ‘for William Young’, Joan was the one who entered it in the Stationers’ Company Register on 5 January 1596, and it was likely a joint publication (Arber 1875–94: 3.56).21 Although John Kingston practised the trade of printing and bookselling, he was a member of the Grocers’ Company, and Joan’s second husband George Robinson had been his apprentice, likely being translated to the Stationers in 1585 in order to be eligible to marry Joan after Kingston’s death.22 Given the connection between John Kingston and George Robinson, it would not be surprising to discover continuities between their business practices, even without Joan’s influence; however, George had no evident direct connection to Thomas Orwin except for Joan herself, and a comparison of the outputs of Joan’s first and subsequent husbands reveals evidence either of her guidance or of her maintenance of her shop’s clientele despite its changes in senior management, as I will discuss below. Joan’s later influence on her son Felix Kingston, who took over his mother’s printing house in Paternoster Row in 1597, can be further deduced by the extant evidence of her independent printing and bookselling operations as the Widow Orwin between 1593 and 1597 and her continued activity in the Stationers’ Company records through 1605.23 During the last ten years of his life, John Kingston’s printing house produced an average of 155 edition-sheets per year. George Robinson produced less, averaging about 112 sheets a year over the three years when he was helming the shop. For a house with two presses, these numbers are low.24 One reason why they are is that many of the books produced by John Kingston and successors to his

88

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

printing materials were schoolbooks, a ‘high-loss’ genre that makes it more unlikely that any copies of a given edition will have survived long enough to be counted in a bibliography like the STC .25 Even accounting for loss rates, however, Kingston and Robinson’s output was near the lower end of the spectrum of production for presses, as Thomas Orwin’s considerably greater output makes clear. The extant evidence reveals that Thomas Orwin’s average output between 1588 and 1592 (the five full years he might be identified as master of the house) was more than 350 edition-sheets a year, far greater than either of his wife’s previous husbands.26 Joan’s impact is evident because these numbers remained at this higher level even after Thomas Orwin’s death. According to the STC , which attributes to Joan both items in which her name appears in the imprint as well as several items where she shared printing with others, her press was responsible for fully or partially printing sixty-two editions between 1593 and 1597, totalling 1,225 edition-sheets. At an average of 343 sheets per year, the Widow Orwin’s house was working at an extraordinary clip that significantly exceeded the production rate of her first two husbands and rivalled that of her third husband. She was able to continue the house’s recent trend of printing at least two-thirds of the maximum capacity that her two presses could muster. Joan’s effects on her third husband’s business practices can most clearly be seen in the unbroken continuation of a clientele despite the shift in male management. During George Robinson’s three-year tenure in the Kingston printing house, he printed three books for the bookseller Thomas Cadman. Cadman continued his affiliation with the shop even after Robinson’s death, bringing eight books to be printed by Thomas Orwin. Cadman stopped publishing entirely in 1589, likely predeceasing Orwin, so it is difficult to determine whether he would have continued to print with the Orwin house under Joan’s tenure; however, it is unclear why Cadman would have hired Thomas Orwin to print his works after George Robinson’s death apart from as a result of their connection with Joan, as there was otherwise no apparent relation between the pair of men. Other major clients of Thomas Orwin such as Thomas Man had no difficulty continuing to hire the print shop after 1593 when Joan was in charge. Booksellers such as Thomas Woodcock, John Porter and William Ponsonby, all clients of Thomas Orwin during his life, likewise commissioned the printing house in Paternoster Row after

STATIONERS AND THEIR SECOND-PLUS HUSBANDS

89

his death, suggesting their trust in Joan’s proficiency as a printer. Further evidence of Joan’s competence can be surmised from the diversity of her bookselling clientele, most of whom commissioned her more than once to print nearly 1,000 edition-sheets’ worth of material in under five years of operation.27 Just as the shared clientele between John Charlewood and James Roberts should be credited largely to Alice, the demonstrably skilled printer who married both men, so Thomas Orwin’s success in the printing trade can be linked to his experienced and successful wife Joan.

Assuming women’s presence In much the same way that characters who do not speak onstage for long periods of time can be forgotten by the readers of plays despite their silences being obvious – and indeed, conspicuous – to audiences of live theatre, women stationers whose names flux and disappear from imprints can likewise be forgotten or ignored. But the absence of evidence attesting to their presence does not necessarily equal evidence of their absence. When we remember that women must have existed in the printing houses and bookshops of Renaissance London, it is amazing where we can see them. Perhaps what needs to change in our analysis is a stronger commitment by bibliographers to demonstrating that women are not merely ancillary or implied within the trade, but that they have always been there. Quantitative methods that assume women’s presence rather than their absence, such as those offered here, have the potential to uncover many of the hidden textual labours of early modern women.

Notes 1

I am adapting the term ‘second-plus’ from its usage by Alan B. Farmer and Zachary Lesser to denote the second or later reprinted editions of a book, which booksellers approached differently from works that needed to be set into print for the first time (2005: 7).

2

‘Since ordinarily their economic and other activities were not regulated by the City or the companies, women left few traces of themselves in the records upon which this study is based’ (Rappaport 1989: 42, emphasis added).

90

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

3

On Joan Wolfe, see Smith 2012: 103.

4

On London’s civic organization and its regulatory mechanisms, see Unwin 1938.

5

Blayney makes a point of indexing Elizabeth Pickering by her birth name rather than by the names of her husbands, as does this book.

6

Both of Newbery’s news books were co-published with Felix Kingston, but Kingston had not published news before (and did so only once more over his long career), which further suggests Joan’s influence.

7

Many early modern parish records can be accessed through http:// familysearch.org.

8

See also Erika Boeckeler’s essay in this volume.

9

Collation data for individual copies can sometimes be supplied from a resource like the English Short-Title Catalogue or from library records.

10 Looking at the total number of edition-sheets produced by a shop only in an individual year can be an unreliable gauge of productivity, because imprint dates indicate only when a book is complete and offered for sale; some books thus may be counted as printed in 1590, although a majority of their pages were actually printed in 1589, producing what appears as a ‘bust/boom’ cycle in the data. To get a sense of the usual output of John Charlewood’s shop, I calculated fiveyear averages for the last full fifteen years before his 1593 death (1578–92). These numbers cannot and do not consider either lost editions or currently unrecognized instances of shared printing that might raise or lower these averages. 11 If Alice’s widowhood lasted five months, her 69.5 sheets average out to 167 sheets per year; if it lasted nine months, it would average out to 93 sheets per year. 12 The Charlewood house had at least one apprentice, Geoffrey Charlewood, son of a Richard Charlewood of Surrey (not of John and Alice Charlewood). Geoffrey Charlewood was bound for a seven-year term on 12 January 1591 (Arber 1875–94: 2.173). Apprentices could be freed after turning twenty-four, which would put Geoffrey’s age at nineteen or so at the time John Charlewood died. Geoffrey died shortly after his first master in March 1593/4 and was buried as an apprentice of James Roberts (Miller 1966: 34). 13 Alice Charlewood’s literary influence has also been hinted at in the printing of three of Boccaccio’s vernacular works in England (Armstrong 2013).

STATIONERS AND THEIR SECOND-PLUS HUSBANDS

91

14 An extended entry appears in STC 3.298. 15 STC 5012 was printed for John Wolfe; STC 10833/10833a (variant imprint) for Richard Watkins and Edward White; STC 12160 for Thomas Adams; STC 12259 for Thomas Adams and John Oxenbridge; and STC 19539 for John Busby. Wolfe, Watkins, Adams and Waterson had all hired John Charlewood to print for them. 16 On John Roberts’s apprenticeship, see also Alan B. Farmer’s essay in this volume. 17 Roberts had assumed responsibility for Matthew Selman on 1 September 1589 for the remainder of his apprenticeship, which ended in September 1594 (Arber 1875–94: 2.173); on Roberts’s children from his previous marriage, see Kathman 2006. 18 Perhaps motivated by William Jaggard’s attempted acquisition of the playbills patent, or out of a concern that Alice could die (perhaps in childbirth) before their marriage was old enough for him to rest secure in her rights to copy, Roberts formally entered forty-one of John Charlewood’s titles (including the playbills patent) into the Stationers’ Registers on 31 May 1594 (Arber 1875–94: 2.651–2). Alice was still alive on 18 August 1595 when she was granted 4s. 6d. for John’s share in ‘the Carrick goodes’ (Arber 1875–94: 1.575). 19 Joan and John Kingston’s son Felix begins printing in 1597; he was freed as a Grocer by patrimony in 1595 (STC 3.99), and was translated to the Stationers in 1597. The Grocers had set their minimum age for freedom at twenty-five, which suggests that Felix could have been born as early as 1570 or as late as 1574, if he claimed patrimony to enable his freedom earlier (Rappaport 1989, 323). A conservative dating therefore sets the beginning of Joan and John Kingston’s marriage between 1569 and 1573, giving Joan a minimum of eleven years’ work alongside John before his death. 20 STC 3.130 supplies Joan with the responsibility of an additional eighteen titles. 21 Also on 5 January 1596, Joan entered a book titled Romes monarchie (STC 21296) that was later printed by her for Matthew Law, which was likely a joint publication between them. Joan’s other publications as Widow Orwin include a reprint of De Officiis (STC 5267) as well as three other Latin schoolbooks (STC 24790.7, 701.5, 702), Jean Calvin’s The Catechism (STC 4387), Thomas Elyot’s The Castle of Health (STC 7656) and Leonard Digges’s A Prognostication Everlasting of Right Good Effect (STC 435.57). 22 The Stationers’ Company was granted a monopoly over the craft of printing as part of their incorporation in 1557, but Kingston had been

92

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

printing since 1553; as there is no evidence that they sought to prevent him from printing, Blayney suggests that Kingston may have had a sort of grandfathered status within the company (2013: 781, 908–9, 912). Such protections, however, would not have covered an apprentice like Robinson. 23 Despite giving up her printing house in Paternoster Row to her son Felix in 1597, Joan continues to appear in the records of the Stationers’ Company through December 1605, binding and freeing apprentices, and appearing in a case brought before the Stationers’ clerk between Felix and Thomas Judson. 24 Kingston is listed as having two presses in 1583 (Arber 1875–94: 1.248), and Robinson is listed as also having (presumably the same) two presses in 1586 (Arber 1875–94: 5.lii). 25 On loss rates, see Farmer 2016. On booksellers’ wholesaling activities, see Blayney 2013: 30. 26 Thomas Orwin’s output, and later Joan’s, suggests that the house continued to have two presses. 27 This number subtracts the edition-sheet totals of Joan’s own publications (239.5) from the publications she was hired to print for others.

References Arber, E. (ed.) (1875–94), A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London, 1554–1640 A. D., 5 vols. London: privately printed. Armstrong, G. (2013), ‘The Framing of Fiammetta: Gender, Authorship, and Voice in an Elizabethan Translation of Boccaccio’, in Gabriela Schmidt (ed.), Elizabethan Translation and Literary Culture, Berlin: De Gruyter, 299–339. Baron, S. (2008), ‘Butter, Nathaniel (bap. 1583, d. 1664), bookseller’, ODNB (accessed 12 March 2019). Bell, M. (1996), ‘Women in the Early English Book Trade 1557–1700’, Leipziger Jahrbuch zur Buchgeschichte, 6: 13–45. Blayney, P. W. M. (1982), The Texts of King Lear and their Origins, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Blayney, P. W. M. (2013), The Stationers’ Company and the Printers of London, 1501–1557, 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Farmer, A. B. (2016), ‘Playbooks and the Question of Ephemerality’, in Heidi Brayman, Jesse M. Lander, and Zachary Lesser (eds), The Book

STATIONERS AND THEIR SECOND-PLUS HUSBANDS

93

in History, The Book as History: New Intersections of the Material Text, New Haven: Yale University Press, 87–125. Farmer, A. B. and Z. Lesser (2005), ‘Popularity of Playbooks Revisited’, Shakespeare Quarterly 56: 1–32. Greg, W. W. and E. Boswell (eds) (1930), Records of the Court of the Stationers’ Company, 1576 to 1602, from Register B, London: Bibliographical Society. Kathman, D. (2006), ‘Roberts, James (b. in or before 1540, d. 1618?), Bookseller and Printer’, ODNB , accessed 16 October 2018. Korda, N. (2009), ‘Women in the Theatre’, in Richard Dutton (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Theatre, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 456–73. McKenzie, D. F. (1961), Stationers’ Company Apprentices 1605–1640, Charlottesville, VA : Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia. McKerrow, R. B. (1910), A Dictionary of Printers and Booksellers in England, Scotland and Ireland, and of Foreign Printers of English Books 1557–1640, London: Bibliographical Society. Miller, W. E. (1966), ‘Printers and Stationers in the Parish of St. Giles Cripplegate 1561–1640’, Studies in Bibliography 19: 15–38. Plomer, H. R. (ed.) (1903), Abstracts from the Wills of English Printers and Stationers from 1492 to 1630, London: Bibliographical Society. Rackin, P. (2005), Shakespeare and Women. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rackin, P. (2016), ‘Why Feminism Still Matters’, in Dympna Callaghan and Suzanne Gossett (eds), Shakespeare in Our Time: A Shakespeare Association of America Collection, London and New York: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 7–14. Rappaport, S. (1989), Worlds within Worlds: Strictures of Life in Sixteenth-Century London, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shakespeare, W. (2000), The Merry Wives of Windsor, Giogrio Melchiori (ed.), London: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare. Smith, Helen (2012), ‘Grossly Material Things’: Women and Book Production in Early Modern England, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Todd, B. J. (1985), ‘The Remarrying Widow: A Stereotype Reconsidered’, in Mary Prior (ed.), Women in English Society 1500–1800, London: Methuen, 54–92. Unwin, G. (1938), The Gilds and Companies of London, 3rd edition, London: Allen & Unwin.

94

5 Left to their own devices: Sixteenth-century widows and their printers’ devices Erika Mary Boeckeler

This chapter examines two neglected topics important to our understanding of early modern printed texts: female printers and printers’ devices. The women in my study are associated with sixteenth-century London printing houses that produced some of the most significant works in English across all genres.1 Printers’ devices regularly appear in early modern texts, although female agency in their use is rarely as visible as in the case of the thrice-widowed Joan Sturgis Kingston Robinson Orwin, who struck her last husband’s initials from the Orwin device and used it in seventeen texts across three years. More often, self-representation appears subtly in the reuse of devices when printers reprinted their existing works either alone or in apparent collaboration with their husbands. Looking to women’s devices offers a means for understanding the broader nature of early modern reproductive press practices, which were characterized by multiple editions of existing titles in new visual contexts and the recycling of individual woodcuts among printers. Marking how women found room to affirm their agency within existing visual and textual paradigms reveals the need to engage with early print as a reproductive image technology. This focus rewards approaches that bring critical literary and art historical 95

96

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

methodologies into dialogue. I contend that the early modern printer’s device served as a locus in which printers displayed their investment in the interrelated visual and verbal features of their books. Those printers were attuned to their craft as a visual art and to the many ways in which the visual collaborates with the verbal in a typeset book. Their devices have deep roots in continental emblem culture and name rebuses, both features dating back to continental incunabula.2 Given the inherent polyvalence of emblems, English and continental devices reworked existing designs. This practice occurred in a creative makers’ milieu that placed a positive value on what we now often negatively view as ‘derivative’ practices like copying, translation and remediation.3 Printers and others in the book trade personalized emblematic images within new settings and added mottos, sometimes bringing into view symbolic elements that were latent in the image. Old devices could take on new meanings in the context of a woman printing: Joan Merrye Jugge’s use of the self-wounding pelican-in-its-piety surrounded by chicks in a nest is striking, appearing as it does on the title and end pages of a book on female anatomy, birth and infant care, printed after Joan had birthed at least seven children.4 The practice of visual reinterpretation through framing elements characterizes a portion of sixteenth-century English women’s printing. Examining the reuse of existing devices by printing women can lead us to a better understanding of the culture that was driving the circulation and reuse of individual woodcuts and (more rarely) cast metal devices among printers. Maureen Bell and Helen Smith have noted that the redistribution of a printing business and its material stock to new generations could depend on the physical bodies of women, both through a widow’s remarriage and through the children whom she bore (Bell 1996: 13–20; Smith 2003b: 178–9). Attention to which devices women chose to use, as well as to how and where they chose to use them, can nuance our understanding of inheritance and acquisition between printers. The repeated deployment of a woodcut block could signal at a glance where a printer trained, thereby marking his or her technical know-how and quality standards. It could subtly note an ongoing investment in a particular genre, like the tiny fingers gesturing to the word LAWE in a Jugge device. Many images ambiguously reference collaboration, which has traditionally been read as indicating the relationship between printer and author

WIDOWS AND THEIR PRINTERS’ DEVICES

97

but may in addition or instead refer to others in the highly collaborative culture of early modern printing, including the husband and wife team managing the printing house that was also their home. The female printers discussed below did not commission new devices, but neither did a significant portion of male printers: most reused others’ devices, sometimes leaving unaltered the names or initials of the original commissioning printer. Considering creative device reuse within a social context allows us to expand the existing explanatory models of thrift or apathy. Maureen Bell’s 1987 dissertation and her subsequent publications significantly advanced our knowledge of English women who were active in the book trades, as did Helen Smith’s major book twentyfive years later (Bell 1987; Smith 2012).5 Their research, combined with article-length studies of individual women in the book trades, has countered biased characterizations of women’s contributions in the historical and bibliographical records. But obstacles remain. Name changes due to marriage can make it difficult to trace a woman’s career arc, if her name appears at all in the records. Elizabeth Pickering Jackson Redman Cholmeley Cholmeley married four times. She printed briefly under her birth name, which she spelled Pykerynge, after her second husband died; then she sold her press and married two brothers in succession (Kreps 2003).6 The imprints that name the widow of George Robinson and the Widow Orwin both refer to Joan Sturgis Kingston Robinson Orwin. Compounding the challenges of primary source research are the interpretations of historical documents in foundational early twentieth-century scholarship. These resources have affected subsequent work, and the recent digital tools that rely upon them duplicate their shortcomings. The standard reference for printers’ devices is R. B. McKerrow’s 1913 book, Printer’s & Publishers’ Devices in England & Scotland, 1485–1640. A free, searchable edition is available online at archive.org, where readers are encouraged to view the devices discussed here. This catalogue’s reliability is compromised because it excludes some printing women and their output or represents them in ways that minimize their agency, from identifying them only as a male printer’s ‘widow’, to listing their independent device use under a husband’s name, or not listing it at all, even when it fits the listing criteria. As other essays in this book have suggested, these resources must be supplemented with new strategies for identifying women and the texts they produced.7

98

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

McKerrow’s approach partly duplicates women’s own cautious self-presentation in print as they strategically positioned themselves as widows, obscured their gender through the common practice of using initials (E. Short or E.S.), or published under their husbands’ names. These conventions can both aid and frustrate searches in electronic databases like EEBO and the ESTC .8 Updating and expanding upon his previous publication’s compartments, McKerrow and F. S. Ferguson’s 1932 Title-page Borders Used in England & Scotland, 1485–1640 (‘McK&F’) continues the urban and nationalist bias that omits many individuals who worked domestically and in European networks, as Bell and others have been at pains to document.9 The present study of printers’ devices is limited to sixteenth-century women in London, all of whom are identified as printers in title-page imprints or in colophons and used devices that we know they owned. This attention to named, London-based women, to monographs and even to devices may on occasion replicate earlier biases about who printed what kinds of texts and how the texts signalled individual contributions, but hopefully it will also serve as a foundation on which others can correct the record. Looking at devices as indices of a printer’s agency and selfrepresentation poses still more problems, since it can be unclear what their presence in a publication indicates. Typically they denote a particular print agent such as a printer, publisher or bookseller, but questions persist about why one collaborator’s device appears instead of another’s, or why some books bear devices while others do not. Device use could be driven by the formal requirements of the page, and as a result, print agents sometimes commissioned multiple sizes of a particular image. Title-page compartments consisting of a single woodcut were the most limited, as they fitted only a specific format. Devices were copied by others in the book trade and also occasionally forged.10 Individual practices and attitudes varied widely diachronically as well as synchronically, but printers certainly invested in devices, personalizing both newly commissioned ones as well as those acquired from other print agents. These variations underscore the devices’ rich potential to shed light on the culture of early modern printing and printerly selfrepresentation. In a study of continental devices, Valérie Hayaert concludes that ‘their function . . . had to do with self-promotion and self-presentation’ (2018: 310). The most well-known selfpromoting printer in England is John Day. He ostentatiously created

WIDOWS AND THEIR PRINTERS’ DEVICES

99

devices that referred to himself and the contents of his texts, including a self-portrait device (McK 145) and a motto ‘Arise, for it is day’.11 The printing widows mentioned here have fewer than ten unique titles in which their names appear, with the exception of Joan Sturgis Kingston Robinson Orwin, whose imprint with her name appears in close to forty titles and who is known to have printed sixty editions. Small numbers of editions can occlude considerable work if they require a large number of edition-sheets per title, as Sarah Neville explains in her essay in this collection. A focus on numbers alone without a larger sense of their context also does not represent the technical expertise required to create complex layouts or books with movable parts; nor does it register the volume of materials printed during short periods of time or the cultural impact or significance of individual titles.

Joan Merrye Jugge and her flock of pelicans Some Jugge devices and title-page compartments visually suggest a decades-long husband–wife collaboration through their dualgendered figures and a name rebus. These take on new meaning when the widowed Joan used them in new contexts. The ‘pelican in its piety’ was a dual-gendered symbol in early modern culture, interpreted as both a female mother and the male Christ. The Jugge printing house chose for its device this well-known image of a nested mother pelican vulning, i.e., pecking at her chest, surrounded by open-mouthed chicks who are to be revived from (near) death upon drinking her blood. The Christian allegory of this image reads the mother as the male pelican Christ, whose pierced side spills his blood to redeem sinful souls (Graham 1962). The pelican’s spiky nest in the Jugges’ title-page compartment (Figure 5.1) iconographically invokes the christological crown of thorns. Continental pious pelican devices have existed from the days of incunabula.12 They may denote an association of printers ‘delivering’ multiple copies from an author’s ‘mother’ text through their labour in the print shop, since midwifery was a metaphor used for printing.13 The Jugges personalized their pelicans through the addition of enchained name ciphers and name

100

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

rebuses, mottos, and with figures and settings that emphasized its dual gender. Joan Jugge began life as Joan Merrye, wedding printer Richard Jugge on 14 June 1543 (Blayney 2013: 514). Their marriage occurred close to the start of Richard’s thirty-six-year professional career: he entered the Stationers’ Company as a freeman in 1541, then held lucrative stationer privileges starting in 1551, becoming a printer first in 1559 (Blayney 2013: 514). Jugge published and printed Bibles and other religious books like the Book of Common Prayer, common law texts and official state documents until his death in 1577, with some of these privileges due to having been named ‘the Queen’s printer’ along with John Cawood in 1560 (Tedder, rev. Boro 2008). Evidence exists that Joan may have participated in the printing of three unique titles from after Richard’s death in 1577 to 1584/5, and each is remarkable for its length, virtuoso printing, or female interest: (1) A compendious and most marueilous Historie of the latter tymes of the Iewes commonweale (STC 14798.5–14799a),14 a 500-page English translation by Peter Morwen of the abbreviated Josippon, a tome of Jewish history misattributed to Joseph ben Gurion; (2) Arte of Nauigation (STC 5800, 5801),15 the era’s most important navigational textbook, which contained movable parts now called volvelles, but called ‘rundells’ by Richard Eden, who translated this book by Martín Cortés de Albacar from the Spanish; and (3) an edition of a book on female sexuality, anatomy and the care of infants called The Birth of mankynde, otherwyse named the womans booke that is conjecturally attributed to her (STC 21159).16 The original Jugge house device surrounds the pelican images on either side with the common allegorical pair of Prudence and Justice, the former portrayed in profile on the left with a young woman’s face in front and a bearded man’s face in the back (McK 125, used 1552–77).17 Contemporaries interpret this head as farseeing wisdom guided by knowledge of the past. Allegorical figures such as these are inconsistently identified by their names on English devices: in McK 125, the identification seems unnecessary and therefore remarkable, since PRVDENCIA regularly pairs with her fellow cardinal virtue IVSTICIA, who bears her attributes of scale and sword. Early modern readers would have noted the snake winding around Prudencia’s arm as both a reference to wisdom and the printer’s caduceus. Prudencia’s tiny fingers protrude past the

WIDOWS AND THEIR PRINTERS’ DEVICES

101

outer band of the motto to touch the word LAWE’s artful W.18 The image appears to suggest that prudence should guide the formation and practice of law. The male and female Prudencia’s gestures and attributes are fitting if Richard and Joan are viewed as a team printing books related to English law. ‘Jugge’ itself can refer to both Richard’s (male) family name and Joan’s (female) first name because ‘Jug’ was a nickname for Joan. The usage is familiar now from the Fool’s remark in King Lear, ‘Whoop Iugge I loue thee’, where ‘Jug’ has been glossed as ‘Joan’.19 This ambiguity plays out in the only title-page compartment that Joan used among an array of options while the Jugge press was under her control (see Figure 5.1; McK 181, McK&F 141).20 From left to right this compartment’s lower portion features three separately outlined elements: (1) Cupid holding an R (for ‘Richard’); (2) the pelican in his/her nest; and (3) a nightingale in a tree over which appears a banderole with ‘IVGGE’, which was a common onomatopoetic word for that bird’s song (McKerrow 1913: xix). Early modern culture associated the nightingale with the Ovidian Philomela, whose transformation into the songbird represented a recuperation of her voice after her tongue had been violently removed by her brother-in-law after he raped her. Is the compartment open to a reading of Richard as the male Cupid with his arrow on the left, and Joan as the female songbird on the right? Formally, the cupid’s upstretched wings and potentially piercing arrow converse with the central open-winged, vulning pelican. Symbolically, the nightingale that produces music out of her tragedy and sorrow is allied with her fellow avian maternal pelican in self-sacrificial pain. The content of the book The Birth of mankynde, otherwyse named the womans booke makes the use of this compartment especially appropriate. If STC 21159 was indeed published after 1577, then it never appeared in the earlier editions printed by the Jugge press during Richard’s lifetime (STC 21156?, 21157, 21157.5, 21158). ‘Birth’, the largest word on the title page, and the alternate title ‘the womans booke’, bring attention to the potential female gendering of the nightingale and to the maternal qualities of the pelican surrounded by her offspring. In this context, the decorative putti heads flanking left and right evoke infants, and the childish aspect of the Cupid becomes meaningful. As the pelican title-page compartment pairs with the colophonic McK123 (Figure  5.2), a device similar to the larger McK 125, pelican images bookend this

102

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

FIGURE 5.1 The printer Joan Merrye Jugge used this title-page compartment featuring the self-sacrificing mother figure of the pelican, a toddler-sized Cupid and a nightingale (McK181, McK&F 141) in a book about mothering, female anatomy and childbirth. Thomas Raynalde, The Birth of mankynde, otherwyse named the womans booke (1585?) (London: Joan Jugge?), STC 21159, the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, call number 30690.

WIDOWS AND THEIR PRINTERS’ DEVICES

103

FIGURE 5.2 This printer’s device on the last page of The Birth of mankynde aligns with the title-page compartment to frame this edition with images of two maternal pelicans and their chicks (McK 123; Joan’s use uncatalogued). Justice and Prudence, two female allegorical figures, flank the central pelican. Thomas Raynalde, The Birth of mankynde, otherwyse named the womans booke (1585?) (London: Joan Jugge?), STC 21159, the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, call number 30690.

text on mothering, female anatomy and childbirth. Those figures peck open the avian female body, and the book visually opens up the human female body by including images of the unborn in utero across four pages at the centre of the book. One of Joan’s seven children, her son John Jugge, was admitted to the Stationers’

104

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

Company, but he had little to do with printing and died soon after his mother. And so the flock of pelican devices was disbanded, with nearly all having flown off to others in the book trade.21

Alice Bailey Charlewood Roberts leans out of the border Some printing women selected devices that included female figures from among several available options. Alice Charlewood selected a title-page compartment featuring the tragic Roman matron Lucretia, whose rape and subsequent suicide are said to have been the catalyst for the Roman transition from monarchy to a republic (McK 133, McK&F 85; Alice’s single use uncatalogued).22 Printing between her marriages in 1593,23 Alice never used either of the two eclectic devices acquired by the Charlewood business: the shop’s half-eagle and key sign (McK 136), and a caduceus, an old and much varied printer’s sign (McK 112).24 Instead she used a border of Lucretia in the act of committing suicide after being assaulted. Lucretia holds the long dagger in one hand and grips the medallion’s frame with the other in a subtle trompe l’oeil of a woman inching out from an enclosure that purports to contain her (see Figure 5.3). From its earliest uses, the compartment’s Lucretia pointed outside the frame to a shop sign and was perhaps used by a woman printing beneath that sign. The Berthelet printing house operated at the sign of the Roman Lucrece in Fleet Street and owned a full length ‘Lucrecia Romana’ device (McK 80) in addition to the compartment. Among the earliest recorded uses of the compartment is an edition of John Heywood’s Proverbs, to which the printer Margery [Powell?] Berthelet Payne, Thomas Berthelet’s wife and widow, may have contributed (STC 13293).25 In 1576, the Charlewood house began using the Lucretia compartment. Alice’s own use of it falls in line with previous Charlewood editions: it greets readers in the house’s sixth edition (STC 6707) of Edward Dering’s A Sermon Preached Before the Queenes Maiestie, with all editions from 1578 to 1589 except 1586 bearing the compartment.26 As we saw with Jugge’s pelican compartment, female figures or references within different elements of a title page may work together synergistically. Alice’s imprint here amplifies the presence

WIDOWS AND THEIR PRINTERS’ DEVICES

105

FIGURE 5.3 Textual and visual references to women appear in the title, imprint and compartment on printer Alice Bailey Charlewood Roberts’s title page: Queen Elizabeth I before whom the sermon was preached, Alice’s large imprint as the Widdow Chalwood, and the Roman matron Lucrece, whose fingers escape the medallion’s border in a subtle trompe l’oeil (McK 133, McK&F 85; Alice’s use uncatalogued). Edward Dering, A Sermon Preached Before the Queenes Maiestie (1593) (London: Alice Charlewood), STC 6707, The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, shelfmark 8° T55 Th. (8).

106

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

of women throughout the title page, from the work’s title (a sermon addressed to Queen Elizabeth) to the identification of Alice and her printing house, followed by the Lucretia device. Her imprint in the Lucretia compartment stands out for four reasons. She calls herself Wid-dow, which is itself unexceptional except that (1) here the word appears in very large type, with the first two lines larger than the second and third lines of the book’s title; (2) the entire imprint is in a font larger than most words in relation to the rest of the title-page text; and (3) the text tapers down to draw the eye toward the Lucretia medallion at the bottom of the page.27 In addition, (4) she calls herself ‘Chalwood’, which is a singular spelling but potentially representative of the name’s pronunciation. Books attributed to her husband John overwhelmingly spell the name ‘Charlewood’, although both printers use ‘Charlwood’. Late sixteenth-century English orthography is flexible, but trends do exist. Alice’s imprint positions her professional printing activity between two important historical women, Queen Elizabeth I and Lucretia.

Joan Sturgis Kingston Robinson Orwin cuts into the record Joan Sturgis Kingston Robinson Orwin printed sixty editions, vastly more than any other sixteenth-century woman in England, and printed under two different names as a widow, Robinson (in 1587) and Orwin (from 1593 to 1597). She also printed in multiple languages, printed new titles as well as those previously published, and printed across a wide variety of genres for various publishers. In a title-page gesture of agency, she cut her third husband’s initials from what was by then her own device (Figure 5.4; McK 273β; not pictured in McKerrow 1913). Seizing visual ownership by physically modifying a device was an established practice. In 1592, the Orwin press had also cut away Thomas Marshe’s initials from at least two of his former devices (McK 154, 180 and possibly 167).28 Joan waited a year and a half after Thomas’s death before removing his initials from the device in 1595, much as Jane Yetsweirt in 1597 would drop ‘widow’ from her imprints two years after the death of her husband Charles. Joan used McK 273β in seventeen books from 1595 to 1597.

WIDOWS AND THEIR PRINTERS’ DEVICES

107

FIGURE 5.4 Thrice-widowed printer Joan Orwin cut out her last husband’s initials – ‘T.O.’ – from beneath this device’s clasped hands (McK 273β; not pictured in McKerrow 1913). Her imprint conveys the business relationship she held as a printer with another woman, I. B., the publisher and bookseller Joan Broome. William Warner, Albions England (1596), (London: Joan Orwin, for I[oan] B[roome]), STC 25082, the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, call number 79624.

108

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

Joan’s consistent use of McK 273/273β and unwavering selfidentification as ‘the Widow Orwin’ maintained brand consistency.29 Just once – during her mourning period and on an internal title page – does Joan deploy the only other original Orwin device (McK 254, Joan’s use uncatalogued), which also bears her husband’s initials, ‘TO’, and the imprint ‘Imprinted at London by the Widdow Orwin, for Thomas Man. 1594’.30 She never deploys the masculine Mars device (McK 180β) used during Thomas Orwin’s life and then by her son Felix Kingston when he took over her thriving business in 1597. Felix cashed in on McK 273’s cachet, cutting a near-duplicate device (McK 274) and eventually commissioning three further modified versions that added his own initials into the design (McK 397, 402, 403). With its classic symbols of two hands emerging from clouds to grasp the caduceus and its parallel cornucopia, along with its balanced motto of ‘BY PEACE PLENTY/ BY WISDOME PEACE’, Joan’s device emphasizes the harmonious and fruitful collaborations that created printed texts throughout the early modern period. In Figure 5.4, her imprint teams up with the device to perform visually the business relationship she held with another woman, the publisher and bookseller Joan Broome. The left half emphasizes printing and ‘the Widow Orwin’ appears directly below the extended hand, while the right half emphasizes selling and the initials ‘I.B.’ appear below the less visible clasped hand. With the removal of her husband’s initials, the Widow Orwin signalled that their collaborative labour had ended and that her independent agency as an early modern English printer had begun. The culture of reproductive printing technologies furnished women with some tools by which they could show their hands in shaping the printed face of England’s textual heritage, and also conceal their hands when they saw fit. Yet we can catch glimpses of their sleights of hand in self-expressive flashes. We see these through connections between female-gendered devices and widows’ imprints and/or their textual content, as with Jugge’s pelican compartment and Charlewood’s Lucretia compartment. Signs of agency appear when looking to a woman who cut out her deceased husband’s initials from woodcut devices, as Orwin did, and when widows chose to use devices featuring female figures that did not appear in previous editions, as Jugge did. Analysis of this kind draws upon literary, historical, book historical and art historical approaches. Attending to what women did when left to their own devices can add an important corrective to the record in each of these scholarly fields.

WIDOWS AND THEIR PRINTERS’ DEVICES

109

Notes 1

In this essay, I refer to printing establishments as the gendered and collaborative spaces they were, against the custom of identifying them exclusively by the husband’s name.

2

The relationship between devices and emblem culture is one of mutual influence: see Wolkenhauer 2018: 3–28. Wolkenhauer and B. Scholz argue for an interdisciplinary, international comparative approach to devices, relating them to the reverse side of medals, Renaissance hieroglyphics, epigrams, and mottos (Wolkenhauer and Scholz 2018: vii–xi; an extensive bibliography for research on printers’ devices is provided at 378–412).

3

On imitation in early modern printmaking, see Zorach and Rodini 2005: esp. 3–6; on creativity and the copy, see Korey 2005: 31–40; on female printmakers positioning themselves within a male printmaking culture, see Markey 2005: 51–63.

4

See Figures 5.1 and 5.2, the title page and colophon device from The Birth of mankynde, STC 21159 [J. Jugge? 1585?]. The ODNB entry for Richard Jugge (Tedder, rev. Boro 2008) names his and Joan’s two sons and five daughters.

5

Bell 1996: 31–9 provides a preliminary list of women working in the early English book trades, which is updated in Smith 2003a: 417–19.

6

Kreps fleshes out Pickering’s biography and printed oeuvre, in an account that is augmented and corrected by Blayney (2013: 415–20). My own chapter is interested in how early modern women selfrepresent visually: Pykerynge never identifies herself under the now-regularized ‘Pickering’, and her particular spelling does not alter across the four imprints in which it appears (STC 23210, 10970, 7716, 10985). She printed between her marriages in 1540–1 and is the first female English printer to identify herself in an imprint and the only sixteenth century English printer to use her birth name.

7

See especially Valerie Wayne’s introduction to this collection and the essays by Alan Farmer and Sarah Neville.

8

The field would benefit from a reference tool that lists female printers, their biographies, and their known and probable STC titles along with their devices and full text imprints. The essay by Alan Farmer in the volume could be the beginning of such a resource.

9

See Bell 1996, and the chapters on provincial and international English publishing in The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain (Barnard, McKenzie and Bell 2008: 663–752).

110

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

10 For example, Richard Ward forged one of John Day’s devices (McKerrow 1913: 161), and John Charlewood testified to having witnessed the forgery of Reginald Wolfe’s device (The National Archives: Public Record Office, C 24/67/26 (Trinity 1564), Wolfe v. Payne). Many thanks to Peter Blayney who alerted me to this case and offered the documentation. 11 For more on Day’s self-representation through his devices, see King 2001. 12 The device image is present as far back as Andreas Frisner, active 1474–8 (Walker 1989). 13 On this metaphor, see Smith 2003b: 180–6. 14 STC 14798.5 contains Joan’s imprint in the colophon and the date 1579, in contrast to the title-page date of 1575; the STC attributes the work to her. STC 14799–14799a contain the same title page but have cancelled colophon leaves with pelican devices that bear the imprints of William Seres and John Walley, respectively. 15 The imprint of STC 5800 reads ‘Prynted by Richard Iugge’, and the colophon reads ‘Imprinted at London, by the Widowe of Richarde Iugge, late Printer to the Queenes Maiestie’; both bear a publication date of 1579, two years after Richard’s death. The title-page imprint of STC 5801 reads, ‘printed by Iohan Iugge Wydowe’ and its colophon identifies her as in STC 5800; both are dated 1584. 16 This edition bears no imprint and the STC entry reads ‘J. Jugge? 1585?’. For the work’s complex authorial and publication history and a modern edition, see Elaine Hobby’s edition (Reynalde 2009). 17 McKerrow 1913: 45. McK 125 is the first recorded device originating with the Jugge press. The similar and smaller, more roughly cut device, McK 123 (Figure 5.2), renders the male face as indistinguishable from the figure’s hair. But instead of representing Prudencia as she does in McK 125, the left-hand figure in McK 123 bears the attributes of Justicia, although she generally retains the clothing, hairstyle and head positioning of McK 125’s Prudencia. Other images of pelicans within compartments (McK 137, McK&F 106; McK 181, McK&F 141) and a third pelican device (McK 165) all appear later. For a collection of other dual-gendered allegorical Prudence depictions in the arts, see https://artmirrorsart.wordpress.com/2015/07/19/prudence-at-hertoilette. 18 McK 123 (Figure 5.2) does not textually identify the two allegorical women. However, to signal further that the right-hand figure is Prudencia, the artist has rotated the outer band of the motto 180 degrees so that her fingers point downward toward ‘the Lawe’.

WIDOWS AND THEIR PRINTERS’ DEVICES

111

19 Note to 1.4.216 in Foakes, ed., King Lear (1997). In Q1 the spelling is ‘Iug’ (Shakespeare 1608: D1v); in F1 it is ‘Iugge’ (Shakespeare 1996: 797). 20 McKerrow and Ferguson list twenty-three different compartments/ border pieces under Richard’s name, ten of which apparently originated with the Jugges. McK 181, McK&F 141 is not the only compartment to feature the pelican (cf. McK 137, McK&F 106), or the nightingale (cf. McK 182, McK&F 100), but the two never appear together in any other Jugge device or compartment. Joan used it three times across two titles, The Birth of mankynde (1585?, STC 21159) and The Arte of Nauigation (1579, STC 5800 and 1584, STC 5801). 21 McK 123’s history appears to have ended with Joan. McK 125’s centre oval alone next appeared in a 1588 text associated with John Windet, who acquired it via Andrew Maunsell. McK 165 shows up again in a 1599 text associated with William White, who acquired it by way of Richard Watkins. As for the compartments, McK 137, McK&F 106 does not appear in any extant text printed by the Jugge press despite bearing the Jugge monogram; its first appearance is in a book associated with M. Flesher to be sold by F. Grove in 1629. And McK 181, McK&F 141 appears next in a text with an uncertain date of 1587 associated with Richard Watkins, and in another more certainly dated 1587 associated with Watkins and James Roberts. 22 The STC also credits Alice with printing Greenes Newes both from Heauen and Hell (STC 12259), which bears a unique device (McK 291) appearing exclusively in this single text. In printing a work for Richard Watkins and Edward White (STC 10833/10833a), Alice also used a compartment owned by one of them (McK 182, McK&F 100). 23 The printing house connected to John Charlewood and Alice’s second husband James Roberts is notable for its contributions to English poetry and drama, which included holding exclusive rights to playbill printing. The Roberts press is associated with several Shakespearean plays (Straznicky 2013: 281–2), but Alice’s name does not appear on the imprints. 24 The Charlewood printing house seems to have invested in personalizing its devices. All letters but one from the last name of its original owner, William Baldwin, were cut away from the caduceus device (McK 112), leaving only the ‘D’. The half-eagle and key (McK136) appears to have been acquired as a reference to the Charlewood shop sign. 25 It is possible that Margery had a hand in printing this 1556 Heywood edition. Blayney posits that she ran the shop alone between the end of September 1555 after the death of Berthelet and before her marriage to Richard Payne at the end of January 1556 (2013: 788–93). Alice

112

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

Charlewood would likely have known of Margery, as her husband John worked in this shop and testified when legal action was brought against the Berthelet business (Blayney 2013: 793). 26 STC 6702–7. The Charlewoods also used the device for Dering’s Catechisme texts. For an account of Alice’s accomplishments as a printer, see Sarah Neville’s essay in this volume. 27 The imprint in the 1589 edition tapers even more dramatically but begins with smaller type. The sixteenth-century widow’s imprint knew no hard and fast rules: ‘Elisabeth Pykerynge’ sometimes omitted her surname but never her widowhood; Jane Yetsweirt dropped all reference to her widowhood after two years (Allen 1987: 9–10); Jacqueline Vautrollier printed only as I. Vautrollier; Emma Short likewise printed as E. Short or as E.S.; Joan Jugge called herself both the ‘Widowe of Richarde Iugge’ and ‘Iohan Iugge wydowe’; and Joan Orwin only appeared as ‘The Widow Orwin’ except in Latin imprints, which mention her deceased husbands’ full names. See Martine van Elk’s essay in this volume for how these practices compared to Dutch women printers in the subsequent century. 28 It is unclear whether the Orwin press, which did not use McK 167 in any extant texts, or Felix Kingston, Joan’s son and the device’s next owner, cut away Marshe’s initials. 29 See note 27. 30 A potential exception is a 1585 title (STC 18207, 18208) bearing a title-page image of King David with a harp (not in McKerrow), which may have been owned by either Thomas Man or John Porter, booksellers who each appear in one of the title’s imprints with Joan.

References Allen, S. (1987), ‘Jane Yetsweirt (1541–?): Claiming Her Place’, Printing History, 9 (2): 5–12. Barnard, J., D. F. McKenzie and M. Bell (eds) (2008), The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, Vol.4, 1557–1695, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Available online: https://doi.org/10.1017/ CHOL9780521661829. Bell, M. (1987), ‘Women Publishers of Puritan Literature in the Midseventeenth Century: Three Case Studies’, PhD diss., Loughborough University. Bell, M. (1996), ‘Women in the Early English Book Trade 1557–1700’, Leipziger Jahrbuch zur Buchgeschichte, 6: 13–45. Blayney, P. W. M. (2013), The Stationers’ Company and the Printers of London, 1501–57, 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

WIDOWS AND THEIR PRINTERS’ DEVICES

113

Foakes, R. A. (ed.) (1997), King Lear, London: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare. Graham, V. E. (1962), ‘The Pelican as Image and Symbol’, Revue de Littérature Comparée 36 (2): 235–43. Hayaert, V. (2018), ‘The Legal Significance and Humanist Ethos of Printers’ Insignia’, in A. Wolkenhauer and B. Scholz (eds), Typographorum Emblemata, Typographorum Emblemata, Berlin and Boston: de Gruter, 297–314. King, J. (2001), ‘ “The Light of Printing”: William Tyndale, John Foxe, John Day, and Early Modern Print Culture’, Renaissance Quarterly 54 (1): 52–85. Korey, A. M. (2005), ‘Creativity, Authenticity, and the Copy in Early Print Culture’, in E. Rodini and R. Zorach (eds), Paper Museums: The Reproductive Print in Europe, 1500–1800, Chicago: David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, 31–40. Kreps, B. (2003), ‘Elizabeth Pickering: The First Woman to Print Law Books in England and Relations within the Community of Tudor London’s Printers and Lawyers’, Renaissance Quarterly 56 (4): 1053–88. Markey, L. (2005), ‘The Female Printmaker and the Culture of the Reproductive Print Workshop’, Paper Museums: The Reproductive Print in Europe, 1500–1800, Chicago: David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, 51–63. McKerrow, R. B. (1913), Printers’ & Publishers’ Devices in England & Scotland, 1485–1640, London: The Bibliographical Society at Chiswick Press. McKerrow, R. B. and F. S. Ferguson (1932), Title-page Borders Used in England & Scotland, 1485–1640, London: The Bibliographical Society at Oxford University Press. The National Archives: Public Record Office, C 24/67/26, Trinity 1564. Pollard, A. W. and G. R. Redgrave, rev. W. A. Jackson, F. S. Ferguson and Katharine F. Pantzer (eds) (1976–1991), A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, and Ireland and of English Books Printed Abroad, 1475–1640, 3 vols. 2nd ed. London: Bibliographical Society. Reynalde, T. (2009), The Birth of Mankind: Otherwise Named, The Woman’s Book, Elaine Hobby (ed.), Burlington, VT and Surrey, UK : Ashgate. Rodini, E. and R. Zorach (2005), ‘On Imitation and Invention: An Introduction to the Reproductive Print’, in Rodini and Zorach (eds), Paper Museums: The Reproductive Print in Europe, 1500–1800, Chicago: David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, 1–27.

114

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

Scholz, B. F. and A. Wolkenhauer (eds) (2018), Typographorum Emblemata: The Printer’s Mark in the Context of Early Modern Culture, Berlin and Boston: Walter De Gruyter. Shakespeare, W. (1608), ‘King Lear, First Quarto, 1608’, Shakespeare in Quarto, British Library, Available online: www.bl.uk/Treasures/ SiqDiscovery/UI/record.aspx?Source=text&LHCopy=25&LHPage=18 &RHCopy=25&RHPage=19 (accessed 16 October 2019). Shakespeare, W. (1996), ‘King Lear’, in The Norton Facsimile: The First Folio of Shakespeare, Charlton Hinman (ed.), 2nd ed., New York: W. W. Norton. Smith, H. (2003a), ‘Grossly Material Things’: Women and Textual Production in England, 1550–1650, PhD diss., University of York. Smith, H. (2003b), ‘ “Print[ing] your royal father off”: Early Modern Female Stationers and the Gendering of British Book Trades’, Text 15: 163–86. Smith, H. (2012), ‘Grossly Material Things’: Women and Book Production in Early Modern England, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Straznicky, M. (ed.) (2013), Shakespeare’s Stationers: Studies in Cultural Bibliography, Philadelphia, PA : University of Pennsylvania Press. Tedder, H. R., rev. J. Boro (2008), ‘Jugge, Richard’, ODNB . Available online: https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/15160. Walker, T. D. (1989), ‘The Cover Design’, The Library Quarterly 59 (3): 261–2. Wolkenhauer, A. (2018), ‘Sisters, or Mother and Daughter? The Relationship Between Printer’s [sic] Marks and Emblems During the First Hundred Years’, in A. Wolkenhauer and B. Scholz (eds), Typographorum Emblemata, Berlin and Boston: de Gruter, 3–28.

6 ‘Famed as far as one finds books’: Women in the Dutch and English book trades Martine van Elk

The 1663 painting by Jan de Bray on the cover of this book features a successful female stationer: Margaretha van Bancken is depicted with her husband Abraham Casteleyn. Casteleyn was official city printer for the city of Haarlem, but he also produced newspapers, including the Oprechte Haerlemsche Courant (Authentic Haarlem Newspaper), a particularly important and internationally known publication.1 As Arthur der Weduwen notes, the newspaper relied on numerous foreign contacts, contained more news than others and was renowned for its reliability; it was printed in England in translation and even circulated in manuscript copy at the Russian court (2017: 1.41–4, 2.671–6). Margaretha married Abraham in 1661. They were Mennonites, which explains their sober, oldfashioned costumes.2 After Abraham’s death in 1681, Margaretha continued to run the business, printing for the city and publishing the newspaper under his name while printing other works under her birth name – even after a second marriage in 1682 – until her death, when the business passed on to her son. The choice of her birth name for book publications is unusual and points to an independent sense of herself as publisher, an impression that is confirmed by a dispute in 1692 with the city of Haarlem when it proposed additional taxes to 115

116

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

be imposed on newspapers. Van Bancken threatened to close her business, after which the city relented (Hoftijzer 2001b: 218). As a newspaper publisher, Van Bancken must have maintained a vast network of contacts, both in the Dutch Republic and abroad, with correspondents, advertisers and distributors. The portrait, painted two years into the marriage, presents us with an image of spousal fidelity, signified by the fact that Van Bancken leans towards her husband and that they are holding hands, a convention in marriage portraits.3 A sketch of De Bray’s original design explains her unusual pose and outstretched arm: he had planned to show other women entering the space, one bearing a basket of goods.4 The portrait positions husband and wife differently. The bust above them, of Laurens Janszoon Coster, the Haarlem printer who was rumoured to have invented the printing press, is closer to Abraham than to Margaretha. He sits in what looks like a study, next to the books that denote his profession. The open book is an atlas, which, like the globe right behind him, points to his international outlook and contacts. He gazes directly, confidently and with a smile at the viewer, inviting us into his world with his gesturing hand. By contrast, the background immediately behind Van Bancken is largely blank; leaning towards her husband but gesturing towards the outside, she is poised between the world of her stationer husband and what lies beyond. Yet, although she is not placed right next to the signifiers of their business, her smiling glance, not directly at us or her husband but at the books, alludes subtly to her role in producing them. Van Bancken, a Haarlem stationer, is not among the Amsterdam book traders I discuss in this essay, but the complexity of her status as wife and business partner is indicative of the position of female stationers generally in the male-dominated book trade; women made critical contributions that were normally not publicly visible until after their husbands died. Book historians and feminist scholars have been uncovering the extent to which early modern English women participated actively in the production and dissemination of books, but very little comparative study has been undertaken that would allow us to situate them in an international context. How do English women stationers compare to women stationers elsewhere? This essay offers a cross-cultural perspective on women in the English and Dutch book trades in the seventeenth century. For the purposes of

WOMEN IN THE DUTCH AND ENGLISH BOOK TRADES

117

this essay, I examine only women with long careers in the trade who worked independently in Amsterdam and London. Along with their business strategies, I consider how these women appeared on the title pages of the books they printed or published. As Helen Smith has argued, ‘a woman’s name on the title page can be appropriated as an interpretive act, challenging us to rethink our readings of the gendered dynamics of early modern texts’ (2012: 89). I approach this subject as a matter of public representation of women, since women’s names on title pages created a textual presence in a public arena that implied the marketability of their names and registered their importance to the trade.5 London and Amsterdam make for a productive comparison of women stationers.6 Women stationers in the Dutch Republic were in similar legal and social positions to English women stationers. There are deep connections: English stationers moved to the Low Countries, Dutch stationers worked in England, and Dutch booksellers, printers and publishers catered to the English market. Amsterdam and London were home to thriving book trades.7 English and Dutch women generally could not join the book trade guilds and companies independently, but they were allowed to maintain their male relatives’ guild membership after their husbands or fathers died.8 As wives, daughters, mothers and sisters of stationers, women in Amsterdam and London occupied key positions in ‘dynasties’ of stationers’ families (Bell 1996b: 22–3; Hoftijzer 2001b: 220). Widows running their own bookshops or printing houses sometimes remarried other book traders, their sons frequently became stationers and their daughters often married in the trade. Dutch and English women performed a range of functions in printing houses and bookshops. A search by gender in the database ECARTICO shows that women worked as printers, publishers, booksellers, newspaper-printers and -publishers, papersellers, map-sellers, engravers and letter foundresses; Paul Hoftijzer mentions female bookbinders and cites evidence of women and girls working as typesetters and proof readers (2001b: 212–13). The same variety can be seen in England; Smith has also found references that point to some of the less visible types of activities undertaken by women, such as removing paper sheets from the press, book-sewing and bookbinding (2012: 96–100). The challenges of ascertaining how long women were active in the book trades, how many books they produced and what kinds

118

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

of labour they engaged in are not unique to England. Both the English Short-Title Catalogue (ESTC ) and the Short-Title Catalogue Netherlands (STCN ) are incomplete.9 These databases depend on early modern imprints, which are not perfect tools for uncovering the historical record given the number of lost works and the failure to include certain types of printing. Imprints may give incomplete or false information (Smith 2012: 100–2), as we will see later in the case of one Dutch stationer, who represented herself as an English stationer in works published for the English market. More frequently, they leave women out or they may feature only initials, making identification of the stationer difficult. Guild records can be unreliable too. In the Dutch Republic, regulation limiting the number of master printers was not strict, and some people registered only as booksellers, even though they also printed works. The number of entries in the ESTC and the STCN is not a fool-proof indicator of the amount of work performed by printers or the degree of financial investment by publishers. Nonetheless, for the purposes of this essay, a large number of entries in these bibliographies is taken as an indication of a significant, recorded public impact. My aim is to explore the careers of women stationers who worked independently of their husbands and fathers for at least five years and were responsible for printing or publishing at least fifty works. Using Maureen Bell’s dictionary and list of women stationers (1983, 1996b), I have identified twenty-two English women and, based on my own research, nineteen Dutch women who had extensive and substantial independent careers in the seventeenth century. Given the problems with the ESTC and the STCN , there are certainly women I have overlooked; this discussion is not meant to offer definitive numbers of women in this group, but rather to uncover trends among women with long, independent careers that are documented in both countries.10 English and Dutch women stationers tended to thrive by relying on their husbands’ reputations and networks, as Alan B. Farmer concludes for English widows in his essay for this volume. However, as Sarah Neville emphasizes in her essay, women also guided business decisions during their first marriage, upon marrying again and upon leaving the business to their sons. After their husbands’ or fathers’ deaths, many women found it profitable to specialize or continue specializing, either as sectarian publishers and printers

WOMEN IN THE DUTCH AND ENGLISH BOOK TRADES

119

or by printing or publishing a particular author or genre. While they often built on the foundations laid by their first husbands and fathers, many ended up publishing or printing more than their male relative and determining their own business strategies. Three differences between English and Dutch women with long careers stand out. First, among English women there are more printers (seventeen out of twenty-two) than among Dutch women (ten printers out of nineteen, with a possible additional two who may have owned a press). Second, Dutch women stationers had a greater international orientation than English women. The latter published and printed mainly English materials for the English market (with occasional works in French and Latin), though they also produced translations. Many Dutch women put out translations, but they also published and printed a substantial body of works in other languages, including Latin, German, French and English. The international orientation of Dutch women confirms Hoftijzer’s argument that the conditions in London were less favourable for the international trade than in Amsterdam, due to London’s ‘peripheral location, . . . the lack of knowledge of the English language on the Continent and poor typographical standards’ (2001a: 261). Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen also highlight the sophistication of the Dutch book trade and the extent to which Dutch stationers looked abroad (2019). Dutch women, who were in some ways better positioned than English women, benefited from and participated in creating and maintaining the Dutch Republic’s role as a centre of the international book trade. A third difference is the prominence of sectarian book traders among the English women. This is not surprising given the state of the trade during the Civil War, but their importance is not confined to the 1640s and 1650s. Bell has explored the careers of the Fifth Monarchist publisher Hannah Allen (1989), the nonconformist publisher Elizabeth Calvert (1996a) and the Quaker printer Mary Westwood (1988). The best-known seventeenthcentury English woman stationer is the Quaker printer Tace Sowle, whose career and formidable record have been discussed by Paula McDowell (1998, 2008). Other women with long careers in the book trade catered to royalists, such as Anne (or Abigail) Baldwin, who published Whig tracts. While most Dutch female stationers printed, published or sold religious works, there are

120

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

fewer sectarian stationers among the women with extensive careers. Two of the most prolific female sectarian book traders in the Republic were of English descent, both members of families that had come to Amsterdam as refugees in the sixteenth century. As Hoftijzer has explained, Abigaal Swart and Mercy Bruyningh promoted their political and religious agendas after their husbands died. While Bruyningh catered largely to a Puritan English readership, Swart attempted to garner sympathy for William III’s campaign abroad in the Dutch Republic, publishing not only political pamphlets but also dictionaries, grammar manuals and other works that added ‘modestly to the economic, religious, political, and cultural traffic between the Dutch Republic and Great Britain’ (Hoftijzer 1987: 17). There were other sectarian book traders among Dutch women with long careers who had no family connections to England. Maritje Brandt was a reformed bookseller and publisher of religious works in Dutch and Latin; Pettegree and Der Weduwen describe her husband, Marten Jansz Brandt, as ‘the most important orthodox devotional publisher in the first half of the seventeenth century’ (2019: 133). After his death, she joined with her nephew Abraham van den Burgh to run the bookshop known as ‘In de Gereformeerde Catechismus’ (‘In the Reformed Catechism’) and published books that supported the Further Reformation (Nadere Reformatie), a movement of pietist Protestants with links to English Puritanism. This is evident in some of her publications, which include books by the Westminster Divine William Price, for instance. Another sectarian is Catharina Arentsz, a Mennonite bookseller-publisher. After ten years of working independently, Arentsz collaborated for sixteen years with her son-in-law, Cornelis van der Sijs. The two paid their guild dues separately (Van Eeghen 1960–78: 3.16). They specialized in publishing a small group of authors who were members of a network of heterodox thinkers known as the Collegiants (members of a religious society), but they also published song books and emblem books, a favourite genre among Mennonites and a means to attract a wide readership. Like Brandt, Arentsz and Van der Sijs looked beyond borders, putting out a collection of works by English Quakers and the writings of German preacher August Hermann Francke. Thus, they contributed to the culture of song, emblem contemplation and free exchange of ideas across borders promoted by others of their faith. Moreover, we know from

WOMEN IN THE DUTCH AND ENGLISH BOOK TRADES

121

advertisements that, from 1690 to 1698, the bookshop of Arentsz was the place in Amsterdam where one could buy the Opregte Leydse Courant (Authentic Leiden Newspaper), a paper with ‘a middling position in the newspaper industry’ that delivered international news to readers (Der Weduwen 2017: 2.1448). This suggests that Arentsz ran a bookshop that was by no means intended to appeal exclusively to a sectarian clientele. In addition, it shows the perils of only relying on book publications as a method of assessing the ‘identity’ of a stationer’s firm. The long careers of Brandt and Arentsz, maintained on the basis of familial collaboration, close relationships with particular authors and a network of like-minded thinkers, resemble those of English sectarians like Allen, Calvert and Westwood. But in the case of the Dutch women, we also see a desire to look abroad and appeal to a wider reading public. This expansive vision is less common among English women. Generally, Dutch sectarian publishers depended on a relatively small but reliable audience of readers and group of authors, while they tried to put out works from and attract readers outside their close networks. This interplay between catering to small communities and expansive strategies of publication enabled their longevity as stationers. Dutch and English women shared other forms of specialization. Some English women printers concentrated on particular types of printed matter, such as Ellen Cotes, who printed parish mortality bills, and Elizabeth Mallet, who printed serial publications and the first issues of the earliest daily English newspaper. The STCN does not include newspapers, but in Amsterdam there were four women with long careers who were courantiers, or publishers, sellers and printers of newspapers, though none with quite the influence of Van Bancken. They were not all equally involved in the business. Lijsbeth Jansz, widow of one of the first courantiers, left the printing of her newspaper to her son-in-law after her husband Broer Jansz died in 1652. Yet the newspaper continued to appear under her name until 1670 (Der Weduwen 2017: 1.263). By contrast, Jacomina Oossaan gave up most of her husband’s business after his death in 1693 with the explicit exception of his newspaper, which she printed and distributed until 1724 (Der Weduwen 2017: 2.1163–4). Although neither woman’s presence in the STCN reflects it, their names appeared on newspapers that were read widely for years, allowing them to establish and sustain their reputations in order to sell their work.

122

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

Other Dutch women specialized in secular book publication. Annetje de Wees built a thirty-one-year career out of publishing the works of one of the country’s foremost authors, Joost van den Vondel. Out of De Wees’ seventy-five entries in the STCN , only seven are not authored or translated by Vondel. Less narrowly specialized, Hendrickje and Lijntje de Groot published chiefly plays. We see such concentration in particular genres in England too, as Farmer and Neville point out in their essays for this volume. For instance, the ESTC shows that Mary Clark published popular almanacs and that Jane Coe printed newssheets during the upheaval of the Civil War. Three Dutch women stationers found means of specialization that enabled their especially long careers. Shortly after her husband’s death, Susanna Schipper joined in the profitable trade in English bibles, making her an example of what Farmer calls an ‘entrepreneurial’ stationer. As she converted to Catholicism after her husband died, her decision to publish English bibles and other Protestant texts seems entirely profit-based. Schipper printed English bibles, first with her stepfather’s widow and then with his daughter, with the purpose of selling them in England, where their cheap products could compete with the more expensive bibles sold there, in what Pettegree and Der Weduwen call ‘the most provocative part’ of Dutch stationers’ efforts to infiltrate the English book market (2019: 275). Somehow the Jewish printer Joseph Athias acquired the privilege, or right to publish and print, for English bibles in 1670, giving him a monopoly.11 The legal conflict that ensued between these competing printers of English bibles was resolved by a remarkable agreement: Athias and Schipper started producing English bibles together in 1673. They had a house built that would contain their many printing presses, a letter foundry and storage facilities. In a 1691 request for renewal of their privilege, they even claimed to have invented a mysterious and unidentified way of speeding up the printing process ‘in such a way that its like in the world had never been heard of or practised’.12 Although Athias went bankrupt at the end of his life for unclear reasons, Schipper left an enormous fortune to her heirs (Van Eeghen 1960–78: 4.99). The combination of such narrow specialization and extreme economic success is only approximated among English women by the exceptional Tace Sowle.

WOMEN IN THE DUTCH AND ENGLISH BOOK TRADES

123

The second Dutch example of effective specialization is the Lescailje printing house, which after the death of Jacob Lescailje in 1679 was run by his daughters Katharina, herself a prolific author of poems and plays, and Aletta. The Lescailje firm was authorized to do all the printing work, including playbills, for the Schouwburg, the only public theatre in Amsterdam. By means of a special privilege, the Schouwburg had the rights to plays performed there, which it bestowed on its preferred printing house (Grabowsky 1995). This meant that the Lescailje firm was allowed to print and publish plays upon their performance in the Schouwburg, with the exception of plays that were subject to a competing privilege (such as those by Vondel). Due to this special relationship, the Lescailje family dominated the market for play editions for many years; they published by no means all plays performed or written at that time, but did put out the majority. Among female stationers with long careers, Katharina and Aletta Lescailje were an anomaly, as there are only a few cases of daughters taking over the businesses of their father. Along with Alida and Maria Matthijsz, they are the only pair of sisters I have found in the Dutch Republic who ran a book- and printshop together after their father’s death.13 In Bell’s Dictionary of Women in the London Book Trade, 1540–1730, her list of 325 female stationers (1996b) and the British Book Trade Index online, I have only found five London stationers who inherited their fathers’ businesses, along with three others who may have done so. Elizabeth Latham was the first who was admitted to the Stationer’s Company by patrimony in 1668 (Bell 1983: 54; Smith 2012: 95). Again, Sowle is a key English example: she began running her father’s firm in 1690 once he became ill, well before his death in 1695. Guild membership by patrimony normally only happened when there were no sons or sons-in-law to take over, but in Lescailje’s case there was a living son, Anthony Lescailje. His own business had gone bankrupt, which may explain why Jacob left his printing house and bookshop to his other descendants. Those may have included his eldest daughter’s widower Matthias de Wreedt, himself a printer from Germany, but there is no evidence that he had much to do with the business.14 The Lescailje sisters would have had extensive experience working in their father’s business; their mother, Aaltje Verwou, had herself run a bookshop after the death of her first husband. Katharina was most likely in charge: I have found records in the Schouwburg account books that name her as the person who was paid for printing

124

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

work.15 The German traveller Zacharias von Uffenbach recounts meeting Katharina in 1711, as he says, living in her bookshop, ‘where only Comedies were sold’. He bought one of the plays by Katharina herself who, he writes, ‘was held for one of the best Poetesses of this age’.16 Indeed, Lescailje was well known into the eighteenth century as a poet and especially as a translator of French plays, six of which were performed at the theatre in Amsterdam. She was only the third Dutch female playwright to have her works performed on a public stage and the first to publish tragedies. What public presentation was associated with these women in the book trade? Textually, the imprints of their books were the primary source for their publicity. Imprints often have, as Smith has argued, a story to tell, a story that I am connecting with the public sphere of print and with the books themselves as products in a competitive marketplace (2011). An imprint that features a female name contributes to the public representation of women, offering an indication of their standing in a trade that was culturally central. As we have seen in the case of Jacomina Oossaan, the newspaper publisher mentioned above, sometimes women’s names feature on title pages or in newspapers even when they had little to do with the business.17 From the perspective of representation, however, what Bell calls ‘nominal ownership’ of businesses by women is as important as active ownership, given that the female name is the public face of the business (1996b: 19). Because of their biases and gaps, it is equally instructive to examine what is missing from imprints, so that we can understand the circumstances in which women’s names did and did not appear. In the Dutch Republic, most female publishers and printers marketed their products by presenting themselves on title pages as widows of their husbands, which emphasized the continuation of the business. However, guilds could also register membership of the heirs of a book trader collectively without listing their names. This practice extended to imprints that identified the printer or publisher as ‘erven van’ or ‘heirs of’ the deceased male stationer, a phrase that included women and men. Moreover, Dutch imprints are frequently unclear and sometimes unreliable about the task performed by the person named. They often simply state, ‘By A’, with no indication of whether A is a publisher, bookseller, printer or a combination of the three. Trade printers, i.e. stationers who only printed but did not initiate publication or sell books themselves, can be left out of

WOMEN IN THE DUTCH AND ENGLISH BOOK TRADES

125

imprints entirely. Equally confusingly, a book may be said to be ‘gedrukt door A’ (‘printed by A’), even when the name is actually that of the bookseller-publisher; the phrase ‘gedrukt door’, in other words, may indicate the person who did the printing or the person who had the work printed. English imprints often identify roles of stationers on the title page but can also list stationers entirely or partly by initials, which means that we are not always sure who is behind those letters. ‘E. Allde’, for instance, may refer to Elizabeth Allde or her husband, Edward Allde. Unlike Dutch women, English women stationers only infrequently presented themselves on title pages as widows or assigns. A search in the ESTC for the word ‘widow’ in the imprint produces a result of ninety-seven records for the entire seventeenth century, out of which thirty-three were books produced in London. Four of these publications are by widows of the author rather than working female stationers, leaving only twenty-nine books printed in London for which a woman used the word ‘widow’ to describe herself in an imprint. Identification as a widow seems to have been a personal preference for some seventeenth-century women stationers, but, unlike in the Dutch Republic, they often listed their full name first, using the phrases ‘Elizabeth Burby, widow’ (in five imprints) and ‘Joyce Macham, widow’ (in six imprints). A broader look at the use of the word ‘widow’ on title pages beyond London in the ESTC shows that a sizeable portion – sixty-two out of ninetyseven – was in books printed and published by women working on the Continent. The differences in publication practice are clearly visible in the case of the sectarian women stationers mentioned above. Arentsz appears from 1689 to 1698 as ‘Weduwe Pieter Arentsz’ or ‘Weduwe P. Arentsz’; from 1698, her name is accompanied by her son-inlaw’s but always listed first, which emphasized the continuity with her husband’s business as well as her status vis-à-vis her business partner. Westwood, by contrast, is named on eleven pamphlets published in 1659 and 1660 with her full name, but she appears as M. W. in imprints for forty works between 1659 and 1663, and likely as W. M. on a further eight texts published in 1662 and 1663, possibly for reasons of persecution, as Bell suggests. It seems no accident that her full name only appears on imprints for a short period of time leading up to the Restoration, when Quakers were hoping for toleration from the new government (1988: 5, 45). By

126

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

contrast, Sowle, who was not in charge of her printing house until 1690, could have her name appear publicly more freely. The variation in her imprints instead bears the traces of her professional situation. She tended to use ‘T. Sowle’ rather than ‘Tace Sowle’, but in 1706, upon marrying her husband Thomas Raylton, who was not a stationer, she made her mother the ‘nominal head’ of the business (McDowell 1998: 36). Subsequent imprints bear her mother’s name, followed by imprints with ‘assigns of J. Sowle’ after her mother’s death. By 1736, widowed and working with Luke Hinde, Tace began to use ‘Tace Sowle Raylton’ along with her associate’s name (McDowell 1998: 37). On the whole, then, while English women used their own names independently, they frequently appeared in ungendered form by using their initials. Dutch women, by contrast, primarily named themselves in imprints in terms of their relationship to a man, showing their interest in maintaining their family’s enterprise. It was not unusual for women stationers, even if they worked independently of fathers and husbands, not to appear at all in imprints in the Republic. Schipper only featured sometimes on title pages, and she remained unnamed in the many English bibles she produced. Even though her firm owned the privilege for English bibles in the Low Countries, this right did not extend to selling the bibles in England. Hoftijzer cites the observations of the English traveller William Nicolson, who visited their printing house: They print here many English bibles of all sizes; upon the titlepages of which they sett: London printed by R. Barker and the Assigns of John Bill &c. . . . They showed me also severall books printed here with the title pages as if at Collen, Leipsick, Mentz, &c. whence it comes to pass that you may buy bookes cheaper at Amsterdam, in all languages, then at the places where they are first printed: for here the copy cost them noething. Hoftijzer 1988: 100 Due to the semi-legal status of their work, Schipper’s name was generally only visible in works she published for the Dutch market, which obscured the larger business she conducted internationally. On Dutch title pages, she was named as the widow of her husband, sometimes using the device that puns on his name (skipper) to link her professional identity with his (see Figure 6.1).

WOMEN IN THE DUTCH AND ENGLISH BOOK TRADES

127

Katharina and Aletta Lescailje’s more respectable work remained obscured behind the ‘erven van’ (heirs of) label on the title pages of the many plays they published.18 The title page of one of Katharina’s plays (see Figure 6.2) is a good example: her status as author features prominently, but her work in printing and publishing the play is subsumed by her listing as her father’s heir. Erika Boeckeler’s argument in this volume that women could use printer’s devices as means of self-representation proves fruitful in looking at Dutch title pages too. Lescailje’s choice of a printer’s device frequently highlights continuity with her father’s business: she usually reprints Jacob Lescailje’s device, with his motto ‘perseveranter’, Latin for ‘steadfastly’. In spite of Katharina’s extended professional career, almost all dedicatory poetry in her posthumous collected works praises her as poet and playwright while disregarding her achievements as printerpublisher. Yet the prefatory note to the first volume of the collected works published by her descendants presents her not only as author: it claims that ‘One would certainly have seen more Tragedies by her pen, if she had not nobly spent her time and diligence on the substantial improvement of the Plays by others’.19 This is a remarkable description of her work as a substantial intervention in the texts that she published. Smith observes of English stationers, ‘it is likely that women rarely intervened in the content of texts produced on their premises’ (2012: 99), but this preface seems to indicate otherwise for the Dutch Republic, or at least for Lescailje. Nevertheless, even in this moment of professional recognition, Lescailje’s status as printer-publisher is depicted as detrimental to her career as a poet and an instance of her selfless, noble desire to enhance the success of others, not as evidence of her own successful career as a stationer. As was true for England, besides imprints and guild and legal records, there was little textual representation of the work done by Dutch women stationers. However, Lescailje composed a poem on the death of Schipper that offers a rare instance of a woman stationer writing about a female colleague. In the epitaph, Lescailje gives an account of her profession that differs from her heirs’: ‘The Widow of SCHIPPERS, famed throughout the World, / As far as one finds Books; elevated due to her virtue; / Excelling in knowledge; rests here.’20 In the collection in which this poem appears, Lescailje’s own fame is overwhelmingly couched in terms of her literary production. Yet Lescailje represents Schipper’s fame as deriving

128

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

FIGURE 6.1 Title page of Ioannis Calvini Noviodunensis Opera omnia [John Calvin from Noyon’s Complete Works] (Amsterdam, 1671), vol. 1. The book is presented as published ‘apud viduam’ or ‘by the widow’ of Johannes Jacobus Schipper. The printer’s device draws attention to her husband, whose last name means skipper. Courtesy Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague, shelfmark KW 599 B 1[–9].

WOMEN IN THE DUTCH AND ENGLISH BOOK TRADES

129

FIGURE 6.2 Title page of Katharina Lescailje, Ariadne, Treurspel [Ariadne, Tragedy] (Amsterdam, 1693). Lescailje presents herself both as author-translator and stationer. Her name is prominently featured on the title page for the play, but as stationer she is hidden behind ‘erven van J. Lescailje’ (‘heirs of J. Lescailje’). The printer’s device, originally her father’s, shows a salamander in fire with the motto ‘perseveranter’ (steadfastly or persistent). Courtesy Koninklijke Bibliotheek, the Hague, shelfmark KW 448 H 196.

130

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

from her labour in book production, as well as her virtue and knowledge. This exceptional representation suggests the limitations of the textual traces through which we encounter women stationers. Nonetheless, the regular appearance of women’s names and the mention of widows in imprints must have made it obvious to book buyers and readers in both countries that women were vital to the book market. As active agents, working in most areas of the trade, women stationers had a textual presence in books that contributed to a female public presence associated with literacy, the marketplace and book production.21

Appendix of women stationers in seventeenth-century Amsterdam The information in this appendix is based on five principal sources: the list of stationers in Thesaurus 1473–1800 (Gruys and de Wolf 1989), the database ECARTICO , the STCN and the pioneering work done by I. H. van Eeghen (1960–78) and M. M. Kleerkooper (1914–16). I have only included women who were listed as active for more than one year. The STCN and ECARTICO describe most women as booksellers and publishers, but if there was evidence that they also printed works, I have included the word printer, using square brackets in cases of uncertainty. For women who married more than once, I have only listed names of husbands who were in the book trade; if women worked under more than one name (due to multiple marriages), I have left the space for their birth name blank and listed their birth name in the first column. Women marked with an asterisk have been identified as those with long careers and a substantial textual presence in imprints for the purposes of this essay, that is, those who worked independently for at least five years and printed or published at least fifty works. Women in the newspaper business (courantiers) have been included in this group, using Arthur der Weduwen’s index of newspaper stationers (2017: 1: 115–18). The numbers in the STCN column indicate the number of works listed under their name in the STCN .

Appendix 6.1: Women stationers in seventeenth-century Amsterdam Name

Birth Name

Husband(s) [unless noted otherwise]

Type of Stationer

Years Active STCN

ARENTSZ, Catharina*

WIJNENBERG

Pieter Arentsz. Schrijver

Bookseller, Publisher, Courantier, [Printer]

1689–1715

101

BERGH, Joanna van den

WASTELIER

Johannes van den Bergh

Bookseller, Publisher

1676–80

14

BOETEMAN, Abegail

van NIEBERGEN

Pieter Dircksz. Boeteman

Publisher, [Printer]

1677–80

22

BOOM, Aegje

WEYERS

Jan Hendricksz. Boom

Bookseller, Publisher

1664–71

14

BOOM, Johanna*

VEERIS

Dirk Boom

Bookseller, Publisher, [Printer]

1680–1709

277

BOUMAN, Aaltje

BROERS

Jan Jacobsz. Bouman

Bookseller, Publisher

1671–2

8

BRANDT, Maritje*

JAKOBS

Marten Jansz. Brandt

Bookseller, Publisher

1650–69

59

Gerrit Hendricksz. van Breughel

Publisher, Printer

1637–8

2

BREUGHEL, Trijntje CORNELIS van 131

132

Name

Birth Name

Husband(s) [unless noted otherwise]

Type of Stationer

Years Active STCN

BROERSZ, Willemijntje*

BROERS

Joost Broersz

Bookseller, Publisher, Printer, Courantier

1647–61

31

BROUWER, Geesje

COOPERS

Jan Janssen Brouwer de Jonge; Johannes Arcerius; Samuel Arcerius

Bookseller, Publisher

1660–2

5

BRUYNINGH, Mercy*22

ARNOLD

Joseph Bruyningh

Bookseller, Publisher

1673–88

46

BURGH, Vroutje van JANS den

Abraham Meijnartsz. van den Burgh

Bookseller, Publisher

1670–7

15

CLOPPENBURGH, Anna

SWEERS

Evert Cloppenburgh

Bookseller, Publisher

1643–5

4

COMMELIN, Trijn

Jansdr. VALCKENIER

Jan Commelin

Bookseller, Publisher

1615–21

3

CUNRADUS, Ytje

FOCKENS

Christoffel Cunradus

Printer

1685–90

3

DORSTEN, Aaltje van

Jans VERWOU

Balthazar Crijnen van Dorsten; Jacob Lescailje

Bookseller, Publisher

1641–4

7

DUIJST, Maria van

SMIENT

DUIJVELAND, Jacomina van*

Otto Barents Smient (father); Bookseller, Publisher, [Printer] Nicolaas van Duijst (husband)

1693–1710

9

Aert Dircksz. Oossaan; Dirck Schouten

Bookseller, Publisher, Printer, Courantier

1693– 1727/1718– 33

13

DYCK, Annetje van

Jacobs SCHOENMAKER

Joachim van Dyck

Bookseller, Publisher

1690–1703

15

ELZEVIER, Anna

BEERNINCK

Daniel Elzevier

Bookseller, Publisher, Printer

1680–1

11

FORTGENS, Maria

de VIJVER

Michaël Fortgens

Bookseller, Publisher

1696–1711

3

GAASBEECK, Sara van*

TIEWELEN

Adriaen van Gaasbeeck I

Bookseller, Publisher, Courantier

1686–c. 1694 22

GOOS, Geertruyt

van RUIJF

Pieter Goos

Publisher, Print Seller

1675–6

2

GROOT, Hendrickje de*

BLAEUW

Gijsbert de Groot

Bookseller, Publisher, Paperseller

1692–1717

408

GROOT, Lijntje de

Antonis LOOTSMAN

Michiel de Groot

Bookseller, Publisher

1681–3

58

133

134

Name

Birth Name

Husband(s) [unless noted otherwise]

Type of Stationer

Years Active STCN

HOUTHAECK, Machteld

van DAELEN

Thijmen Dircksz. Houthaeck; Hendrik Harmensz. Boterenbrood

Bookseller, Publisher, [Printer]

1665–7, 1700–2

7

JACOBSZ, Aaltje

WILBOORDS

Jacob Jacobsz

Printer

1626–7

3

JANSSONIUS, Francina

van OFFENBERG

Jodocus Janssonius; Hendrick Prins

Bookseller, Publisher

1655–6

4

JANSZ, Lysbeth*

PHILIPS

Broer Jansz

Publisher, Printer, Courantier

1652–71

2

JONGE, Hester de

Jacobs van ACKERE Jacob de Jonge

Printer

1679–84

6

KONIJNENBERGH, LOOTSMAN Jannitje

Jacob Konijnenbergh

Bookseller, Publisher

1694–1706

7

LESCAILJE, Aletta*

Jacob Lescailje (father)

Bookseller, Publisher, Printer

1679–1725

581

LESCAILJE, Katharina*

Jacob Lescailje (father)

Bookseller, Publisher, Printer

1679–1711

ca. 388

LIESHOUT, Sara van*

FLAMEN [VLAMINCK]

François van Lieshout

Bookseller, Publisher, Courantier

1646–69

1

LOOTSMAN, Lijntje*

ROBIJNS

Theunis Jacobsz. Lootsman

Bookseller, Publisher, Printer

1651–89

85

MAGNUS, Marretie

Claes VIS

Albert Magnus

Bookseller, Publisher

1690–1701

9

MATTHIJSZ, Alida*

Paulus Matthijsz (father)

Bookseller, Publisher, Printer

1684–1723

64

MATTHIJSZ, Maria*

Paulus Matthijsz (father)

Bookseller, Publisher, Printer

1684–1723

64

METELEN, Machteld KIEFT

Joachim van Metelen

Bookseller, Publisher

1676–80

14

MEURS, Annetje van Philips GOULET

Jacob Willems van Meurs

Bookseller, Publisher

1681–3

6

PLAET, Catrina van der

Barent Willems van der Plaet; Dirck Barentsz. Ficke

Bookseller, Publisher

1675–6

3

PLASSE, Anne van de PIETERSDR.

Cornelis Lodewijcksz. van de Plasse

Bookseller, Publisher

1641–4

4

PLUIMER, Catrina

Joost Pluimer

Bookseller, Publisher

1673–8

12

CLAAS

de VOGEL

135

136

Name

Birth Name

Husband(s) [unless noted otherwise]

Type of Stationer

Years Active STCN

RAVESTEIN, Elisabeth van

Emanuelsdr. SWEERTS

Pauwels Aertsz. van Ravestein

Publisher, Printer

1655–61

28

SCHAGEN, Jacomina BULLENS

Gerbrandt Schagen

Bookseller, Publisher, Printer

1698–1714

29

SCHIPPER, Susanna* VESELAER

Jan Jacobsz. Schipper

Bookseller, Publisher, Printer

1670–99

49

SOMEREN, Hester van*

de WEER

Jan Pietersz. van Someren

Bookseller, Publisher

1678–1710

199

STORCK, Marritje van der

Gijsberts van Abel Sijmonsz. van der GOEDESBERGHEN Storck

Bookseller, Publisher

1680–8

9

Bookseller, Publisher

1653–5

3

STROOBANT, Anna STROOBANT, Margrieta

BOSSCHAERT

Paulus Stroobant

Bookseller, Publisher

1627–53

8

SWART, Abigaal*

MAIJ

Steven Swart

Bookseller, Publisher, Printer

1683–1708

103

TROOST, Lijsbet

JANS

Dirck Cornelisz. Troost

Bookseller, Publisher

1633–6

3

VESELAER, Aagje

JACOBS

Joris Jacobsz. Veselaer; Jan Fredricx Stam

Bookseller, Publisher, Printer, Courantier

1625–8

6

VOSCUYL, Aefje

Willems SASKERS

Dirck Pietersz. Voscuyl; Hessel Gerritsz

Bookseller, Publisher

1622–4

3

WACHTER, Marretgen

Jacobs van WAELBEECK

Jacob Pietersz. Wachter

Bookseller, Publisher

1650–69

1

WEES, Annetje de*

HARMENS

Abraham Jansz. de Wees

Bookseller, Publisher

1654–85

75

WEIJERSTRAET, Sara

JANSSONIUS

Elizée Weijerstraet

Bookseller, Publisher

1667–9

62

Israel de Paul; Abraham Olofs; Andries Pieters; Johannes Groenewout

Publisher, Printer

1687; 1693; 1705–9

4

WIAERTS, Elisabet Abrams

137

138

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

Notes 1

Information on Van Bancken is based on Hell (2014).

2

Ekkart and Buvelot 2007: 86. For more on the portrait, see also Ekkart 1984–5.

3

De Jongh 1986: 51–4. For further symbolism in the portrait, see De Jongh 1986: 181–2, and Ekkart and Buvelot 2007: 86.

4

The sketch, held by the Fondation Custodia in Paris, is currently available on Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/File:Jan_de_Bray_-_Haarlem_Printer_Abraham_Casteleyn_and_ His_Wife_Margarieta_van_Bancken_-_WGA03118.jpg.

5

See my discussion of the terms public and private, Van Elk 2017: 1–26.

6

The only comparative research to date on this subject is by Zech (1997, 2000).

7

Hoftijzer 2001a; Pettegree and Der Weduwen 2019. See Rasterhoff 2017 for the competitive nature of Dutch publishing.

8

Schmidt 2009 situates Dutch guild practice in an international context.

9

Pettegree and Der Weduwen (2018) estimate that more than five times as many editions were published in the Dutch Republic as are currently in the STCN (abstract).

10 Bell 1996, 1983. No equivalent list exists at present for the Dutch Republic. Bell’s research spans a larger period (1540–1730). My count includes only women who worked in the seventeenth century. English women with long, productive careers are Elizabeth Allde, Hannah Allen, Anne (or Abigail) Baldwin, Mary Clark, Jane Coe, Ellen Cotes, Gertrude Dawson, Elizabeth Flesher, Anne Griffin, Sarah Griffin, Mary Magnes, Elizabeth Mallet, Anne Maxwell, Dorothy Newcombe, Joyce Norton, Joan Orwin, Elizabeth Purslowe, Hannah Sawbridge, Mary Simmons, Tace Sowle, Mary Westwood and Elizabeth Whitlock. Dutch women in this group are identified with an asterisk in the appendix. 11 Van Eeghen 1960–78: 4.102. Factual details in this paragraph are gathered from her entry on Jan Jacobszoon Schipper, 4.96–117. See also Pettegree and Der Weduwen 2019: 275–8. 12 Their claim was that they printed ‘op sulcke manier dat diergelijcke in de werelt noyt gehoort, off gepractiseert was’ (Van Eeghen 1960–78: 4.107).

WOMEN IN THE DUTCH AND ENGLISH BOOK TRADES

139

13 Zech’s figures show that 159 out of 165 women stationers in the Dutch Republic were widows (1997: 56, 70). She does not list names, making it difficult to verify her numbers, but the Lescailje sisters and the Matthijsz sisters must make up four of the remaining six. 14 See Van Leeuwen (1993). Grabowsky writes that after Katharina’s death, her family took over the printing house. She claims in her dissertation that Aletta ran the business for a short while before passing it on to her niece Susanna and her husband Dirk Rank (1991: xix), and in a later essay that Susanna took Katharina’s place immediately and then was joined by her husband (2000: 74). 15 For details, see Van Elk 2018. Grabowsky says that De Wreedt was involved in the business at first but later left it mostly to the women; he most likely died in 1681, only two years after Jacob Lescailje himself (2000: 78 n. 46). 16 Von Uffenbach calls it a shop ‘wo lauter Comodien verkaufft werden’ and says she ‘wird vor eine der besten Poetinnen dieser Zeit gehalten’. He visited her on 6 March 1711, the year of her death (1754: 3.592). 17 For English examples, see Bell 1996: 19–21. 18 The lack of clarity of the phrasing in the imprint is discussed by Van Leeuwen (1993). It remains uncertain who the ‘heirs’ were and whether or not, for instance, Aletta and De Wreedt were involved in printing and publishing. 19 ‘Men zou buiten twyfel meerder Treurspeelen van haare penne hebben gezien, ’t en ware ze, aan het merkelyk verbeteren der Tooneelstukken van anderen, haaren tyd en vlyt edelmoedig hadde te kost gelegt’ (Lescailje 1731: vol. 1, fol.**1v). 20 ‘De Weeuw van SCHIPPERS, al de Waereld door vermaard, / Zo ver men Boeken vind; om haare deugd verheven; / Uitmuntende in verstand; rust hier’ (Lescailje 1731: 2.367 fol. Zz4r). 21 I would like to thank Violet Gregory and Ewan Kermode for assistance with compiling the Appendix, Amanda Pipkin for sharing her list of Dutch stationers with me and Valerie Wayne for her encouragement and wonderfully efficient and precise editing. 22 I have included Mercy Bruyningh in the group of women with independent long careers since Hoftijzer lists fifty items published when she was in charge of the firm, along with two probable further works and an additional eight works together with the firm of Steven Swart, making for a total of fifty-eight to sixty works (Hoftijzer 1987: 225–45 and 320–2).

140

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

References Bell, M. (1983), ‘A Dictionary of Women in the London Book Trade 1540–1730’, MA Thesis, Loughborough University of Technology, Loughborough. Bell, M. (1988), ‘Mary Westwood Quaker Publisher’, Publishing History 23: 5–66. Bell, M. (1989), ‘Hannah Allen and the Development of a Puritan Publishing Business, 1646–51’, Publishing History 26: 5–66. Bell, M. (1996a), ‘Seditious Sisterhood: Women Publishers of Opposition Literature at the Restoration’, in K. Chedgzoy et al. (eds), Voicing Women: Gender and Sexuality in Early Modern Writing, Keele: Keele University Press, 185–95. Bell, M. (1996b), ‘Women in the Early English Book Trade 1557–1700’, Leipziger Jahrbuch zur Buchgeschichte, 6: 13–45. British Book Trade Index (n.d.). University of Oxford. Available online: http://bbti.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/about (accessed 8 October 2019). ECARTICO: Linking Cultural Industries in the Early Modern Low Countries, ca. 1475–ca. 1725 (n.d.), Amsterdam Centre for the Study of the Golden Age, University of Amsterdam. Available online: http:// www.vondel.humanities.uva.nl/ecartico (accessed 8 October 2019). Eeghen, I. H. van (1960–78), De Amsterdamse boekhandel 1680–1725, 5 vols, Amsterdam: Scheltema en Holkema. Ekkart, R. E. O. (1984–5), ‘Het portret van Abraham Casteleyn en zijn vrouw’, De boekenwereld 1: 13–5. Ekkart, R. and Q. Buvelot (2007), Dutch Portraits: The Age of Rembrandt and Frans Hals, trans. B. Jackson, Zwolle: Waanders. Elk, M. van (2017), Early Modern Women’s Writing: Domesticity, Privacy, and the Public Sphere in England and the Dutch Republic, Cham: Palgrave. Elk, M. van (2018), ‘Printers, Cleaners, and Brewers: Early Modern Dutch Women Behind the Stage’, Early Modern Women: Lives, Texts, Objects. Available online: https://martinevanelk.wordpress. com/2018/05/07/printers-cleaners-and-brewers-early-modern-dutchwomen-behind-the-stage (accessed 8 October 2019). English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC ). Available online: estc.ucr.edu/ estcpublic.html. Accessed 8 October 2019. Grabowsky, E. M. (1991), ‘Op zoek naar de ware Jacob. Een biografisch en bibliografisch onderzoek naar de Amsterdamse drukker, boekverkoper, uitgever en dichter Jacob Lescailje (1611–1679)’, Diss., Universiteit van Amsterdam, Amsterdam. Grabowsky, E. M. (1995), ‘ “Op de goede beterschap van ons sieke privilegie”: Over Amsterdamse schouwburgregenten, drukkers

WOMEN IN THE DUTCH AND ENGLISH BOOK TRADES

141

en censuur’, Jaarboek voor de Nederlandse boekgeschiedenis 2: 35–55. Grabowsky, E. M. (2000), ‘Katharina Lescailje (1649–1711) en de “vrouwenzucht.” Schijn of werkelijkheid?’, Mededelingen van de Stichting Jacob Campo Weyerman 23: 65–79. Gruys, J. A. and C. de Wolf (1989), Thesaurus 1473–1800. Nederlandse boekdrukkers en boekverkopers. Met plaatsen en jaren van werkzaamheid, Nieuwkoop: De Graaf. Hell, M. (2014), ‘Bancken, Margaretha van (ca. 1628–ca. 1694)’, Digitaal Vrouwenlexicon van Nederland. Available online: http://resources. huygens.knaw.nl/vrouwenlexicon/lemmata/data/Bancken (accessed 8 October 2019). Hoftijzer, P. (1987), Engelse boekverkopers bij de beurs. De geschiedenis van de Amsterdamse boekhandels Bruyning en Swart, 1637–1724, Amsterdam: APA Holland Universiteitspers. Hoftijzer, P. (1988), ‘A Study Tour into the Low Countries and the German States: William Nicolson’s Iter Hollandicum and Iter Germanicum 1678–1679’, Lias: Sources and Documents Relating to the Early Modern History of Ideas 15 (1–2): 73–128. Hoftijzer, P. (2001a), ‘Metropolis of Print: The Amsterdam Book Trade in the Seventeenth Century’, in P. O’Brien et al. (eds), Urban Achievement in Early Modern Europe: Golden Ages in Antwerp, Amsterdam and London, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 249–63. Hoftijzer, P. (2001b), ‘Women in the Early Modern Dutch Book Trade’, in S. van Dijk et al. (eds), Writing the History of Women’s Writing: Toward an International Approach, Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, 211–22. Jongh, E. de (1986). Portretten van echt en trouw. Huwelijk en gezin in de Nederlandse kunst van de zeventiende eeuw, Zwolle: Waanders. Kleerkooper, M. M. (1914–16), De boekhandel te Amsterdam voornamelijk in de 17e eeuw. Biografische en geschiedkundige aanteekeningen, 2 vols, Den Haag: Nijhoff. Leeuwen, R. van (1993), ‘Katharyne Lescailje: “Vermaarde en volgeestige dichteresse tot Amsteldam” (1649–1711)’. Available online: https:// www.rozemarijnonline.net/lescailje/lescailje.html (accessed 8 October 2019). Lescailje, K. (1731), Tooneel- en mengelpoëzy, 3 vols, Amsterdam. McDowell, P. (1998), The Women of Grub Street: Press, Politics, and Gender in the London Literary Marketplace 1678–1730, Oxford: Clarendon Press. McDowell, P. (2008), ‘Sowle [married name Sowle Raylton], Tace (1666–1749)’, ODNB . Available online: https://doi.org/10.1093/ ref:odnb/67077 (accessed 8 October 2019).

142

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

Pettegree, A. and A. der Weduwen (2018), ‘What Was Published in the Seventeenth-Century Dutch Republic?’, Livre: Revue historique. Available online: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01713274 (accessed 8 October 2019). Pettegree, A. and A. der Weduwen (2019), The Bookshop of the World: Making and Trading Books in the Dutch Golden Age, New Haven: Yale University Press. Rasterhoff, C. (2017), Painting and Publishing as Cultural Industries. The Fabric of Creativity in the Dutch Republic, 1580–1800, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Schmidt, A. (2009), ‘Women and Guilds: Corporations and Female Labour Market Participation in Early Modern Holland’, Gender and History 21 (1): 170–89. Short-Title Catalogue Netherlands (STCN). Available online: http:// picarta.pica.nl (accessed 8 October 2019). Smith, H. (2011), ‘ “Imprinted by Simeon such a signe”: Reading Early Modern Imprints’, in H. Smith and L. Wilson (eds), Renaissance Paratexts, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 17–33. Smith, H. (2012), ‘Grossly Material Things’: Women and Book Production in Early Modern England, Oxford: Oxford University Press Uffenbach, Z. C. von (1754), Merkwürdige reisen durch Niedersachsen, Holland und Engelland, 3 vols, Ulm. Weduwen, A. der (2017), Dutch and Flemish Newspapers of the Seventeenth Century, 1618–1700, 2 vols, Leiden: Brill. Zech, M. (1997), ‘De werkende vrouw in getal en beeld. Vrouwen in de boekhandel in Amsterdam en London, 1600–1699’, MA Thesis, University of Utrecht, Utrecht. Zech, M. (2000), ‘ “Inde Werelt vol Drucks.” Vrouwen in de boekhandel’, Historica, 23 (1): 22–4.

PART II

Making texts: Authors and editors

143

144

7 Isabella Whitney amongst the stalls of Richard Jones Kirk Melnikoff

In her most-famous poem, ‘Will and Testament’, dated 20 October 1573, Isabella Whitney twice invokes the London book trade. To the ‘youthfull route’ of Inns-of Court and Chancery gentlemen, she bequeaths a ‘store of Bookes . . . / at each Bookebinders stall’ (1573?: E7r). Earlier in the poem, after ironically lamenting her luck that she never ‘came in credit so / a debtor for to bee’, she leaves to ‘all the Bookebinders by Paulles / because [she] lyke[s] their Arte: / . . . mony . . . / when they from Bookes departe’ (ibid., E6r–v). In these lines, she singles out her printer-publisher Richard Jones. ‘Amongst them all,’ she dictates, ‘my Printer must, / haue somwhat to his share: / I wyll my Friends these Bookes to bye / of him, with other ware’ (ibid., E6v). Here Whitney refers to her second printed collection of poems not in the abstract but as so much ‘ware’.1 She refers to ‘these Bookes’ as material commodities available for sale, verbally gesturing to them as if she were speaking from Jones’s bookshop, their pages stab-stitched, folded and stacked before her. Whitney calls Jones ‘my Printer’ years after he first brought her poetry to press. Though her work has, over the past three decades, received the scholarly attention that it deserves, the implications of her first-person possessive have yet to be fully explained.2 As I will show, Whitney’s nod to Jones may well have signalled a relatively long and productive relationship between the two that did much to 145

146

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

shape the ethical and stylistic penchants of her poetry. In this chapter, I will begin by looking again at the print history of Whitney’s two collections of poems that were published and printed by Jones. Though both survive in a single undated copy, it has long been assumed that each is part of a first edition that was not republished. Taking into account the practices of Jones and his peers, I will reconstruct the shape of Whitney’s writing career while arguing that our estimation of her scope as a writer be significantly enlarged. I will highlight, too, the extent to which Whitney’s poetry was a product of its particular time and place. It has been suggested that most of her work was influenced by the prevailing modes and content of 1560s and 1570s poetry; as I will demonstrate, they were perhaps more immediately inspired by a number of titles that were readily available through Jones. In short, Jones’s bookshop appears to have been a familiar haven for Whitney, one that afforded her a library of London’s newest print offerings.

Whitney’s ware Other than what can be gleaned from her poems, almost no evidence survives that documents Whitney’s life.3 It is now thought that she was born in the 1530s or 1540s into a minor-gentry family in a small township near Cheshire and that she had a number of siblings including Geoffrey Whitney, the author of the two-part work, A Choice of Emblems (1586). When Whitney was still young, she and her family relocated to a house near London in Smithfield, and thereafter she was placed into the service of a ‘vertuous Ladye’ as a maidservant and at some point lived in London’s Abchurch Lane. By the end of 1566, Jones had acquired a number of her poems, and he published two of them in the short verse miscellany, The Copy of a Letter. A few years later, Whitney placed with Jones the poems that would be joined in the much more extensive collection, A Sweet Nosegay. No definitive record documenting Whitney’s activities after this year has been found. In negotiating with Jones in the mid-1560s, Whitney dealt with a merchant who was finding his footing in an ever-expanding London book trade.4 Possibly a migrant from Wales (Melnikoff 2001), Jones was made a ‘brother’ of the Stationers’ Company in August 1564 (Arber 1875–94: 1.278).5 By the next year, he had opened a small

ISABELLA WHITNEY AMONGST THE STALLS OF RICHARD JONES 147

bookshop in the southwest side of St Paul’s Churchyard, by 1567 or 1568 he appears also to have established his own small printing house, and by 1571 he may have moved these press operations to a location in Fleet Lane. Being a transplant without the connections that a London apprenticeship would have afforded, Jones would have been anxious to develop relationships both with his stationer peers and with London’s assembly of writers, translators and compilers. Since he needed a significant amount of investment capital to outfit a bookshop and then a printing house, Jones’s earliest publication projects were often cooperative enterprises. Almost all of his 1560s published work appears to have been set and inked at a neighbouring printing house. During these years, Jones also jointly financed and distributed two titles, sharing the risk and potential profit with a stationer peer. In his earliest years, Jones mainly published ballads and short pamphlets, titles requiring little financial outlay. If a title sold well, he would either group it with other popular titles in a new print compilation or reprint it in an expanded ‘new’ offering.6 The extant edition of Whitney’s octavo Copy contains one prefatory poem by Jones (‘The Printer to the Reader’) and four complaint poems, two by Whitney (‘I.W. To Her Inconstant Lover’ and ‘The Admonition by the Author to all Young Gentlewomen’), one by ‘W.G’ (‘A Love Letter’), and another by ‘R.VVitc’ (‘R.W. Against the Willful Inconstancy of his Dear Foe E.T.’).7 Whitney’s two heavily allusive poems are interlinked and as such were likely composed as companion pieces. W.G.’s third poem is linked with Whitney’s poems on the volume’s title page (‘Newly ioyned to a Loueletter’); it is also linked to ‘The Admonition’ with the catchwords ‘A Loueletter’ at the bottom of A8v. Nothing connects ‘R.W. Against the Willful Inconstancy’ to the volume’s other three offerings. The undated, extant edition of Copy lists Jones’s printing house ‘in the upper end of | Fleetlane: at the | Signe of the | spred Egle’ as its wholesale location. The bookman had entered the title in the Stationers’ Register between 22 July 1566 and 22 July 1567. The STC hypothesized that the extant edition of Copy was printed in 1567, but this is improbable as Jones appears not to have acquired his Fleet Lane printing house until the later months of 1570.8 Looking at a variety of bibliographic evidence, Michelle O’Callaghan has convincingly argued that Whitney’s poems were previously

148

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

printed in an earlier, now-lost edition of Copy. In the subsequent now-extant edition, Jones set ‘A Love Letter’ with Whitney’s two poems and repurposed pages of R. W.’s poem that had been printed in another volume (O’Callaghan 2019: 18–20). Jones’s own prefatory poem promises ‘Fables that be fained’ and refers to a singular ‘Auctor’ (Whitney 1567?: A1v); as such, it was likely a part of Copy’s earlier edition. The volume’s later extant edition was in all likelihood printed between 1571 and 1573. Though it is impossible to know for sure, Whitney’s dealings with Jones in the second half of the 1560s may not have been limited to her placing ‘I.W. To Her Inconstant Lover’ and ‘The Admonition’ with the stationer. As R. J. Fehrenbach first suggested more than three decades ago, Whitney was very possibly a contributor to A Handful of Pleasant Delights, a collection of popular verse first published by Jones in the middle months of 1566 and reprinted in 1584.9 Like Copy, Handful contains amatory poems from both male and female perspectives, and both volumes are strongly allied in form and content with the mid-sixteenthcentury popular tradition of the broadside ballad. Today, only a fragment of the 1566 edition of Handful is extant, but if Hyder Rollins’s reckonings are correct, it originally contained twenty-two ballads, most previously published in the late 1550s or early 1560s as single broadsides. Five of the ballads have female speakers. Three are signed by male authors, but two, ‘The Complaint of a Woman Lover’ and ‘The Lamentation of a Woman Being Wrongly Defamed’, are unsigned. The perspective, mood and themes of these are strongly reminiscent of Whitney’s complaint poems in Copy.10 Whitney, then, very well may have been a contributor to the ballad projects – small and large – that defined Jones’s early career. If a young Whitney worked on more than one occasion with Jones, she may also have had some relationship with John Allde, William Howe and/or Thomas Colwell. In the 1560s, these four bookmen, either singly or cooperatively, brought out a significant number of ballads; indeed, Jones and Colwell were particularly preoccupied with financing and distributing verse broadsides as part of a general publishing strategy. The topics of their ballads were wide-ranging, from religious didacticism to current events. A significant portion of their output, though, had to do with the occupations of women and/or relationships between men and

ISABELLA WHITNEY AMONGST THE STALLS OF RICHARD JONES 149

women, and a significant subset of these appear to address a female audience from the perspective of a woman. All of these ballads have literally been read out of existence, but the Stationers’ Register records a large number of titles that could have been written by Whitney between 1563 and 1571.11 It has been claimed that Whitney’s two-part defence of women in Copy should be seen in both voice and content as a singular project, but Stationers’ Company records suggest otherwise.12 The only extant edition of Whitney’s second collection of poems, A Sweet Nosegay, was brought to press sometime after 20 October 1573: this date appears both at the close of Whitney’s dedicatory epistle to Roger Mainwaring and at the end of her ‘Will and Testament’. Missing from the edition are the first three leaves – the title page along with what was presumably further prefatory material.13 The volume is divided into three sections identified by half-titles on B2v, C6v and E2v and by three running headers (‘A sweete Nosegay, gathered | in a Philosophicall Garden’, ‘Famyliar and friendly Epistles | by the Auctor: with Replies’ and ‘The Auctor’s Testament, | before her departing’). With a commendatory poem by Thomas Berrie, the first section contains 110 verse adaptations of sententiae compiled by Hugh Plat in his Flowers of Philosophy (1572) framed by an introductory and ‘farewell’ poem. The volume’s second section is made up of thirteen poems, ten by Whitney and three by her acquaintances. The final section consists entirely of Whitney’s ‘Will and Testament’. Evidence suggests that all of the poems in the extant edition of A Sweet Nosegay were initially published together as one unit and that this is the volume’s first and only edition. Though Whitney’s three paratexts – her dedication to Mainwaring, her ‘Auctor to the Reader’ and her ‘farewell to the Reader’ – make no reference to any of the poems in the volume’s second and third sections, Berrie’s commendatory poem describes the entire volume as a ‘heape of Flowers of Philosophie’ with a ‘sequell [that] will declare / To Cuntrey warde, her loue and friendly care’ (B1r–v). Berrie also refers to A Sweet Nosegay as a ‘seconde worke’, attesting that no part of the volume had been previously printed as a stand-alone Whitney title. The accord between the three sections is corroborated by the matching dates of the dedicatory epistle and ‘Will and Testament’. Berrie’s attestation is confirmed by the uncorrected state of the octavo’s first section, where Whitney’s ‘Flower[s]’ are headed with a

150

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

jumble of numbering (first roman, then arabic, then jumps in sequence [e.g. ‘I’–‘XI’, ’12’–‘100’, ‘1001’–‘10010’]), ending with symbols (stars and pilcrows) and punctuation marks.14

Jones’s ‘store of Bookes’ In her prefatory address to her readers in A Sweet Nosegay, Whitney describes a preparatory course of ‘study’ in order ‘[her]selfe to edyfye’ (A5v). This program of reading apparently preceded her second collection by many years. In surveying the many classical histories to which Whitney alludes in her two poems in Copy, Michael David Felker has pointed to Homer’s Iliad, Apollodorus’s Argonautica, Virgil’s Aeneid, Ovid’s Ars Amatoria, Fasti, Metamorphoses and Heroides, Seneca’s Medea, Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women and Gower’s Confessio Amantis as sources (114– 22). The absence of English-language versions of some of these titles in 1566, however, along with contradictions between available titles and Whitney’s allusions, together suggest that Whitney engaged with the histories of Theseus, Jason, Aeneas, Midas and others through other avenues. Browsing the titles in Jones’s bookshop in 1566, Whitney seems to have been particularly struck by Thomas Underdown’s The Excellent History of Theseus and Ariadne.15 In this pamphlet, the Elizabethan translator and poet prefaces his poetic retelling of one of Theseus’s adventures by taking aim at the madness of men in trusting women. Women, he concludes, are especially corrupt due to their idleness. In forwarding these reproofs in his preface, Underdown offers other instructive examples from the ‘olde tyme’ – ‘Armynus’, ‘Myrrha’, ‘Byblys’, Medea, Penelope and Lucrece – to support his mostly misogynist extrapolations. This strategy is taken up again in the history itself when Phaedra recounts the tales of Jason and Minos in order to warn her sister about men’s penchant for forsaking women. Ariadne ironically counters her sister with the example of Paris’s loyalty to Helen. Though of a very different tenor, Whitney’s two poems, ‘I.W. To Her Inconstant Lover’ and ‘The Admonition’, are reminiscent of Underdown’s The Excellent History. With no suggestion that Ariadne’s idleness was to blame for her own downfall, in her first poem Whitney invokes Theseus’s unfaithfulness after Aeneas’s

ISABELLA WHITNEY AMONGST THE STALLS OF RICHARD JONES 151

betrayal of Dido. In ‘The Admonition’, Whitney pursues a similar method by warning young gentlewomen and other maids not to trust ‘a man at the fyrst sight, / But trye him well before’ (A6v). Moreover, just as Phaedra does in Underdown’s quarto, Whitney’s speakers fixate on the stories of Jason and Minos in order to underscore men’s untrustworthiness. In six stanzas in ‘I.W. To Her Inconstant Lover’, her speaker accuses Jason of betraying his vows to Ariadne in ‘t[aking] his Ship and fl[eeing] away’ (1567?, A3r). And in ‘The Admonition’, Whitney’s speaker devotes six stanzas to a defence of Scylla, arguing that if she ‘had not trust to much / before that she dyd trye: / She could not haue ben clene forsake / when she for help did crye’ (1573?, A6v). Eight months after he printed Robert Burdet’s Refuge of a Sinner for Jones in April 1565, Thomas Colwell brought out a history of his own, Thomas Peend’s translation from Ovid, The Pleasant Fable of Hermaphroditus and Salmacis. The three-sheet pamphlet was available for distribution to bookshops only weeks before Underdown’s Excellent History, and given its similar topic and Jones’s collaborations with Colwell, it stands to reason that Jones would have carried the title at his bookshop. Like Underdown, Peend confers ‘a morall’ (1565, A2v) upon his verse history, one that warns male readers both that ‘We chaunge our nature cleane, / being made effemynat’ and that ‘When we do yeeld to serue our lust, / we lose our former state’ (ibid., B2v). He provides as well a series of historical precedents to demonstrate a natural association between women and excessive lust. The pamphlet made a strong impression on Whitney. Peend’s exemplars – Medea, Phillis, Dido, Scylla, Hero, Thisbe, Ariadne – are each reinvoked and recast in Whitney’s poems in Copy. Whereas Phillis and Dido ‘in lyke sorte dyd end their [lives], / when that [they] myght no more / Enjoye [their] ioyfull luste’ (ibid., B3v) in The Pleasant Fable, in Copy it is instead the deceits of Aeneas and Demophoon that are to blame. Whereas Peend has Thisbe driven by lust to kill herself ‘for comely Pirames sake’ (ibid., B4v), Whitney praises Thisbe ‘for her trueth’ (1567?: A4v). Peend closes his pamphlet with what is in effect a glossary of classical names and histories (1565: B7r–C5v); many of these recur in Copy. Whitney’s engagement with The Pleasant Fable’s ‘morall’ includes a sharp revision of its central conceit that compares the

152

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

promise of sexual pleasure to ‘subtle baite’ (Peend 1565: B1r). A young man, Peend contends, is particularly at risk because he is unfamiliar with such snares. As a consequence, ‘He blyndly runneth on ech wh[o]are’ (ibid., B1v). As Peend has it, experience offers the only antidote to the ‘poyson strong’ of lust (ibid., B1r); he can see a happy ending wherein the man is ‘More wyse, alwayes he wil beware / to come in lyke agayne’ (ibid., B2r). In ‘The Admonition’, attractiveness is also compared to bait, but the gender positions are reallocated and reversed and the consequences of desire reimagined. In the final ten stanzas of the poem, Whitney figures women as innocent and naive, at first occupying the position of ‘the little fish that careless is / within the water cleare’ (1567?: A7v). Here, though, being taken is not a means to greater wisdom; instead, it guarantees unspeakable calamity. ‘But sith thy Fortune is so yll / to end thy lyfe on shore: / Of this thy most unhappy end, / I minde to speake no more’ (ibid., A8r). Whitney’s second poem responds to Peend by articulating a double standard whereby men are allowed to profit from temptation while women can only hope for ‘prety shift[s]’ (ibid., A8v) that allow them to recognize and reject it before being had and abandoned. As previous scholarship has indicated, Whitney showed herself to be an engaged reader of contemporary pamphlet material in A Sweet Nosegay as well, especially of Plat’s Flowers of Philosophy.16 Plat was newly graduated from Cambridge’s St John’s College when the printer Henry Bynneman and the bookseller Francis Coldock published his first title in 1572. Reaching a second edition in 1581, his pamphlet proved a popular offering, and it was in all probability available in many of the bookshops around London, including Jones’s. In her ‘Auctor to the Reader’, Whitney outlines a long engagement with Plat’s 1572 octavo wherein she ‘ech day once / [would view] that braue prospect’ (1573?: A6v). Her use of Plat was broader and deeper than has usually been appreciated. In A Sweet Nosegay, she not only adapts selections from his ‘Flowers’ but, in framing addresses in her first section, also borrows images and actively engages with ideas that Plat presents in his ‘annexed’ collection, The Pleasures of Poetry. Whitney’s promise that his ‘ground’ is available ‘to such who haue good skyll’ (1573?: A7v– A8r), for example, recasts Plat’s own assurance that ‘him I giue free leaue . . . / whome hope of gaine dothe bring’ (1581: M6v). Similarly, her fear that visitors to Plat might bring with them swine, dogs and

ISABELLA WHITNEY AMONGST THE STALLS OF RICHARD JONES 153

beasts reprises his own incessant worry about ‘Brutishe beaste[s]’ and ‘dogge[s]’ (1572: F7r) in the first poem of his Pleasures of Poetry. Plat often raises the danger of a ‘beaten’ (ibid., K8v) or ‘brusde’ (ibid., H3v, L4v) brain as a result of too much study, and argues that its antidote is pleasurable pastimes abroad. In her opening address to the reader, Whitney too worries about a ‘brused brayne’ (1573?: A5v) as a consequence of too much study, but when she tries to regain her strength by wandering outdoors, she is immediately accosted by a male ‘friend’ who directs her back inside where there is ‘better aire’ (1573?: A6r). Here Whitney pushes back on what Ann Rosalind Jones has called the ‘masculine perspective’ of Plat (1990: 42), suggesting that his advice can only benefit male scholars who have the freedom to roam. As a woman, she faces weariness within and surveillance without. Plat frequently addresses fortune in his Pleasures of Poetry, where he argues that patience is the best response to the ‘blinded dame’ (1572: I7r) and that a man can only be truly happy if he knows real adversity. ‘The strong and sturdie champion’, Plat insists, ‘reioyceth in his wounde, / He ioyes to see the bloudy blowes / that in his sides be founde’ (ibid., H8v). In A Sweet Nosegay’s first two sections, Dame Fortune is identified as Whitney’s greatest ‘foe’. That ‘tirant Goddesse’ (1573?: E1r) denies her a favouring ‘Wheele’ (ibid., A6r), a ‘yeldyng yeare’ (ibid., C6r), ‘goodes’ (ibid.) and especially luck; she subjects Whitney to ‘heapes of payne’ (ibid., D3r), ‘deadly harmes’ (ibid., D3v) and ‘haps . . . hard’ (ibid., E1v). While time for Plat promises eventual relief and wisdom, in Whitney it is shown to be coldly incessant, rarely affording recess for reflection. Whitney wryly makes this point in her letter ‘To C.B. in Bewailing Her Mishaps’ where, after admitting that she ‘take[s] not patientlye / Correction in aduersytie’ and wishing that God ‘geue me that gyfte, / As he dyd IOB’ (ibid., D6r), she ends by promising ‘[at]tendance for your ayde, / which [she] requier[s] in haste’ (ibid., D6v). Time’s haste is a factor at the beginning of the volume as well. After being ‘sodenly’ (ibid., A6r) interrupted in her foray outdoors, she finds little time to enjoy her discovery of Plat because she ‘leasure lackt, / and business bad [her] hye’ (ibid., A6v). At the volume’s end, Whitney admits that ‘time [has] put [her] in mind, / of [London’s] great cruelnes’ (ibid., E2v). When she arrives at this revelation in her last testament, it comes only at the last possible moment and is not a happy one.

154

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

‘Will and Testament’ was yet another product of time spent in Jones’s bookshop; Whitney appears to have composed the poem after perusing The Will of the Devil. The anonymous pamphlet appears to have been first brought to press by the printer Humphey Powell in the late 1540s, and its short length, virulent antiCatholicism and satiric tone were fashioned for England’s first generation of middling Anglican-Protestant book buyers.17 The bulk of it is dedicated to the ‘Testament and last Wyll’ (1566?: A2r) of ‘Belseebub’, which consists of the demi-devil distributing the rituals, articles and sins of his followers back to his followers. These devotees consist of Catholic clergymen, reprobates like usurers and knaves, and a large host of tradesmen, professionals and townswomen. Jones acquired the satiric pamphlet in the mid-1560s. Reprinted in the late 1560s and in an expanded edition in the early 1580s, it proved to be one of his most popular early offerings and was undoubtedly a part of the ‘ware’ that Whitney advertises in her ‘Will and Testament’. With Jones’s Will of the Devil, Whitney was promoting a title that appears to have been an important model for her own testament poem. Not only did she find in it a close analogue for her strategy of willing components of London to London, but she also found inspiration for the outcast position of her own speaker in the ignominy of Belseebub.18 The pamphlet’s sustained focus on tradespeople like mercers, grocers, vintners, tailors, butchers, fishmongers, goldsmiths, bakers and apothecaries also moved her to attend to like labourers in London.19 Missing from Whitney’s list of townspeople, though, are the ‘Single Wom[e]n’, ‘ydle huswyues’, and ‘wom[e]n maidenlike’ (1566?: A4v, A8r, A8v) that populate The Will of the Devil. The earlier pamphlet consistently condemns these women for their freedom of movement, for using ‘covered baskette[s] . . . to couer their follyes’ ‘in London’ (1566?: A4v), for loving ‘other mens houses better then their owne’ (ibid., A8r) and for pretending to ‘go to the market . . . [but] in the meane tyme . . . go[ing] to a baudy house’ (ibid., A8v). While Whitney objects to spatial restrictions on women in her ‘Auctor to the Reader’, she counters them in her ‘Will and Testament’ by constructing a retrospective map of her uninhibited movements across the whole of London through its streets, lanes, alleys and conduits past its myriad of shops, churches, theatres, inns of court, hospitals and prisons.

ISABELLA WHITNEY AMONGST THE STALLS OF RICHARD JONES 155

Whitney’s aspirations In authoring her own three-part volume of poetry, Whitney was in all probability energized by the success of Copy. The significant length and scope of her later volume attest to Whitney’s ambitions, as do its dedicatory epistle and commendatory poem. Articulated in A Sweet Nosegay, in other words, are the ambitions of a professional writer.20 Even as she laments in ‘Will and Testament’ her coming exile from London and, by implication, its book trade, the volume advertises future Whitney titles on a number of its pages. In her dedication, Whitney commits to presenting Mainwaring with ‘a more dayntier thing’ after her ‘Flowers’ in her dedicatory epistle (1573?: A5r). More extensive ‘worke’ is predicted by Berrie in his commendatory poem: ‘when her busie care from head shall lurke, / She practiZe will, and promise longer worke’ (ibid., B1v). Envisioning future titles along the lines of her heavily allusive complaint ‘The Admonition’ in Copy, Whitney insists that ‘Hencefoorth my lyfe as wel as Pen / shall your examples frame’ (ibid., D1r), and she doubles down on this determination at the end of her letter to her sister ‘A.B.’ where she promises, ‘[T]il some houshold cares mee tye, / My bookes and Pen I wyll apply’ (ibid., D2r). Her ‘Replye’ to ‘T.B.’ is even more determined. In it, she speaks in laureate terms, claiming ‘But that thy Fame, for euer florish shall, / If IS. her Pen, may promise ought at all’ (ibid., D5v). T.B.’s ‘Fame’ here will be the tripartite product of (1) his virtue, (2) his virtue as described in A Sweet Nosegay and (3) his virtue as delineated by the future productions of Whitney. Whitney’s orientation towards the retail side of the book trade manifests especially in the volume’s first section. Addressing potential readers of her ‘philosophical flowers’, she anticipates the anonymity and unpredictability of the book market by presuming that her adapted poems will be read not just by similar-minded familiars but by a range of book buyers. ‘[W]e are not all a lyke, / nor of complexion one,’ she concedes in ‘The Auctor to the Reader’, ‘So that which helpeth some we see, / to others good doth none’ (ibid., A7r). Her ‘farewell’ poem ramps up the stakes of this initial assessment in imagining her work in the hands of ‘one, or other’: ‘[N]othyng is so pure: / But one, or other will mislyke / therof we may be sure’ (ibid., C5v). Whitney’s professional ambitions in A Sweet Nosegay correspond with what was a significant expansion of Jones’s own publishing

156

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

projects at the end of the 1560s. Before then, Jones limited his output to low-cost projects. After 1568, however, he brought out a seven-sheet edition of William Wager’s interlude, The Longer Thou Livest the More Fool Thou Art (1569), an eight-sheet edition of Richard Edwards’s comedy Damon and Pithias (1571), and a tensheet edition of The Casket of Jewels (1571), John Charlton’s translation of Cornelius Valerius’s Ethicae. From 1569 to 1572, Jones would publish four times the number of edition-sheets that he published in his preceding five years. At the start of the 1570s, then, Jones appears to have built his bookselling and printing business to such a point that he was willing and able to take more risks as a publisher. Outfitted with ready capital and copies of a second edition of Copy in his stock room, Jones was thus well positioned to take on A Sweet Nosegay as a publication project in 1573. Even so, drawing on her familiarity with Jones, his shop and his publication practices, Whitney took steps to fashion a volume that her ‘Printer’ would consider a valuable commodity. In publishing Charlton’s Ethicae translation in 1571, Jones had moved to take advantage of what was a burgeoning market for printed commonplace volumes. Though it is in fact an extended treatise, Charlton’s title, A Casket of Jewels, evokes such volumes, as do chapter titles like ‘Of Loue’, ‘Of Iustice’ and ‘Of Friendship’, which replicate headers with which commonplace readers were familiar. In her adaptation of Plat in the first section of A Sweet Nosegay, Whitney figures her adapted poems in the conventional agricultural idiom of commonplace volumes – as a garden full of flowers, stalks and slips – and she presents herself in the conventional role of compiler. Whitney’s Nosegay, in other words, stood cousin to Charlton’s Casket in Jones’s shop. Whitney’s A Sweet Nosegay not only complemented Jones’s new investment in philosophical commonplaces; it also provided him with flexible copy.21 While the three sections of A Sweet Nosegay were made to cohere in terms of authorship, theme and voice, Whitney fashioned each to stand alone as a separate title. Such groundwork is apparent both in the dedicatory epistle and in the framing addresses of Whitney’s first section that provide readers with both an introduction to her verse adaptations and a ‘farewell’; neither makes any allusion to the following two sections. All three sections carry their own titles that are reprised in the volume’s

ISABELLA WHITNEY AMONGST THE STALLS OF RICHARD JONES 157

running headers. Berrie’s commendatory poem, which was most likely commissioned after Jones had decided to produce a threepart edition, provides the only cross-referencing in the volume. All three sections also contain pointed closings. In the first, Whitney makes ‘an end . . . / the liueing Lorde untyll’ (1573?: C6r). In her closing epistolary poem of the second, she vows that she ‘For now [she] wyll [her] writting cleane forsake / till of my griefes, my stomack I discharg’ (ibid., E2r). Whitney’s ‘Will and Testament’ concludes like a conventional will with a list of witnesses – ‘Paper, Pen and Standish’ – and with the breathless exit, ‘So finally I make an end / no longer can I tary’ (ibid., E8v).22 What emerges from the evidence assembled here is a portrait of a writer who was active and productive, and who was accustomed to the publishing penchants of ‘[her] Printer’ and conversant with a number of titles available at his bookshop. For the newly established Jones, Whitney may very well have been an indispensable source of publishable copy, and the success of the now-lost first edition of Copy might have played a significant role in inspiring the bookman to publish a tripartite volume of her poetry in the early 1570s. Whitney at this time was energized as well, presenting herself in her poetry as a blossoming professional writer with literary aspirations. Jones would continue to build his business after publishing A Sweet Nosegay in 1573, becoming in the next two decades one of London’s more prolific – and forthright – publishers of popular reading material.23 For reasons that remain unknown, the professional ambitions that Whitney articulates in A Sweet Nosegay were not realized, possibly because her two volumes did not sell well in the mid-1570s, possibly because she left London in 1573. If she continued to write for Jones after 1573, her titles were restricted to anonymous ballads and pamphlets. Three decades ago, Fehrenbach suggested that Whitney may have contributed two anonymous poems to the poetry miscellany A Gorgeous Gallery of Inventions that Jones published in 1578: ‘The Lady Exclaimeth of the Great Untruth of Her Lover’ and ‘The Lamentation of a Gentlewoman upon the Death of Her Late Deceased friend William Gruffithe Gent.’. Among the merits of the latter attribution is the possibility that Gruffith is ‘W.G.’ in Copy.24 Four lines in the middle of the poem are suggestive: ‘My phrase doth serue but rudely to recite,’ the poet concedes, ‘How Louers loss doth pinch mee all this while: / Who was as prest to dye for Gruffithes sake, / As Damon,

158

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

did for Pithias undertake’ (1567?: P3r). Here, along with modesty and the familiar complaint about a ‘Louers losse’, is an allusion to Damon and Pythias, the popular story that Jones had brought to press seven years earlier and that was in all likelihood still available for purchase in his shop.

Notes 1

All early modern titles have been modernized for spelling, punctuation and capitalization in the essay’s text, but not in the References.

2

For other extensive considerations of Whitney’s relationship with Jones, see McGrath 2002 and especially O’Callaghan 2019.

3

For biographical accounts of Whitney, see Felker 1990, Jones 1990 and Travitsky 2004.

4

For more on Jones, see Melnikoff 2001 and 2005.

5

As aliens, foreigners or freemen of another guild, brothers in the Stationers’ Company paid a small fee for admission and enjoyed some company privileges. Most brothers were not allowed to keep apprentices; Jones, for reasons unknown, was an exception.

6

Jones’s A Handful of Pleasant Delights (1566?) is an example of the former; his Will of the Devil (1567?) is an example of the latter. Both are discussed later in this chapter.

7

For attributions of poems in A Sweet Nosegay, see Felker (1990: 113–68).

8

Only one of Jones’s early publications, The Excellent History of Theseus and Ariadne (1566), identities him as printer. Jones’s Fleet Lane printing house is first identified in Of the Horrible and Woeful Destruction of Sodom and Gomorra (1570). The next year, three publications advertise his Fleet Lane location.

9

Hyder Rollins argues in his 1924 edition that the earliest edition of Handful was printed in 1566, promptly after Jones entered the volume in the Stationers’ Register. According to Rollins, the later 1584 edition was ‘a reissue, with additions’ (x) of the 1566 edition.

10 Cf. Fehrenbach 1981: 86 and Felker 1990: lxxiv–lxxv. 11 Unfortunately, Stationers’ Register records between July 1571 and July 1576 have been lost. 12 See Marquis 1995: 315, 324. 13 One piece of this material might have been a dedication to the ‘vertuous Ladye’ mentioned at the close of ‘To her Brother. G.W.’.

ISABELLA WHITNEY AMONGST THE STALLS OF RICHARD JONES 159

14 The inexperience of Jones’s compositor can also be seen in ‘An other Letter sent to IS. VV’. The product of faulty casting off at the beginning of the printing process, the formatting there is at first amply spaced, then overcrowded (D8v–E1v). 15 Jones published Underdown’s two-sheet pamphlet on 18 January 1566, less than a year before he entered Copy in the Stationers’ Register. 16 See especially Felker 1990: xxii–xxv; Jones 1990: 41–2; and Lamb 2002. 17 Hutson and Ingram have associated The Will of the Devil with oral and print versions of the mock testament, a genre that operated as a festive vehicle of ‘ironic revelation’ (Hutson 1989: 127). Ingram (2006: 82–5) provides an overview of the genre while vaguely connecting the pamphlet with Whitney. 18 As has been pointed out by a number of commentators, women who wrote for money during the early modern period were sometimes likened to prostitutes. For Whitney’s ‘Will and Testament’ as an ‘ironic meditation’ on England’s legal tradition of the legacy, see Wall (1991: 49). 19 The other available mock testaments of the day, ‘The Testament of the Hawthorne’ (in Tottel’s Songs and Sonnets [1557]), Wyl Bucke his Testament (1560?) and Jill of Brentford’s Testament (1563?), contain neither this strategy nor this focus. 20 Ellinghausen (2005) and O’Callaghan (2019) have each productively explored Whitney’s distinctly professional perspective in A Sweet Nosegay. 21 Jones would add Breton’s A Small Handful of Fragrant Flowers to his stock of commonplace books in 1575. See O’Callaghan 2019: 26–9. 22 O’Callaghan (2019: 26) suggests that Jones may have eventually published a version of ‘A Will and Testament’ as a stand-alone ballad in 1576. 23 During his long career, Jones would pen as many as twenty addresses for his publications; in this period, only John Wolfe wrote more. 24 Jones entered the poem in the Stationers’ Register on 20 December 1577, apparently intending initially to publish it as a stand-alone title.

References Arber, E. (ed.) (1875–94), A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London, 1554–1640 A. D., 5 vols. London: privately printed.

160

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

Ellinghausen, L. (2005), ‘Literary Property and the Single Woman in Isabella Whitney’s Sweet Nosegay’, Studies in English Literature, 45 (1): 1–22. Fehrenbach, R. J. (1981), ‘Isabella Whitney (fl. 1565–75) and the Popular Miscellanies of Richard Jones’, Cahiers Elisabethains, 19: 85–7. Felker, M. D. (1990), ‘The Poems of Isabella Whitney: A Critical Edition’, Dissertation, Texas Tech. University. Hutson, L. (1989), Thomas Nashe in Context, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Ingram, J. P. (2006), Idioms of Self-Interest: Credit, Identity and Property in English Renaissance Literature, New York: Routledge. Jones, A. R. (1990), The Currency of Eros: Women’s Love Lyric in Europe, 1540–1620, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Jones, A. R. (1999), ‘Maidservants of London: Sisterhoods of Kinship and Labor’, in S. Frye and K. Robertson (eds), Maids and Mistresses, Cousins and Queens: Women’s Alliances in Early Modern England, New York: Oxford University Press, 21–32. Lamb, Mary Ellen (2002), ‘Isabella Whitney and Reading Humanism’, in L. Knight, M. White and E. Sauer (eds), Women’s Bookscapes in Early Modern Britain: Reading, Ownership, Circulation, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 43–58. Marquis, P. A. (1995), ‘Oppositional Ideologies of Gender in Isabella Whitney’s Copy of a Letter’, Modern Language Review, 90: 314–24. McGrath, L. (2002), Subjectivity and Women’s Poetry in Early Modern England: ‘Why on the ridge should she desire to go?’, Aldershot: Ashgate. Melnikoff, K. (2001), ‘Richard Jones (fl. 1564–1613): Elizabethan Printer, Bookseller and Publisher’, Analytical and Enumerative Bibliography, 12 (3): 153–84. Melnikoff, K. (2005), ‘Jones’s Pen and Marlowe’s Socks: Richard Jones, Tamburlaine the Great (1590), and the Beginnings of English Dramatic Literature’, Studies in Philology 102 (2): 184–209. O’Callaghan, M. (2019), ‘ “my Printer must, haue somwhat to his share”: Isabella Whitney, Richard Jones, and Crafting Books’, Women’s Writing, 26 (1): 15–34. Ovid (1565), The pleasant fable of Hermaphroditus and Salmacis, trans. T. Peend, London: Thomas Colwell. STC 18971. Plat, H. (1572), The floures of philosophie with the pleasures of poetrie annexed vunto them, London: Francis Coldcocke and Henry Bynneman. STC 19990.5. Plat, H. (1581), The floures of philosophie with the pleasures of poetrie annexed vunto them, London: Francis Coldocke and Henry Bynneman. STC 19990.7. Proctor, T. (1578), A gorgious gallery, of gallant inuentions, London: Richard Jones. STC 20402.

ISABELLA WHITNEY AMONGST THE STALLS OF RICHARD JONES 161

Robinson, C. (1584), A handefull of pleasant delites, containing sudrie new sonets and delectable histories, in diuers kindes of meeter, London: Richard Jones. STC 21105. Rollins, H. (ed.) (1924), A Handful of Pleasant Delights, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Travitsky, B. (2004), ‘Whitney, Isabella (fl. 1566–1573), Poet’, ODNB. Available online: www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-45498. Underdown, T. (1566?), The excellent historye of Theseus and Ariadne, London: Richard Jones. STC 24517. Wall, W. (1991), ‘Isabella Whitney and the Female Legacy’, ELH, 58 (1): 35–62. Whitney, I. (1567?), The copy of a letter, lately written in meeter, by a Yonge gentilwoman: to her vnconstant louer, London: Richard Jones. STC 25439. Whitney, I. (1573?), A sweet nosgay, or pleasant posye: contayning a hundred and ten phylosophicall flowers, London: Richard Jones. STC 25440. The wyll of the deuill, with his .x. detestable commaundementes (1566?), London: Richard Jones. STC 6794.

162

8 ‘All by her directing’: The Countess of Pembroke and her Arcadia Sarah Wall-Randell

A reader in 1593 encountering a copy of the second edition of Sidney’s prose romance, the Arcadia, newly printed in folio by John Windet for William Ponsonby, would have noticed multiple signs in the first few leaves of the book indicating the centrality of Sidney’s sister, Mary, Countess of Pembroke, to the text. The title, The Countesse of Pembroke’s Arcadia (the same borne by the 1590 quarto edition), states plainly that the text is ‘hers’. The possessive functions in part as a dedication, an affectionate tribute to Pembroke1 and a symbolic presentation of the work to a benefactor. This formulation of assigning ownership of the work to the patron or dedicatee was used, for instance, by Abraham Fraunce in 1591 for The Countesse of Pembrokes Yvychurch, a pastoral romance he dedicated to Pembroke (and named after one of her estates) in the hope of winning her recommendation for a position at court, and in 1620 by Pembroke’s niece, Lady Mary Wroth, for her The Countesse of Montgomeries Urania, ‘given’ to Susan de Vere, Pembroke’s daughter-in-law.2 These works, though, are directly inspired by the Arcadia, both in genre and in name; the more typical convention, observable in many other titles that include possessives in late 163

164

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

sixteenth-century books, such as Greene’s Groats-worth of Witte (1592), Nashe’s Lenten Stuffe (1599) or Kempes Nine Daies Wonder (1600), is to use the possessive to signal the book’s ownership by the (purported) author. Nashe’s, Greene’s and Kemp’s books are very different from the Arcadia in kind and scope, but the semantic pattern that their titles seem to represent suggests that the possessive, The Countesse of Pembroke’s Arcadia, claims the Countess as the book’s author.3 The 1593 Arcadia title page goes on to say ‘Written by Sir Philip Sidney Knight’, but it also alludes in the next line to the participation of the Countess of Pembroke in the book’s production, declaring the difference between this printing of the Arcadia and the less monumental quarto edition undertaken three years previously by Sidney’s friend Fulke Greville: ‘Now since the first edition augmented and ended’ (see Figure 8.1). Since Sidney had died in 1586, someone else had clearly done the augmenting and ending. The advertisement of a new and improved posthumous edition makes clear that the creation of this book’s content has involved someone’s agency besides Sidney’s; the title reveals whose work that was. And yet these two pieces of information sit together on the title page without fitting together exactly, leaving much to be read between the lines. The specific nature of Pembroke’s alterations to the 1590 edition of the Arcadia have been considered previously. Three manuscript copies of the ‘Old’ Arcadia were rediscovered in the early twentieth century, making it possible for the first time to compare Books 3–5 of the 1593 folio to an earlier version presumably bearing some relationship to the copy that Pembroke used. Textual scholars including R. W. Zandvoort, Edwin Greenlaw and Albert Feuillerat at first aimed to identify and undo Pembroke’s editorial work on the text, which they characterized as ‘tampering’, ‘bowdlerizing’ and ‘unauthorized’ (Rowe 1939: 123–4); their aim was to recapture Sidney’s ‘original’ text. More recent studies have taken Pembroke’s choices more seriously and have proposed an array of possible motivations, having to do with her investment in the shaping of her brother’s legacy: as a Protestant warrior, as a political philosopher and/or as the epitome of an English poet.4 The crucial question I want to ask, amidst much necessary and revelatory work on how Pembroke positions herself in the 1593 Arcadia as the editor, curator, mediator, transmitter, executrix, secretary, and/or manager of Sidney’s literary inheritance, is whether we have still

THE COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE AND HER ARCADIA

165

FIGURE 8.1 Frontispiece to Sir Philip Sidney, The Countesse of Pembroke’s Arcadia (1593), with Sidney family porcupine at top and an emblem expressing disdain for dull-witted readers, like hogs who fail to appreciate sweet marjoram: ‘I breathe not for you’ (¶2r). STC 22540, copy 1 (folio). Used by permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library.

underestimated her role as a collaborator in the romance, and have held back unnecessarily from including her as its co-author. Pembroke is one of many early modern women whom we find, as Helen Smith notes in an apt and memorable phrase, ‘at the scene of writing’, involved in various ways in the publication, whether print or scribal, of texts by men, often as part of the duties of a widow or heir (Smith 2012: 16, 40–9). Recognizing the work of these women, as Smith notes, demands that we revisit our ideas of what roles matter in the production of books, who counts as having ‘expressive agency’: not only authors per se but also collaborators, editors, scribes, circulators of manuscripts and others (Smith 2012: 18). Julie Crawford, too, calls for a more commodious definition of

166

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

early modern authorship that includes different kinds of work, some of it performed by women. Crawford proposes that in such sites as a 1594 dedication by Samuel Daniel of his sonnet cycle Delia to Pembroke, in which Daniel says his poems are ‘Begotten by thy hand and my desire’, we can see ‘a mode of literary production in which the productive (and contentious) collusion of supporting, creating, transcribing, and reading literary texts lay at the core of authorship’ (Crawford 2014: 4). Smith and Crawford show the need for greater recognition of Pembroke’s work within texts in which authorship is assigned to Sidney. In this chapter, I want to ask, more simply, whether a case could also be made for reassigning authorship of the 1593 Arcadia to both Sidney and Pembroke, or, at least, to point out that the case for Sidney’s sole authorship rests on evidence no more substantial than the case for Pembroke’s collaboration with him. Even very recently, studies of Sidneian figurations of authorship in the Arcadia have paid insufficient attention to Pembroke’s part in its making, focusing instead on male genealogies of literary production and male singularity in the narrative voice (Alwes 2004; Zarnowiecki 2009; Fleck 2010). A flowering of scholarship on Pembroke’s work in the 1990s and 2000s led by Margaret Hannay, Mary Ellen Lamb, Elaine Beilin and others re-centred her importance as a poet in her own right and as a contributor to the ‘Sidney corpus’. This scholarship has addressed Pembroke’s editorial work on the 1593 Arcadia and her print publication of Sidney’s other works, as well as her centrality to Sidney’s creative process as the Arcadia’s first reader, but it has tended to focus less on the Arcadia than on the Countess’s translations, and especially on the explicitly collaborative Psalmes of David, in which Pembroke is accepted by modern scholars as having a significant authorial role, as a full creative partner with Sidney rather than his editor or muse (Smith 2012: 46). Scholars have convincingly argued that early modern women writers often chose to undertake translation projects rather than original works, and to address religious subjects rather than secular ones, as a way of entering into the realm of letters while risking less censure in a patriarchal society (Hannay 1985; Beilin 1987). Pembroke herself, in her dedicatory poem to Elizabeth I introducing the siblings’ Psalmes, defends it as a devotional translation, distinct from fanciful fictions: ‘the stuffe not ours, our work no curious thing’ (Hannay, Kinnamon and Brennan 1998:

THE COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE AND HER ARCADIA

167

I.102). Perhaps, however, in our celebration of Pembroke’s learned and divine translations, we have paid less attention than is warranted to her work in original, ‘curious’ texts such as the Arcadia. In the context of arguing for Pembroke’s importance in establishing the mythology of Sidney as the founder of the English poetic tradition, Patricia Pender adopts Roger Chartier’s formulation that an ‘author’ in the print era, as opposed to a ‘writer’, is someone who brings a text to the press. Pender makes the bold suggestion that ‘in the contemporary [i.e., modern] sense that Chartier endorses – the author of The Countesse of Pembroke’s Arcadia was the Countess of Pembroke’ (2011:70). It is clear that Pender aims to be provocative, and she speaks in intentionally anachronistic terms, but if we take her proposal seriously, it offers a salutary unsettling of how we frame Pembroke’s work on the 1593 Arcadia, which established the official text of Sidney’s romance up to the twentieth century. Building on Smith’s detailed account of the collaborative and heterosocial nature of early modern book production, I propose to use the energy and freshness of Pender’s challenge to reassess the label of ‘editor’ of the Arcadia that is commonly given to Pembroke. I will suggest that when we look at Pembroke’s part in the Arcadia, we would do well to pay more attention to the words of those who, like Pembroke, were ‘at the scene’ of its writing, and to ask ourselves if we have been resisting the most elegant (in the scientific sense of ‘elegant’, that is, simple and powerful) explanation of Pembroke’s role in the Arcadia, that of co-author. The second leaf of the 1593 Arcadia features a dedicatory epistle to Pembroke from Sidney. The letter is a mismatch, chronologically, with the text: it was originally composed to accompany a manuscript copy of the first version of Sidney’s romance, the ‘Old’ Arcadia, much of which was composed at Pembroke’s house in Wiltshire in 1579–81, as he says in the letter. Sidney’s major revision of the Arcadia, which is the text on which both Greville and Pembroke base their editions, was undertaken probably in 1584–5, after Sidney’s marriage, when he was living in London (Duncan-Jones 1991: 168, 251–6), and it was never finished. Nevertheless, the letter, which may have circulated with some of the many manuscript copies of the Old Arcadia (Fulke Greville wrote in 1586 that such copies were ‘so common’ [Brennan and Kinnamon 2003: 112–13]), was printed at the beginning of Greville’s 1590 quarto as well as

168

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

Pembroke’s folio. Its transference to the printed ‘New’ Arcadia likely has to do with its resemblance to the customary dedicatory epistle written for a patron, but its use to serve this function highlights its distinct differences. In the letter, Sidney characterizes the Arcadia as written by himself, but entirely and only for Pembroke. At first this sounds like conventional authorial modesty, but Sidney may be speaking more literally. He credits Pembroke not only with commissioning and motivating the work, but also with being physically present during its composition, and with collecting and guarding the pages as they left his pen. To my deare lady and sister, the Covntesse of Pembroke . . . You desired me to doo it, and your desire, to my hart is an absolute commandement. Now, it is done onlie for you, onley to you: . . . Your deare selfe can best witnes the manner, being done in loose sheetes of paper, most of it in your presence, the rest, by sheetes, sent unto you, as fast as they were done. Arcadia 1590 [STC 22539], A3r Pembroke fulfils the traditional female roles of muse and patron, but they are here interestingly concretized and activated: instead of mutely serving as inspiration, Pembroke makes an ‘absolute commandment’; instead of exciting another’s ‘desire’ (like the beloved of a sonneteer), she declares her own; and instead of the glamour by association of a noble name and the possibility of financial reward that a poet might hope for from a typical aristocratic patron, Pembroke offers the emotional and material assurance of comfortable hospitality enjoyed at Wilton. The sense we get from Sidney’s dedication of the availability of an endless supply of paper – not a cheap commodity – also suggests the generative abundance of Pembroke’s home. In Sidney’s words, Pembroke is not the author, and yet her contribution to the text’s existence is something greater than that of a traditional patron. Another perspective on Pembroke’s responsibility for and ownership of the Arcadia is offered by Thomas Howell, a poet who, like Samuel Daniel and Abraham Fraunce, was part of the countess’s literary circle at Wilton, the Pembroke seat.5 In 1581, soon after Sidney finished the first version of the Arcadia, Howell published a collection of short poems on miscellaneous subjects, H. His Devises,

THE COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE AND HER ARCADIA

169

for his owne exercise, and his Friends pleasure, and dedicated it to Pembroke: so if the Reader hereof, behold your name in the fyrst leafe, he will deeme the whole Booke the more fruitfull, and the framer thereof the more skilfull . . . This slender worke of your seruant, which as I did wryte at ydle times in your house, to auoyde greater ydlenesse or worse businesse: so I present it humbly vnto you. Howell 1581: A3r–v The more conventional language of dedication seen here, without the sense of Pembroke’s immediate nurture of the work, throws the extraordinary nature of Pembroke’s and Sidney’s collaboration, and their own accounts of it, into relief. One of Howell’s poems in the 1581 collection, headed ‘Written to a most excellent Booke, full of rare inuention’, is addressed to the Arcadia and urges the wider publication of the romance: Go learned booke, and vnto Pallas sing ............................................. Unfolde thy fruite, and spread thy maysters praise, Whose prime of youth, graue deeds of age displaies ............................................. Goe yet I say with speede thy charge delyuer, Thou needst not blushe, nor feare the soyle of blame: The worthy Countesse see thou follow euer, Tyll Fates doe fayle, maintaine her Noble name. Attend her wyll, if she vouchsafe to call, Stoope to her state, downe flat before her fall. 1581: E4v–F1r While Howell calls Sidney the ‘mayster’ of the Arcadia, he also recognizes Pembroke’s authority in terms no less absolute, and no less (or more) literary: the book is her servant and must obey her command, even worship her, and prostrate itself before her; Pembroke too is one of the book’s ‘masters’. When Howell says ‘Go, little book’ to the Arcadia, he is perhaps saying both ‘go from Philip to Mary’ (who could be Pallas, goddess of wisdom) and also ‘go from the household circle into the wider world (into the company of

170

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

wise people, lovers of Pallas)’. It is unclear whether Howell is recommending print publication or broader manuscript circulation in the poem, or both. Although this poem was written during Sidney’s lifetime, not after his death, Howell already figures Pembroke as the person who will lead the book to a wider public and act as its guide there (‘The worthy Countesse see thou follow euer’), while Sidney apparently stays at Wilton, within the elite, domestic space of the Arcadia’s composition. Of the two siblings, Pembroke certainly seems more like the person of action and adventure: Sidney will remain still while his praises are spread, while Pembroke will protect, lead, assert her will, call and issue orders. If the presence of Sidney’s dedication to Pembroke, transported from its context of the early 1580s, stands as a commonality between the 1590 and 1593 Arcadias, the next document to appear in the 1593 edition reveals the contentious difference between quarto and folio. Sidney’s letter ends on the verso of leaf ¶3, and the letter ‘To the Reader’ begins on ¶4r; these two epistles, written in different decades, to different recipients, and in vastly different moods, nevertheless face each other in the book, and ‘To the Reader’ picks up immediately, dialectically, from where ‘To my deare lady’ left off. The disfigured face, gentle Reader, wherewith this worke not long since appeared to the common view, moued that noble Lady, to whose Honour consecrated, to whose protection it was committed, to take in hand the wiping away of those spottes wherewith the beauties thereof were vnworthely blemished. But as often in repairing a ruinous house, the mending of some old part occasioneth the making of some new: so here her honorable labour begonne in correcting the faults, ended in supplying the defectes; by the view of what was ill done guided to the consideration of what was not done. 1593: ¶4r Pembroke’s reference to the work of her ‘hand’ in the 1593 edition is notable. In early modern usage, ‘hand’ is a metonym for handwriting or signature. Pembroke’s announcement that she has ‘take[n] in hand’ necessary revisions to the 1590 edition suggests both that she took charge of the situation and that she personally took pen in hand. If we imagine Pembroke setting about her task

THE COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE AND HER ARCADIA

171

with a pen poised to write, we can readily understand how ‘wiping’ away blots became supplying the missing text. Practically speaking, the ‘spottes’ that Pembroke felt obliged to erase were the chapter divisions and chapter summaries that Greville and his collaborators had introduced into the 1590 edition, and the main ‘defect’, or lack, was that the ‘New’ Arcadia was only half finished, its work-in-progress state emphasized by the 1590 editors’ choice to leave its last sentence incomplete.6 Pembroke’s editorial policy, by contrast, was to achieve completeness. Her 1593 edition takes the revised but unfinished Books I–III that had been printed in 1590, further revises them, and adds a conclusion based on Books III–V of the Wilton version, the ‘Old’ Arcadia, edited for better coherence with the first half.7 Although ‘To the Reader’ unambiguously declares Pembroke’s confidence in ‘her honorable labour’ of ‘mending’, ‘making’, ‘correcting’ and ‘supplying’, her choices have remained controversial. Following the 1908 recovery of several manuscripts of the ‘Old’ Arcadia, the generation of scholars that first compared Greville’s and Pembroke’s editions with the Wilton ‘original’ roundly denigrated Pembroke’s ‘meddling’ interventions in the text (Rowe 1939: 122–38), while the back cover of the current Oxford World’s Classics Old Arcadia proclaims its superiority to the ‘composite’ version based on the 1593 folio, calling Pembroke’s text ‘a hybrid monster which Sidney himself never envisaged’ (Duncan-Jones 2008). The 1593 epistle goes on to elaborate and prepare the reader for the nature of the text, in a tone that combines the traditional deference of author to reader with a refusal to apologize for the composite form of the text. It grounds its authority not only in Pembroke’s intimacy with Sidney, while he lived, and with his intentions, but also in Pembroke’s own right to shape the text as she sees fit. [W]ith what aduise entred into, with what successe it hath beene passed through, most by her doing, all by her directing . . . [readers] (it is hoped) will fauourably censure. But this they shall, for theyr better satisfaction, vnderstand, that though they finde not here what might be expected, they may finde neuerthelesse as much as was intended, the conclusion, not the perfection, of Arcadia: and that no further than the Authors own writings, or knowen determinations could direct. . . . But howsoeuer it is, it is

172

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

now by more then one interest The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia: done, as it was, for her: as it is, by her. 1593: ¶4r–v Commenting on the epistle to the reader, Andrew Fleck remarks that ‘The countess and her agents presume to know the author’s intention, a stunning presumption’ (Fleck 2010: 543). But was fidelity to Sidney’s ‘intention’ the only principle of the folio edition? Did Pembroke necessarily see any distinction between ‘authorial’ intention and her own, since the text was explicitly described by both siblings as belonging to her? The letter uses bold, direct language for Pembroke’s work: ‘doing’, ‘directing’, ‘done . . . by her’, rather than more modest or gendered metaphors of serving or mending the text. Pembroke’s presentation of the revised Arcadia according to the plan that ‘the Authors own writings, or knowen determinations could direct’ is part of a work of fidelity to and mourning for a beloved brother; at the same time, the letter shows a confident and active agency behind Pembroke’s edition, not an effort to be as unobtrusive and transparent as possible. I have spoken so far of ‘Pembroke’s edition’, and I want to reiterate my position that we have no reason to believe that the choices borne out in the edition were not, as the preface says, entirely Pembroke’s intellectual and literary work: ‘her honorable labour’; ‘most by her doing, all by her directing’. Yet scholars such as Fleck, who, in the passage just quoted, refers to the folio as being the work of ‘the Countess and her agents’, have been remarkably reluctant to give credit to Pembroke even for editing the Arcadia, not only in the early twentieth century but up to the present. Victor Skretkowicz, the editor of the Clarendon Press edition of the ‘New’ Arcadia (1987), chooses the 1590 quarto as his copy-text rather than the 1593 folio because the stated goal of his edition is to get as close as possible to Sidney’s ‘foul papers’, the working manuscript, including the revised Books I–III that Greville says he possessed at the time of Sidney’s death and on which he based the quarto edition. Such a procedure is fully in line with the principles of the ‘New Bibliography’, which aimed to produce an edition as close as possible to the (singular) author’s final intentions. Skretkowicz assumes that Sidney left the ‘New’ Arcadia unfinished as Greville represents it in the quarto, and refers to Books III–V in the folio as ‘a long appendix’ (CPA lxii), implying that Pembroke erred by

THE COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE AND HER ARCADIA

173

presenting them as continuous with the ‘New’ books I–III. He thus begins by discounting Pembroke’s version as derivative, and continues by judging not just the textual authority of her work but the whole nature of it as less important and of less integrity than Greville’s. He describes some of Pembroke’s more fine-grained revisions as ‘tampering’, and her choices that he disagrees with as ‘blunders’ (1986: 121–2). Referring to passages in which Pembroke’s rewriting was especially extensive, in the integration of the Eclogues into the prose narrative, Skretkowicz says of Pembroke that she (and the assistants he presumes she had) ‘exercised their literary faculties’ (1986: 122), as if such ‘exercise’ were an unusual exertion for Pembroke, when she was herself a skilled poet, or, alternatively, as if her work were merely an ‘exercise’ rather than a fully realized creative accomplishment. Skretkowicz is broadly committed to disentangling Pembroke’s work from Sidney’s, while I propose that we regard them as inseparable. It is important to acknowledge that Skretkowicz, like other textual critics of Sidney’s work in the early and middle twentieth century, was writing without the benefit of the transformational work by feminist scholars like Hannay, Lamb, Beilin, Betty Travitsky, Margaret J. M. Ezell and others, which first emerged during the 1980s. But even some of the most recent scholarship on the Arcadia seems inclined to discount Pembroke’s labours without sufficient consideration. Joel B. Davis, while acknowledging the salutary influence of Hannay and Lamb on the evolution of his own understanding of the extent and sophistication of Pembroke’s work in the 1593 edition, and while in general taking Pembroke’s intentions as an editor seriously, still resists ascribing authorial agency to her (Davis 2011: 146). Discussing a passage in the folio that bridges the end of the revised part of Book III and the ‘Old’ Arcadia Book III, and that appears neither in the 1590 text nor in any of the extant manuscripts, Davis runs through multiple bibliographical conjectures before venturing a ‘final possibility’: that the passage is not Philip Sidney’s work, and that it was written under the aegis of the countess of Pembroke specifically for the 1593 folio. If we could attribute the passage to Philip Sidney with absolute certainty, we could know that he intended to conclude his revised Arcadia in much the same manner as his Old Arcadia. Lacking that definitive attribution, we may instead

174

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

accept the authority of the 1593 folio, granting its heterogenous origins but seeking in the work an overarching vision – an editorial interpretation – and, therefore, we may examine the passage in the context of the 1593 folio. Davis 2011: 163 Davis begins with the premise that if the passage is not by Sidney, it may not be worthy of critical attention, and goes on to construct a provisional affordance, in place of authorial intention, that he names ‘editorial interpretation’, which sees the passage as acceptable given its ‘heterogenous origins’ (this phrase recalls the Oxford World’s Classics blurb that calls the 1593 folio a ‘hybrid monster’), and allows scholars, at least for the moment, to ‘accept the authority of the 1593 folio’. The person or persons responsible for the ‘editorial’ work, and in whom the ‘authority’ of the folio rests, are left unmentioned. Most notably of all, Davis does not consider that the passage might have been written not ‘under the aegis of the Countess of Pembroke’ but, as the preface tells us, by her. In the current landscape of editorial theory and attribution studies of early modern texts, in which a growing awareness of and respect for collaboration has, for instance, allowed Macbeth and Measure for Measure to be adopted pluralistically into the Middleton canon (Taylor and Lavagnino 2007), scholarship has nevertheless continued to minimize Pembroke’s role in the co-authorship of the 1593 Arcadia. It is as if, in the presence of a controversy around authorship, scholars even well into the twenty-first century simply cannot accept the involvement of a woman in a text as willingly as they credit all its male collaborators. Davis’s projection of a writer working ‘under the aegis’ of Pembroke brings us to the question of Pembroke’s secretary, Hugh Sanford, who is generally believed to be the ‘H.S.’ whose initials appear at the end of the preface to the reader in the folio Arcadia. Scholars and critics of the 1593 Arcadia up to the present have often assumed that Sanford’s responsibility for the edition went far beyond signing the preface. Skretkowicz plainly takes as a given that Sanford alone edited the 1593 text; he says explicitly that in the folio preface Sanford ‘laid down his editorial policy’ (CPA lxi) and repeatedly refers to ‘the editor of 93’ as ‘he’ (CPA lxi, lxxiv). Hannay, describing the composition of the folio, proposes a relationship in which Pembroke ‘supervised the work of Sanford’

THE COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE AND HER ARCADIA

175

(Hannay 1990: 72). Gavin Alexander says that Sanford ‘probably did much of the work on the Countess of Pembroke’s behalf’ (Alexander 2006: xxvi). But no documents survive witnessing the arrangement, except for the 1593 preface. This account describes a working relationship in which the edition was produced ‘most by her doing, all by her directing’; that is, even if H. S. sometimes held the pen, Pembroke was dictating its strokes. Why have we imagined Pembroke as a patron remotely enabling, under her ‘aegis’, the work of a hands-on male editor like Sanford, rather than listening to what the 1593 preface is telling us and seeing her as the one responsible, creatively and even mechanically, for the revision? It seems safe to assume that H. S. is indeed Sanford. His presence as an administrator in the household of the second Earl of Pembroke, stretching over a decade of service, is well documented. He served as a secretary to the Earl, often writing letters on his behalf and witnessing documents, and he tutored the Pembroke children (Hannay 1990: 60, 112, 189). But to propose Sanford as the chief editor of the 1593 Arcadia, not just as a scribe in Pembroke’s service, based on his provision of the voice of the preface, seems something of a leap. Aubrey, in Brief Lives, a century later, records him as a ‘good scholar and poet’, but Sanford wrote no poetry that survives and did not publish anything in print.8 Scholars have pointed to two prefaces that John Florio wrote to other works as evidence that Florio believed Sanford was the author of the 1593 preface and that Sanford had a major part in the work of producing the folio edition (Brennan and Kinnamon 2003: 160, 177). The folio Arcadia preface disparages those readers who prefer the Arcadia unfinished, as in Greville’s version, as ‘cattel’ who reject its ‘pastures’ and ‘flowers’ (1593: ¶4r). Florio was a friend of Greville and may have been involved in the project of the 1590 quarto Arcadia, although his name does not appear in it. In a preface to his 1598 English-Italian dictionary A Worlde of Wordes (STC 11098), Florio rages against critics, ‘leering curs’ who unfairly censure writers, then launches into a specific attack on one person: ‘But my quarrel is to a tooth-lesse dog, that hateth where he cannot hurt, and would faine bite when he hath no teeth. His name is H.S.’ (a5v). Frances Yates suggests in her biography of Florio that he read the slighting references to ‘flowers’, correctly or not, in the 1593 preface signed by H.S. as playing on Florio’s name, making ‘as familiar a word of F. as I had been his brother’ (a5v), and then responded with

176

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

a long list of taunting plays on the initials H. S.: ‘Huffe Stuffe, Horse Stealer’, ‘Hugh Sot’, and more, in Latin, Italian and English (a5v). The next year, Thomas Nashe published his Lenten Stuffe (STC 18370), in the dedication of which Nashe included a dig at Florio, calling him ‘a poet of no lesse price then H. S. that in honour of Maid-marrian gives sweete Margera[m] for his Empresse’ (A2r). Nashe is apparently mocking Florio’s quarrel with the ‘H. S.’ of the Arcadia preface; ‘empress’ puns on ‘impresa’, or emblem, and refers to the device of the hog and marjoram that decorates the title page of the 1593 Arcadia. In 1603, Florio dedicated the second book of his translation of Montaigne (STC 18041) to Sidney’s daughter, Elizabeth, Countess of Rutland, and to Lady Penelope Rich, expressing in an epistle to them his disapproval of the 1593 folio, which he deems ‘more marring what was well, than mending what was amiss’ (R3r). From these pieces of evidence, Yates proposes that Florio, in the 1598 dictionary preface, was retaliating against the folio and against Sanford’s preface, and that Nashe was laughing on the sidelines at how Sanford had needled Florio. The case that Florio’s and Nashe’s insults hurled at ‘H. S.’ mean that they attributed the editing philosophy behind the folio to Sanford personally, not just the preface, seems to me less than fully persuasive, however. An anecdote about another secretary to an aristocratic woman writer in the early modern period, John Rolleston, who was in the employ of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, suggests a very different kind of assumption about their relationship. The eighteenth-century antiquarian Michael Lort claimed that Rolleston ‘slept in a closet opening out of Margaret’s bedchamber, so that he could rush out, pen at the ready, in answer to her calls of “John, I conceive” ’ (Whitaker 2002: 350). This image of the secretary as a servile amanuensis is a comic exaggeration, a tale told in support of the popular perception of Cavendish as eccentric. But Lort’s portrayal of Rolleston as lacking any agency might make us question critics’ assumption that Sanford, in contrast, exercised a great deal of agency in the editing of the 1593 Arcadia, when all we can surmise about his contribution is that he signed the preface. I propose, then, that in the absence of further evidence, we consider Pembroke to be the sole creative force responsible for the editorial theory and practice behind the production of the 1593 Arcadia. I also suggest that, based on her intimacy with the writing process of the first, Wilton Arcadia, her self-appointment as the true

THE COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE AND HER ARCADIA

177

and authorized heir of the Arcadia project after Sidney’s death, and the pervasive work of reshaping, adding, and revising that she undertook in the 1593 text, we take seriously the question of whether Pembroke should more properly be considered Sidney’s coauthor in the folio Arcadia, the version that held the field from 1593 to the early twentieth century and still the form of the romance most commonly studied today. What would the text look like if we allowed the role of co-author to be one of the possible lenses, along with editor, curator, mourner and muse, through which we see the work of Pembroke? More speculatively still, while we are accounting for Pembroke’s and Sanford’s respective work in the folio Arcadia, how confident can we be that Sanford composed on his own account, and not just wrote down under Pembroke’s direction, the 1593 preface? As Pembroke’s employee, he would presumably have done what she asked, including, perhaps, putting his initials to a preface she dictated, in order to deflect the scrutiny of a print audience and any fallout from a public quarrel with Greville, away from Pembroke. Notably, Pembroke does not include epistles or prefaces of any kind with her other print publications. In the translations A Discourse of Life and Death and Antonius, A Tragedie . . . Both done in English by the Countesse of Pembroke (published together in 1592), the first leaf opens directly from the joint title page into the beginning of the text of the Discourse, with no preliminaries (A1r–2r); after its close on a recto, a blank verso is followed by ‘The Argument’, and then the first lines of Antonius (F1r–2r). Pembroke appends a dedicatory poem to Elizabeth to the manuscript of the Psalmes that she prepared for presentation to the Queen (known by its first line, ‘Even now that care which on thy Crowne attends’), but this work was not intended for print publication and seems never even to have reached the Queen. Is it possible that in the Arcadia, Pembroke wanted to speak in print but not to insert herself so visibly into the controversy over her brother’s, and her own, legacy? If Sanford was not speaking in his own voice but was dutifully bearing the ‘heat’ of a possible response from Greville or his allies to the confrontational folio preface, and Florio knew it, perhaps Sanford’s very obedience to Pembroke, his employer, might have inspired Florio’s abuse of him in the 1598 World of Words preface as a ‘tooth-lesse dog’. The long list of abusive names, we may note, are all attacks on the intelligence of ‘H. S.’ in three languages in

178

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

which Florio was fluent; Florio had attended university in Germany, whereas scholars have found no record of a university matriculation for Sanford. Perhaps Florio is specifically taunting Sanford for being unlettered and unqualified to take charge of the creative choices of the Arcadia revision project. Nashe, too, characterizes ‘H. S.’ as a foolish devotee of Pembroke, paying her tribute in courtly love style by offering flowers to ‘his Empresse’ (Pembroke) ‘in honour of Maid-marrian’ (Robin Hood’s consort, but also Pembroke). These references have been used to establish Sanford’s responsibility for the Arcadia edition, but in fact the common theme in this male inter-preface invective seems to be that Sanford was a menial worker, merely Pembroke’s tool. At the very least, even if Sanford was not literally taking dictation from Pembroke, this letter would not have appeared in this edition without her approval of it. But some scholars have seen verbal links between the folio preface and Pembroke’s other known writing that we might take as evidence that even the words could be hers. Margaret Hannay, in an analysis of Pembroke’s later elegy for Sidney, ‘To the Angel spirit’ (1599?), which was written to accompany a manuscript of their Psalmes, notes syntactical parallels between it and the 1593 ‘To the Reader’ preface: in the phrase from the poem ‘yet so much done, as Art could not amende’, Hannay hears ‘an echo of Sanford’s remarks in the 1593 Arcadia’ (Hannay 1990: 69). It seems equally likely that rather than signalling an imitation by Pembroke of her secretary’s style, similarities in voice between the preface and the poem could mean that they were both written by Pembroke. Pembroke’s authorship of the epistle cannot be proven with the documents we currently have; my intention is not to push too hard on this claim, but simply to point out that the attribution to Sanford is not provable either. Nevertheless, Sanford’s authorship of the preface – both that he is ‘H.S.’ and that its voice is authentically his – has been accepted unquestioningly by scholars up to the present. We can draw an instructive contrast with Pembroke’s poem known as ‘The Dolefull Lay of Clorinda’, the lament for Sidney that is printed, anonymously, in the collection Colin Clouts Come Home Againe (1595; STC 23077), a volume that begins with Spenser’s titular pastoral poem, followed by a section of elegies for Sidney beginning with Spenser’s ‘Astrophel’ and followed by poems, signed and unsigned, by other authors. Pembroke’s authorship of the

THE COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE AND HER ARCADIA

179

second poem in the section has remained in question despite bountiful external and internal evidence that she is its creator. In their Clarendon edition of Pembroke’s works, Hannay, Noel J. Kinnamon and Michael G. Brennan lay out the case for Pembroke’s authorship of the ‘Dolefull Lay’, noting that the controversy around the poem ‘has been ostensibly textual, yet it often assumes that an Elizabethan woman would not have had the education or the rhetorical skill to write a poem in a Spenserian mode’ (CW 128). Despite the convincing demonstration offered by the Clarendon editors for Pembroke’s authorship of the ‘Dolefull Lay’, the poem is still listed in their edition under ‘Disputed Work’. Even as the definitive attribution of the ‘Dolefull Lay’ to Pembroke is withheld out of an excess of caution, Sanford’s authorship of the 1593 Arcadia preface becomes a positive feedback loop: successive critics base their confidence in his substantive contribution to the folio edition on previous critics’ conjectures and assumptions, and Sanford’s agency in the text seems to expand mysteriously in scholarly accounts of the 1593 Arcadia beyond the existing evidence. Florio’s ‘Hugh Sot’ supports Yates’ claim that Florio worked on the 1590 Arcadia quarto and was thus an antagonist of the folio editors, while the idea that Florio worked on the quarto supports the identification of ‘H.S.’ as Sanford; each claim is built on the other. Alexander, writing about Mary Wroth, Pembroke’s niece, who was part of the next generation of women in the Sidney-Pembroke literary genealogy, seems inspired by the large role assigned to Sanford in Pembroke’s work by previous scholars to propose an even more dramatic part for Sanford in Wroth’s life. Observing that Wroth and her first cousin, William Herbert, Pembroke’s son, despite apparently being in love with each other, each married someone else unhappily in matches that Sanford, still the Pembroke household secretary, helped to negotiate, Alexander (using Wroth’s roman-à-clef Urania as a guide) conjectures that Sanford ‘deceitfully drove a wedge between them, and they were tricked into loveless marriages’ (Alexander 2006: 147–8).9 How would it change our perception of Pembroke’s work in the 1593 folio Arcadia if we took the preface signed by ‘H. S.’ as having been dictated by Pembroke? Certainly, it would contribute to our sense of Pembroke’s agency being expressed and her ownership asserted in her edition. Moreover, if we saw Pembroke as someone who enjoyed the play of subterfuge involved in a false signature,

180

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

and the preface’s language of ‘spottes’ that blot the face of the 1590 Arcadia like smudged ink, could we more easily appreciate the way in which she also liked to play with the language and imagery of books, writing, and printing in her works more broadly? In ‘To the Angel Spirit’, Pembroke describes the dedicatory poem itself as ‘these dearest offerings of my heart / dissolv’d to Inke’ (CW I: 112). The poem begins with a subtler reference to the materiality of texts, folded into another account of the shared agency of Sidney and Pembroke: To thee pure sprite, to thee alone’s addres’t this coupled work, by double int’rest thine : First rais’de by thy blest hand, and what is mine inspird by thee, thy secrett power imprest. ‘To the Angell spirit of the most excellent Sir Philip Sidney’, CW I: 110–12 As Helen Smith notes, ‘The elegiac tone . . . allows Herbert both to establish her contribution to the psalms, and to privilege her brother’s originary authority’ (2012: 47). Of course, what elegy privileges above all is the authority of the survivor, the elegiac poet. As Milton would demonstrate in Lycidas and its stunning final vista as the speaker turns toward ‘fresh woods, and pastures new’, an essential part of poetic elegy is the establishment of the distinct lyric voice, and the concomitant power, of the one who is still alive. Though the Psalmes circulated only in manuscript and were not printed until the nineteenth century, Pembroke’s language here contains a reference to print technology. The OED tracks the use of ‘impress’, with specific reference to the printing press, back to 1508, and offers continuous examples until 1781, alongside the metaphorical meanings such as ‘impose’, ‘imprint’, ‘stamp’ and ‘mark’.10 Rather than an aristocratic lady delicately removed from the ‘stigma of print’, Pembroke deserves to be re-evaluated as a writer who took pleasure in entering print’s material world and skilfully playing with its language. If we posit Pembroke’s authorship, or at least authorizing, of the preface, we might continue to rethink, through the language of the preface, the accepted relationship of Pembroke to the text of the romance as an ‘editorial’ one. The designation as ‘editor’ separates Pembroke unduly from the ‘scene of writing’, making her a

THE COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE AND HER ARCADIA

181

secondary, supplementary figure. Sonia Massai has pointed out that the use of ‘editor’ in relation to early modern texts is itself anachronistic; she proposes ‘perfect’ or ‘correct’ as words for ‘edit’ that are more native to the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries (Massai 2007: 5–10). In the 1593 preface, Sanford/Pembroke indeed use ‘perfected’, but then reject it, saying that what readers will find within is ‘as much as was intended, the conclusion, not the perfection of Arcadia’. Generally scholars have read that substitution of ‘conclusion’ for ‘perfection’ as a gesture of modesty: Pembroke would not aspire so high as to ‘perfect’ her brother’s work in his absence, but only to wrap it up as best she could. But I would argue that while ‘conclusion’ is other than perfection, it only reads as something less than perfection if a falling-off from ‘perfection’ in the modern sense is what the reader is expecting: the word ‘conclusion’ has no connotations of a clumsy job, an inexpert mend. To effect a conclusion requires creative effort and denotes creative control of an ultimate and consequential kind. Furthermore, in the terminology of the printing house, ‘to perfect’ a sheet is to print the second side; perhaps ‘not the perfection, but the conclusion’ implies that Pembroke’s work is no mere mechanical fulfilment of a plan already laid out by Sidney, but a more nuanced and subjective effort. When the preface says, ‘Sir Philip Sidneies writings can no more be perfected without Sir Philip Sidney, then Apelles pictures without Apelles’, it seems to acknowledge that the dream of recapturing the singular author’s intentions (whether of a recently deceased brother or of an ancient Greek artist) is an impossible chimera, and is best abandoned, with the idea of ‘perfection’ rejected in favour of the less value-laden and more practical ‘conclusion’. The double spelling out of Sidney’s full name, first and last, perhaps points subtly to the idea that even if there is no more Sir Philip to perfect, it is a different Sidney, the Countess of Pembroke, who remains, and who will conclude the work. ‘[T]hough they find not here what might have been expected’, the preface says, readers ‘may find nevertheless as much as was intended’ [by Sidney (and Pembroke)]; in this phrase, perhaps Pembroke and Sanford remind us that Pembroke’s intentions still matter, and that her work on the 1593 Arcadia, even insofar as she may have overwritten or gone beyond Sidney’s intentions, is authorial as well. Another keyword for the 1593 preface, whoever wrote it, is one of the most basic in the language: ‘do’. The preface declares that the

182

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

revision of the 1590 text was achieved ‘most by her doing, all by her directing’; and its final rhetorical move is to say, ‘But howsoever it is, it is now by more than one interest The Countesse of Pembroke’s Arcadia, done, as it was, for her: as it is, by her.’ Plainly, Pembroke/ Sanford say, if the first iteration of the Arcadia was ‘done’ by Sidney, the text as it appears in 1593 was ‘done’ by the Countess of Pembroke. The wide semantic compass of the verb ‘to do’ makes it superlatively powerful. Criticism of The Countesse of Pembroke’s Arcadia has long had the work of the Countess at the forefront, and yet perhaps modern readers are still not as daring as Pembroke herself in envisioning her shaping, claiming, making presence in the text. Perhaps the possibility that we should classify The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia as a co-authored text has been before our eyes on the title page of the Arcadia, and in the 1593 preface, all along.

Notes 1

I follow the practice of Margaret Hannay et al. 1998 (hereafter CW) in the current standard edition of the Countess of Pembroke’s collected works, and of the Countess of Pembroke herself, in referring to her as ‘Pembroke’. Pembroke signed letters ‘M. Sydney’ before her marriage, ‘M. Pembroke’ during it, and ‘Pembroke’ after she was widowed (with an ‘S fermé’, a monogram signaling the Sidney family, to distinguish herself as ‘Pembroke’ from her son, the Earl); others referred to her in writing as ‘the Countess of Pembroke’ or ‘the Lady Mary’. Many twentieth-century readers and editors chose to call the adult Pembroke ‘Mary Sidney’ as a way of connecting her to her more famous brother, from the first full-length biography, by Frances Berkeley Young (1912) up until Hannay’s now-definitive 1990 biography. More recent scholars have often called her ‘Mary Sidney Herbert’, but this style, with birth name followed by married name, is a modern rather than an early modern usage. By dropping her title, moreover, this name emphasizes Pembroke as a private person, perhaps making her more ‘relatable’ to modern readers, but at the expense of ignoring her own consistent self-association with the considerable power of the earldom that she shared with her husband. For a discussion of her name and her identity as a Sidney, see Alexander 2006: 76–81.

2

On Fraunce’s motives, see Hannay 1990: 78–9.

THE COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE AND HER ARCADIA

183

3

Eve Rachele Sanders calls the title’s possessive a ‘double entendre’, meaning the book both was written for Pembroke and belongs to her (1998: 91).

4

See, for instance, Distiller 2001: 112–29, Alexander 2006, Davis 2011 and Crawford 2014.

5

Howell, an impoverished gentleman, had initially entered service in the household of George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, and then followed Talbot’s daughter Katherine to her new home when she married Henry Herbert, Earl of Pembroke. When Katherine died fourteen years later and Mary Sidney became the next Countess of Pembroke, Howell, who had by that time published two collections of poems, was on-site at Wilton and ready to adopt Pembroke as his new patron.

6

On Greville et al.’s decision to end the 1590 edition in mid-sentence, see Davis 2011: 68–78.

7

Because the manuscript record for the Arcadia is both remarkably thick and remarkably thin – several MSS of the ‘Old’ Arcadia survive, while only one MS of the revised ‘New’ Arcadia is extant – determining the genealogy of the copies and the printed editions, and thus figuring out which changes in the 1593 folio were made by Greville and which by Pembroke, is very complex. See Victor Skretkowicz’s textual introduction to his 1987 edition of The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia (The New Arcadia) (hereafter CPA), liii–lxxxii.

8

Hugh Sanford may have been related to John Sandford (fl. 1567–82), chaplain of Magdalen College, Oxford, and the author of Italian and Spanish dictionaries, or to James Sanford (c. 1564–1629), who published translations from Epictetus and Agrippa and dedicated books to Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, Pembroke’s uncle, but no firm evidence establishes these connections.

9

While Alexander proposes Sanford as the enemy of Herbert and Wroth’s love, the anti-Stratfordian Louis Ule, even more tendentiously, speculates that ‘Hugh Sanford’ was an alias under which Marlowe wrote the sonnets attributed to Shakespeare. See Ule 1995: 265–84. The absurdity of this theory aside, the fact that Ule seized upon Sanford testifies to the way in which, thanks to scholars’ assumptions about his role in the 1593 Arcadia, his name has become famous beyond his actual deeds.

10 The 1508 example, ‘I have put the sayd sermons in wrytynge for to be impressed’, from John Fisher, A treatise concernynge the fruytfull saynges of Dauyd; quoted in OED impress I.4, coincidentally also has to do with the Psalms.

184

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

References Alexander, G. (2006), Writing After Sidney: The Literary Response to Sir Philip Sidney 1586–1640, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Alwes, D. B. (2004), Sons and Authors in Elizabethan England, Newark: University of Delaware Press. Beilin, E. V. (1987), Redeeming Eve: Women Writers of the English Renaissance, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Brennan, M. G. and N. J. Kinnamon (2003), A Sidney Chronology, New York: Palgrave. Crawford, J. (2014), Mediatrix: Women, Politics, and Literary Production in Early Modern England, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Davis, J. B. (2011), The Countesse of Pembroke’s Arcadia and the Invention of English Literature (New York: Palgrave). Distiller, N. (2001), ‘ “Philip’s Phoenix”?: Mary Sidney Herbert and the Identity of Author’, in Mike Pincombe (ed.), The Anatomy of Tudor Literature, Aldershot: Ashgate, 112–29. Duncan-Jones, K. (1991), Philip Sidney: Courtier Poet, New Haven: Yale University Press. Fleck, A. (2010), ‘The Father’s Living Monument: Textual Progeny and the Birth of the Author in Sidney’s Arcadias’, Studies in Philology 107 (4): 520–47. Hannay, M. P. (1985), Silent But for the Word: Tudor Women as Patrons, Translators, and Writers of Religious Works, Kent, OH: Kent State University Press. Hannay, M. P. (1990), Philip’s Phoenix: Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, New York: Oxford University Press. Hannay, M. P., N. J. Kinnamon, and M. G. Brennan (eds) (1998), The Collected Works of Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, 2 vols, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Howell, T. (1581), H. His Devises, for his owne exercise, and his Friends pleasure, London: H. Jackson, STC 13875. Massai, S. (2007), Shakespeare and the Rise of the Editor, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pender, P. (2011), ‘The Ghost and the Machine in the Sidney Family Corpus’, Studies in English Literature 1500–1900 51 (1): 70. Rowe, K. T. (1939), ‘The Countess of Pembroke’s Editorship of the Arcadia’, PMLA 54 (1): 122–38. Sanders, E. R. (1998), Gender and Literacy on Stage in Early Modern England, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sidney, Sir P. (2008), The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia (The Old Arcadia), Katherine Duncan-Jones (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press.

THE COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE AND HER ARCADIA

185

Skretkowicz, V. (1986), ‘Building Sidney’s Reputation: Texts and Editors of the Arcadia’, in Jan van Dorsten, Dominic Baker-Smith and Arthur F. Kinney (eds), Sir Philip Sidney: 1586 and the Creation of a Legend, Leiden: Brill, 111–24. Skretkowicz, V. (ed.) (1987), The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia (The New Arcadia), Oxford: Clarendon Press. Smith, H. (2012), ‘Grossly Material Things’: Women and Book Production in Early Modern England, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Taylor, G., J. Lavagnino et al. (eds) (2007), Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Ule, L. (1995), Christopher Marlowe 1564–1607: A Biography, New York: Carlton Press. Whitaker, K. (2002), Mad Madge: The Extraordinary Life of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, the First Woman to Live by her Pen, New York: Basic Books. Young, F. B. (1912), Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, London: David Nutt. Zarnowiecki, M. (2009), ‘Lyric Surrogacy: Reproducing the “I” in Sidney’s Arcadia’, Sidney Journal 27 (1): 31–53.

186

9 Katharine Lee Bates and women’s editions of Shakespeare for students Molly G. Yarn

Student editions of Shakespeare form an enormous body of neglected editorial work, and it is within this oft-overlooked corpus that many women editors of Shakespeare working prior to 1950 can be found. Student editions have often been seen as ‘derivative’ and dismissed on grounds articulated by the mid-century American bibliographer Fredson Bowers, who wrote that ‘[u]ntil comparatively recent times most practical [student] editions were a disgrace, and the majority still are. That is, having committed himself to a hack job, some scholar contents himself with writing a general introduction and sends this off to the publisher with a note about the text of some edition that can be reprinted without charge’ (1975: 416). Bowers refers here to the common time- and costsaving strategy employed by publishers of reprinting the text of an out-of-copyright Shakespeare edition, meaning that the editor produced new paratextual materials but not a new text. These ‘new’ editions could then be copyrighted and published as a new series. Bowers’s dismissal, however, both over-generalizes and fails to understand the importance of the everyday editions of Shakespeare used by students. All editions share the basic aim of presenting Shakespeare, in some form, to the reader, and it is vital to consider, 187

188

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

in Leah Marcus’s words, ‘the subtle, pervasive rhetorical power exerted by the editions we use’ (1996: 3). This is particularly true of the editions in which readers encounter Shakespeare for the first time. In an article tracing the influence of Shakespeare in schools, Janet Bottoms pointed out that the classroom is ‘one of the most powerful forces at work upon [the concept of “Shakespeare”]’ (2013: 96). Many people first read the plays in school editions, and those editions deserve attention, consideration and analysis – as do their editors. Sustained attention to them reveals that many student editions were the result of thoughtful work by talented editors. This chapter examines the work of poet and editor Katharine Lee Bates to demonstrate that Bates applied both considerable critical understanding and significant textual scholarship to the preparation of her student editions of Shakespeare. Bates represents a generation of American women who embraced opportunities to edit Shakespeare for audiences outside of the academic elite and whose work has too often been excluded from editorial history. She exhibited both writing talent and an eye for social commentary at a young age, writing in her diary at age seven that ‘[w]omen are the feminain [sic] gender. They are high spirited as a general thing and I am happy to say have become impatient under the restraint men put upon them So the great question of women’s rights has arison [sic]’ (Bates 1866: 10 March). Although she wrote novels for children and young adults, travel books, textbooks and periodical articles, even serving as a war correspondent for The New York Times during the Spanish-American War, her primary medium was poetry. In 1893, after a journey to the summit of Pikes Peak in Colorado, Bates began to write ‘America the Beautiful’. It first appeared in print two years later and caused a minor sensation. The most popular of its many musical settings was a candidate to be the country’s official national anthem, and although beaten out for that honour by Francis Scott Key’s ‘Star-Spangled Banner’, it remains a well-known song to this day. In some ways, her editorial work is a relatively minor part of her overall legacy; however, her editions are part of a sizeable but neglected chapter of the Anglo-American Shakespearean editorial tradition. As Andrew Murphy explains in Shakespeare in Print, American Shakespeare publishing was slower out of the starting gate than its British counterpart. Large-scale printing and publication depended on the development of a practical infrastructure for those activities.

KATHARINE LEE BATES’S EDITIONS OF SHAKESPEARE

189

To begin with, printing presses had to be built or shipped across the Atlantic. The first edition of the complete works printed outside of Britain and Ireland was made in Philadelphia in 1795 (Murphy 2003: 145). By the time of de Tocqueville’s travels in 1831, when he commented on the presence of the Bible and Shakespeare in every American home, multiple American-made editions existed, although many were reprints of British editions. An increasing number of texts edited by Americans also appeared during the first half of the nineteenth century. The gradual acquisition of folio and quarto texts by wealthy Americans facilitated more original editorial work starting around 1860 by editors such as Richard Grant White (Murphy 2003: 154). As a consequence of its slow growth, by the late nineteenth century, when home-grown Shakespeare publishing began to catch up to the level of British production, American publishing houses had a rich pool of educated editorial talent to draw on, both male and female. The existence of educated women able to take on editorial roles was due in part to the fact that higher education for women began earlier in the United States than England. Mount Holyoke Seminary, which would grow into one of the famed Seven Sisters schools, opened in 1837, whereas its British counterparts did not get started until 1847 and 1849. The early seminaries were not exact equivalents to all-male institutions, but they provided a testing ground for curricula and general precepts of women’s higher education. Women’s literacy in America has been estimated at as high as 90 per cent by 1850, compared to 55 per cent in Britain. By 1872, women were writing almost three-quarters of the novels published in the United States (Sicherman 2010: 38–9). Experiments with coeducation began with Oberlin College in Ohio in 1833. Founded on radical evangelical principals, Oberlin admitted men and women of all races; its first three women graduated with bachelor’s degrees in 1840. Around 1870, when Girton College was getting off the ground, of the 582 institutions of higher education in the United States, 29 per cent, or 169, were coeducational, and 12 per cent (seventy schools) were women’s colleges (Solomon 1985: 44). The first generations of American college women acknowledged and understood the historical nature of their undertakings, so colleges like Wellesley and Smith still maintain rich archives relating to their faculty and alumnae. Katharine Lee Bates attended Wellesley as an undergraduate and became a professor of English there, serving as

190

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

head of the department for many years before donating her papers to the college (Thompson and Roberts 1997: 225). The Bates holdings at Wellesley total twenty-two catalogued boxes containing books, lectures, manuscripts, diaries and letters ranging from her childhood until her death.1 The information presented in this chapter is the product of my time spent in this archive, where I examined her papers concerning her work on Shakespeare.2 Bates edited five student editions for Boston-based publishing company Leach, Shewell, & Sanborn’s Student’s Series of English Classics: The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It, Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner and A Ballad Book. Leach, Shewell, & Sanborn employed at least six women as editors for this series, including Bates’s Wellesley colleagues Louise Manning Hodgkins and Vida Dutton Scudder. At their most fundamental, school editions of Shakespeare at this time in America or the United Kingdom contained a critical introduction, a text and glossarial notes. They could also include sections such as appendices, textual notes, sample exam questions, prompts for discussion and freestanding glossaries or indices. The format drew primarily on the conventions used in Latin and Greek school-texts (Jackson 1991: 147). Although the American system of education differed from that of the UK, American school editions were, for the most part, extremely similar in format to their British counterparts, reflecting the degree to which British publishing continued to set the trends in Shakespeare publishing well into the nineteenth century (Petersen 1996: 20). In England, single-text editions of classic texts became lucrative in response to the growing need created by mid-century education reform (Murphy 2003: 182). At girls’ schools in particular, literature functioned as a replacement for the Latin and Greek texts at the centre of the traditional public-school curriculum (Flint 1995: 124). Initially, however, it was difficult to find affordable, practical texts for use in the classroom: a teacher at Dorothea Beale’s pioneering Cheltenham Ladies’ College recalled that during the early years of the school, in order to read The Ancient Mariner, a student had to buy the complete works of Coleridge (Flint 1995: 128). Publishing companies moved in to fill the demand generated by this new market, one driven in large part by growing numbers of female students. When planning the Clarendon Press Series editions of Shakespeare, an Oxford University Press delegate even specified that students at girls’ schools were the primary intended audience

KATHARINE LEE BATES’S EDITIONS OF SHAKESPEARE

191

for their editions (Stray 2013: 495).3 In order to accommodate the needs of students of both genders and varying socioeconomic backgrounds, publishers began to produce series comprised of editions of single plays, making it possible for a less affluent student to purchase, for example, The Merchant of Venice without having to acquire (and carry around) Shakespeare’s entire corpus. The growing popularity of single-text editions resulted in a greater demand for editors. Whereas previously a single editor would be hired to prepare all of the texts for a series or edition of the complete works, publishing companies now hired upwards of thirty volume editors to prepare single-text editions under the supervision of a general editor. This innovation, which began with student editions, eventually spread to the wider Shakespeare market; in 1899, the first series of the Arden Shakespeare adopted this convention, and it has become standard practice for major Shakespeare series throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries (Murphy 2003: 207). The immediate consequence of this change in the late nineteenth century, however, was to increase the number of editions prepared by women. Many college-educated women, particularly those with teaching backgrounds, took advantage of the opportunities created by this new student market. Katharine Lee Bates was only one of these many women, neither the first nor the last; however, most of the labour these women undertook for their editions has been occluded due to the loss of their personal and professional papers. The survival of her large archive makes Bates exceptional, especially because it reveals the process of her editorial work. She kept a five-year diary from 1893 until 1897 that covered the years in which she produced her most significant editions (Bates 1893–7). The format of the journal allowed the diarist to record a few lines each day for five years, as shown in Figure 9.1. Although the space was very limited, Bates possessed a poet’s ability to convey a great deal in very few words. Many entries consist of prosaic accountings of the weather or dinner guests, but her humour and intelligence shine through, as on 24 April 1896: ‘Almost made a friend today, but the stars are adverse.’4 The frustrations of scholarship ring true to academics of any period: ‘I don’t know why anybody should write or read’ (8 September 1897), followed by, two days later, ‘Life isn’t worth living when it’s making an index’ (10 September 1897). The diary makes it possible to chart exactly

192

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

FIGURE 9.1 The entries for 6 June from Katharine Lee Bates’s five-year journal. Used by permission of Wellesley College Archives, Library and Technology Services. Katharine Lee Bates Papers, Box 2, Folder: Diaries (1893–7, 1894).

how much time she spent on The Merchant of Venice, her first Shakespeare edition, and provides a general timeline of her work on Midsummer and As You Like It.5 Letters to her mother and sister expand on her progress and her opinions of her work on Merchant. Bates wrote that she ‘[broke] ground’ on Merchant on 3 May 1894 (Bates 1893–7). Several exasperated entries followed that week, and then an entire month passed without mention of the play, probably because Bates and her partner Katherine Coman were travelling across the Atlantic to the United Kingdom to settle in Oxford for the summer. Beginning around 5 July, Bates worked in the Bodleian to collate the quarto and folio texts of Merchant (Bates 1894a). A flurry of busy entries followed as she made her way through the text. On 8 July, she wrote to her mother Cornelia that she had been ‘enjoying my job so much that there’s no telling when I shall finish it’ (Bates 1894b). To her sister Jane, she explained that she had ‘most unexpectedly become interested’ in Merchant, but ‘shall get it off presently’ (Bates 1894c). That same day, 12 July, she noted in her diary that she had finished the initial textual work (Bates 1893–7). By 23 July, however, like nearly every editor throughout history, she had discovered that the edition ‘is more work than I had realized it would be’ and that she must ignore her terrible toothache and stop writing letters or it ‘will never be done’ (Bates 1894d). She gloomily predicted that even if she finished, the manuscript would

KATHARINE LEE BATES’S EDITIONS OF SHAKESPEARE

193

probably be lost at sea before it reached the publishers in Boston. Luckily, it survived its voyage after being posted on 18 August. By the end of September, having returned to Wellesley, Bates noted that she was working on the proofs, which took her a month to complete once she was back in the bustle of classes and coursework. On 26 October, she wrote in her diary that she was ‘still busy’ with the proofs but ‘almost done’, and indeed, the preface of the published edition was dated November 1894 (Bates 1893–7). Overall, the process took her about seven months. At the end of the summer, just before sending off the manuscript, she told her mother that ‘I have made a much more thorough piece of work than I expected, and I think it is, perhaps, a fairly good edition, but it has eaten up all the time’ (Bates 1894e). Bates failed to give her work adequate credit, for she produced a remarkable edition that demonstrates how insightful and useful a student edition can be in the proper hands. Her three editions were the first Shakespeare plays published in the Student’s Series of English Classics, so her approach to the format and contents may have been less constrained by precedent than editors who produced volumes for an established series.6 Bates’s preface to Merchant encouraged students to make their own discoveries by using the information she provided, since ‘[e]xplanation is sometimes necessary, suggestion is often helpful; but the happiest and, in the end, the wisest student is he who makes the most discoveries. Taste and appreciation, critical judgment and discrimination, are developed through free exercise of the reader’s own faculties, not by submission to authority’ (Shakespeare 1894: iii). Bates took the textual element of her edition extremely seriously, collating folio and quarto texts during her time at the Bodleian. The resulting text, she explained, followed the first folio ‘somewhat closely’, with quarto variations given in the notes. Quarto readings or, very rarely, emendations were used in cases of ‘manifestly’ incorrect or ‘inferior’ folio options: in general the folio readings, even where the editor would personally reject them, are retained, with the design that each member of the class may have opportunity, by aid of the textual notes, of constructing a text for himself. It is suggested that the student, in hope of so sharpening his Shakespearian sense, con these notes carefully, and write into the play the readings which

194

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

seem to him most worthy of the poet. Whatever perils wait upon the result, it is believed that the process will be beneficial. 1894: iv Each textual note expanded upon options available in the quarto and folio texts, as well as some emendations in subsequent editions, and posed a question prompting further thought and analysis. Figure 9.2 is an excerpt of these notes. Bates thus created a democratic, open text in which her own opinions are subordinated to the goal of enhancing the student’s experience. She invited engagement with the text’s material history by deflecting the assumption of a single, authoritative reading, which had predominated in eighteenth-century editions, and by capitalizing on students’ pre-existing propensity to mark up their schoolbooks, encouraging them to take on an editorial role by writing in their preferred readings and emendations. This approach is diametrically opposed to that of eighteenthcentury editors, who adopted bombastic and argumentative tones in their notes, but it is in keeping with a shift towards more measured commentary that developed during the nineteenth century and had a particularly distinguished female proponent. Mary Cowden Clarke, the best-known woman editor of Shakespeare, eschewed the use of footnotes in her 1860 edition of the complete works, condemning notes as ‘mere vehicles for abuse, spite, and arrogance . . . written for the sole purpose . . . of proving that other editors are wrong’ (Shakespeare 1860: vii). Although Bates does not go so far as to exclude footnotes, her editorial approach, like Cowden Clarke’s, feels both humble and entirely self-assured. Her references to other texts and critics are erudite, eclectic and generally impartial, an attitude in keeping with her goal of encouraging reader engagement without demanding ‘submission to authority’. Far from being a nineteenth-century innovation, however, Bates’s supportive but non-dictatorial style of pedagogy has parallels in women’s editorial work dating back to at least the seventeenth century. Whitney Trettien has pointed out that through the arrangement of their cut-and-paste Gospel for King Charles I, now known as the King’s Harmony (c. 1635), the women of Little Gidding created ‘navigational tools’ that guided the reader through Scriptural interpretation but did not ‘dictate or clamp down on individual exploration’ (Trettien 2018: 1142). Elsewhere in this volume, Lori Humphrey Newcomb discusses how, through annotation, Frances

KATHARINE LEE BATES’S EDITIONS OF SHAKESPEARE

195

FIGURE 9.2 First page of the ‘Textual Notes’ section from Bates’s edition of The Merchant of Venice (Shakespeare 1894: 147). These notes demonstrate how Bates encouraged students to engage with editorial decision-making. Photograph by the author.

196

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

Wolfreston’s books became sites of shared intellectual activity. By encouraging annotation, Bates’s student editions offer formalized, mass-produced texts that included a space where her insights could sit alongside those of student readers. The year 1895 brought Bates work on A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the same series. Although the start date is less clear, Bates once again completed the bulk of the work over the summer break. A few of her diary entries from this period are particularly evocative: ‘Have gotten to a state of calm despair over that Introduction’ (17 August); ‘Sunday, wrote hard in my wrapper all day on Introd. to Mid. Night’s Dream’ (18 August). Bates’s state of ‘calm despair’ is understandable, given the importance of the introduction to a student edition. Mary Hammond has suggested (2006: 113) that by the late nineteenth century, ‘[t]he scholarly introduction was, in fact, perceived by editors of the classics series to be at least as valuable as the work itself, and in some cases more so’. On a commercial level, the prestige of the editor enhanced the standing of the edition; on a pedagogical level, the paratextual materials were crucial to framing and explicating the plays for first-time readers, and the needs of students shaped the development of the modern critical introduction (Marcus 2015: 375–6). Like many editors before the advent of twentieth-century bibliography and its increased focus on an idealized editorial objectivity, Bates employed passionate, idiosyncratic and occasionally overwrought prose to explore the play’s history and contents. The introduction that so vexed her ultimately began ‘When was A Midsummer-Night’s Dream written? Three hundred years ago nobody cared, so to-day nobody knows’ (Shakespeare 1895: 1). The play’s structure garnered her particular attention, earning a description in her rather distinctive authorly voice: ‘It ought to be all a jumble, and it is an artistic harmony. But how? What, in this that looks so helter-skelter, is the unifying truth? Here the scholars are at variance. The play is a twist of gold cord and rainbow silks, homespun yarn and shimmering moonbeams’ (Shakespeare 1895: 11). Bates’s analysis of the play cannot be called objective, but it is certainly engaging, as is appropriate for a volume intended to spark interest in students. A year after completing Midsummer, Bates’s diary reveals that she spent about four months working on her edition of As You Like It. The resulting introduction reflected Bates’s long-standing interest in non-Shakespearian literature from the medieval and early modern

KATHARINE LEE BATES’S EDITIONS OF SHAKESPEARE

197

periods. After referring the student to the earlier editions of Merchant and Midsummer for basic information on Shakespeare and Elizabethan theatre, Bates focused on a comparison between As You Like It and Thomas Lodge’s Rosalynde, which included a thirty-four-page abridged version of the prose novella in ‘oldfashioned speech and spelling’ edited by Bates specifically for this edition (Shakespeare 1896: 14–48). Since As You Like It is only extant in the Folio text, the preparation of the edition required less textual labour than Merchant or Midsummer; however, the abridged Rosalynde provided an opportunity for Bates to display additional editorial acumen. Student editions comprised only one element of Katharine Lee Bates’s pedagogy. Martha Hale Shackford, a student and colleague of Bates who went on to edit As You Like It (1911) for Macmillan’s Tudor Shakespeare series of school editions, described the Wellesley students’ admiration for Bates: we who were undergraduates during the years when she established the major in English literature were constantly impressed by the range of her reading, the remarkable tenacity of her memory, the scope and aptness of her allusions, and, most of all, by her sensitiveness to aspects of imaginative beauty. Yet her awareness of ideal values did not prevent her from being a teacher who gently but firmly demanded from students sound knowledge, scrupulous accuracy of detail, and fastidiousness of form. Though often seeming shy in the classroom she was, when roused by argument, unmatched in repartee. Always there was a certain piquancy, in her conduct of a class, due to unexpected, stimulating modes of approaching a subject, and she was capable of gay and teasing innuendoes regarding the stolidity of some of our appreciation of great literature. Burgess 1952: 121 This description of Bates is entirely consistent with the editorial voice present in her student editions and demonstrates how effectively Bates translated her own pedagogical personality into written guidance for students far outside the borders of the Wellesley campus. Bates’s professional life also extended past Wellesley’s gates. Her diaries and letters illustrate her engagement with editors and scholars around the world, both male and female. During her time in Oxford

198

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

in 1894, she wrote an article for Poet-Lore, the magazine founded and edited by Shakespeare editors Charlotte Endymion Porter and Helen Archibald Clarke (28 and 29 June). She also mentions meeting with them in person on a trip to Boston in 1895 (9 November).7 In 1896, she refers to a trip to Vassar during which she saw Laura Wylie, who went on to edit A Winter’s Tale for the Tudor Shakespeare series (19 January). She maintained a long correspondence with editor Edith Rickert, who was, along with Bates, hired to revise editions of D. C. Heath’s Arden Shakespeare series for reissue.8 Bates’s letters also include professional correspondence with British Shakespeareans such as F. G. Fleay (Fleay 1902) and Sidney Lee (Lee 1913), as well as a suggestion from archivist Charles William Wallace that she visit editor A. H. Bullen during an upcoming trip to Stratford (C. W. Wallace 1910). She also corresponded with Wallace’s research partner and wife, Hulda (H. B. Wallace 1917). In her preface to Merchant, Bates thanks William J. Rolfe, who, along with Henry Hudson, was one of the two biggest names in the field of American student editions of Shakespeare throughout the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth (Glazener 2015). She mentions Rolfe numerous times in her diaries. Horace Howard Furness, the editor of the Variorum editions of Shakespeare, wrote her a letter in 1895 after reading her edition of Merchant, expressing genuine admiration and delight, admiration for the thorough conscientious scholarship and wide reading of the Introduction, and delight of the sane and sympathetic dealing with the whole subject of notes, wherein it is most difficult to strike the happy mean between too little and too much. Happy as your selection of notes is, the best part of your book is the Introduction – a genuine contribution to the literature of the play. Furness 18959 This is high praise from a major American editor of Shakespeare, who had also mentored Porter and Clarke (Roberts 2006: 136). Further evidence of Bates’s influence lies in the letters she received. Most of them were in response to ‘America the Beautiful’, but there are some regarding Shakespeare, such as an undated note from a teacher in Colorado named Ellen Louise Hill who pled, ‘I’m in trouble here in my efforts to teach Shakespeare. . . . I know I am taking a

KATHARINE LEE BATES’S EDITIONS OF SHAKESPEARE

199

great liberty in writing you in this strain, but in my despair I turn to you as an authority on everything Shakespearian. Please do pardon the liberty and give me a little light in my darkness’ (Hill n.d.). These two responses demonstrate the complex interplay between elevated and everyday scholarship present in the best examples of early student editions, painting a picture of a book appreciated by distinguished Shakespeareans and frustrated teachers alike. Bates’s influence, like that of many editors of school editions, is difficult to quantify because her work was directed to students rather than the larger world of Shakespeare scholarship. Her editions were certainly used and read throughout the country. Charlotte Whipple Underwood, a Chicago teacher, acknowledged her debt to Bates’s Merchant in her own 1899 edition of the play for Macmillan (Shakespeare 1899: x). A used copy of Bates’s Merchant includes marks identifying its owner as a resident of Salinas, California. Twenty years after their initial publication, As You Like It and Midsummer were reissued. Her correspondence with scholars around the world testifies to her scholarly reputation. Bates produced editions of Shakespeare that responded to a rapidly changing market and ever-evolving theories of pedagogy. Her textual work, far from being ‘derivative’, included her own collation of early and modern texts, but in addition to making choices about which readings she preferred, she posed questions that encouraged students to make their own textual judgements, regardless of her suggestions. Before the crystallization of the modern editorial role during the twentieth century, ‘editing’ referred not only to the process of textual collation and emendation, but also to the creation of critical and paratextual content. Bates is one of at least seventy women who edited Shakespeare prior to 1950. Their work deserves the same level of consideration as that given here to Bates, and Bates should be considered representative rather than exceptional. Most of these women’s editions were designed for other women, children and working-class readers and are excluded from the upper echelons of ‘important’, textually innovative editions cited in textual notes and collation. Their erasure from editorial history is symptomatic of a system that still overvalues the traditionally masculine work of editing at the expense of alternative, feminine forms of textual labour. Women editors of Shakespeare worked under different conditions and for different purposes than their better-remembered

200

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

male colleagues. In a student edition, for example, the preparation of the text may not be the most important part of the editorial task. It is vital to acknowledge that editions differ in their intentions and their processes of preparation, as determined by their intended audiences and the requirements of the series in which they are published. Nevertheless, all editions undergo some form of editorial process and the contributions of women like Bates must be acknowledged in order to understand fully the rich tapestry of fin de siècle Shakespeare editions.

Notes 1 Melinda M. Ponder’s recent biography, From Sea to Shining Sea: The Story of the Poet of ‘America the Beautiful’, draws deeply on this archival material. 2 Although this chapter focuses mostly on material in the Wellesley archive, Bates was a prolific letter-writer, and correspondence both to and from her survives in archives throughout the US and the UK. I am grateful to the Wellesley College Archives for their assistance. 3 Oxford’s Clarendon Press Series and Cambridge’s Pitt Press Series were the best-selling series of Shakespeare school editions in the United Kingdom during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 4 Bates was either hypochondriacal or possessed of unusually poor health, as the majority of entries make some mention of a physical complaint, although what are now considered small ailments were significantly more disruptive in the nineteenth century. 5 In addition to the five editions for Leach, Shewell, & Sanborn, Bates also edited John Keats, Nathaniel Hawthorne, John Ruskin, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Thomas Heywood, and Alice and Phoebe Cary for various publishers. 6 I have only identified two additional Shakespeare plays published in this series: Macbeth (ed. James Mercer Garnett, 1897) and Julius Caesar (ed. Edward Payson Morton, 1901). An advertisement in a copy of Merchant claims that Bates was preparing Macbeth for publication, but Garnett ultimately edited that volume. 7 For more on Porter and Clarke, see Roberts 2006; Glazener 2015. 8 These letters are preserved in the Edith Rickert Papers, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library. D. C. Heath’s Arden series is not related to the well-known Arden

KATHARINE LEE BATES’S EDITIONS OF SHAKESPEARE

201

Shakespeare still in publication. In fact, Heath was the first to use ‘Arden’ as the series title – their first volume appeared around 1895, whereas Methuen released their first Arden volume (Hamlet, edited by Edward Dowden) in 1899. 9 Despite his admiration, Furness could not resist correcting the only mistake he noticed in the book – the failure of the bibliography to distinguish between two different German critics both named Elze (Furness 1895).

References Bates, K. L. (1866), Diary. [Diary] Held at: Wellesley, MA : Wellesley College Archives. Katharine Lee Bates Papers, Box 2, Folder: Diary 1866. Bates, K. L. (1893–7), Five Year Journal. [Diary] Held at: Wellesley, MA : Wellesley College Archives. Katharine Lee Bates Papers, Box 2, Folder: Diaries 1893–7, 1894. Bates, K. L. (1894a), Bates to Jane Bates, 6 July. [Letter] Held at: Wellesley, MA : Wellesley College Archives. Katharine Lee Bates Papers, Box 4. Bates, K. L. (1894b), Bates to Cornelia Bates, July 8. [Letter] Held at: Wellesley, MA : Wellesley College Archives. Katharine Lee Bates Papers, Box 4. Bates, K. L. (1894c), Bates to Jane Bates, 12 July. [Letter] Held at: Wellesley, MA : Wellesley College Archives. Katharine Lee Bates Papers, Box 4. Bates, K. L. (1894d), Bates to Cornelia Bates, 23 July. [Letter] Held at: Wellesley, MA : Wellesley College Archives. Katharine Lee Bates Papers, Box 4. Bates, K. L. (1894e), Bates to Cornelia Bates, 12 August. [Letter] Held at: Wellesley, MA : Wellesley College Archives. Katharine Lee Bates Papers, Box 4. Bates, K. L. (1897), Bates to George P. Brett, 12 November. [Letter] Held at: New York: New York Public Library, Manuscripts and Archives Division. Macmillan Company Records, Box 34. Bottoms, J. (2013), ‘ “Doing Shakespeare”: How Shakespeare Became a School “Subject” ’, Shakespeare Survey 66: 96–109. Bowers, F. (1975), Essays in Bibliography, Text, and Editing, Charlottesville, VA : University Press of Virginia for the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia. Burgess, D. (1952), Dream and Deed: The Story of Katharine Lee Bates, Norman, OK : University of Oklahoma Press.

202

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

Fleay, F. G. (1902), Fleay to Katharine Lee Bates, 14 July. [Letter] Held at: Wellesley, MA : Wellesley College Archives. Katharine Lee Bates Papers, Box 24. Flint, K. (1995), The Woman Reader 1837–1914, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Furness, H. H. (1895), Furness to Katharine Lee Bates, 27 March. [Letter] Held at: Wellesley, MA : Wellesley College Archives. Katharine Lee Bates Papers, Box 24. Glazener, N. (2015), Literature in the Making: A History of U.S. Literary Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hammond, M. (2006), Reading, Publishing and the Formation of Literary Taste in England, 1880–1914, Aldershot: Ashgate. Hill, E. L. (n.d.), Hill to Katharine Lee Bates. [Letter] Held at: Wellesley, MA : Wellesley College Archives. Katharine Lee Bates Papers, Box 24. Jackson, R. (1991), ‘Victorian Editors of As You Like It and the Purposes of Editing’, in I. Small and M. Walsh (eds), The Theory and Practice of Text-Editing, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 142–56. Lee, S. (1913), Lee to Katharine Lee Bates, 5 April. [Letter] Held at: Wellesley, MA : Wellesley College Archives. Katharine Lee Bates Papers, Box 23. Marcus, L. S. (1996), Unediting the Renaissance: Shakespeare, Marlowe, Milton, London and New York: Routledge. Marcus, L. S. (2015), ‘A Man Who Needs No Introduction’, in M. J. Kidnie and S. Massai (eds), Shakespeare and Textual Studies, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 285–99. Murphy, A. (2003), Shakespeare in Print: A History and Chronology of Shakespeare Publishing, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Petersen, S. (1996), ‘ “I Do Know Your Tongue”: The Shakespeare Editions of William Rolfe and H. H. Furness as American Cultural Signifiers’, The Kentucky Review 13 (1): 3–44. Ponder, M. M. (2017), From Sea to Shining Sea: The Story of the Poet of ‘America the Beautiful’, Chicago: Windy City Publishers. Roberts, J. A. (2006), ‘Women Edit Shakespeare’, Shakespeare Survey 59: 136–46. Shakespeare, W. (1860), Shakespeare’s Works. Edited, with a Scrupulous Revision of the Text, by M. Cowden Clarke, M. C. Clarke (ed.), New York: D. Appleton. Shakespeare, W. (1894), Shakespeare’s Comedy of the Merchant of Venice, K. L. Bates (ed.), The Students’ Series of English Classics, Boston and Chicago: Sibley & Ducker. Shakespeare, W. (1895), Shakespeare’s Comedy of A Midsummer-Night’s Dream, K. L. Bates (ed.), The Students’ Series of English Classics, Boston and Chicago: Sibley & Ducker.

KATHARINE LEE BATES’S EDITIONS OF SHAKESPEARE

203

Shakespeare, W. (1896), Shakespeare’s Comedy of As You Like It, K. L. Bates (ed.), The Students’ Series of English Classics, Boston and Chicago: Sibley & Ducker. Shakespeare, W. (1899), Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, C. W. Underwood (ed.), Macmillan’s Pocket Classics, New York: Macmillan. Sicherman, B. (2010), Well-Read Lives: How Books Inspired a Generation of American Women, Chapel Hill, NC : University of North Carolina Press. Solomon, B. M. (1985), In the Company of Educated Women: A History of Women and Higher Education in America, New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press. Stray, C. (2013), ‘Educational Publishing’, in S. Eliot (ed.), The History of Oxford University Press: Volume II , Oxford: Oxford University Press, 472–511. Thompson, A., and S. Roberts (1997), Women Reading Shakespeare, 1600–1900: An Anthology, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Trettien, W. (2018), ‘Media, Materiality, and Time in the History of Reading: The Case of the Little Gidding Harmonies’, PMLA 133 (5): 1135–51. Wallace, C. W. (1910), Wallace to Katharine Lee Bates, 25 July. [Letter] Held at: Wellesley, MA : Wellesley College Archives. Katharine Lee Bates Papers, Box 23. Wallace, H. B. (1917), Wallace to Katharine Lee Bates, 14 April. [Letter] Held at: Wellesley, MA : Wellesley College Archives. Katharine Lee Bates Papers, Box 24.

204

PART III

Marking books: Owners, readers, collectors, annotators

205

206

10 Patterns in women’s book ownership, 1500–1700 Georgianna Ziegler

Let us begin with two ghosts of women past. Sometime in the early 1670s, Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle gave a copy of her newly published Plays to Mary S: ‘Mary [Sl . . . y] Her Book / Giuen by Her Grace / The Duches of / Newcastle.’ This inscription, first written on the back of the frontispiece, was hidden for years behind a thick piece of paper pasted over the page. It was thus invisible to any readers of the book at the Folger Shakespeare Library for seventy years, until it was being prepared for exhibition in 2012. Handwriting was revealed when the extra paper was removed, but it could only be read clearly under ultraviolet light, and even then, Mary’s last name is still obliterated. Nevertheless, the catalogue entry for Plays (1668) could now be updated to include this new information (Wolfe and Ziegler 2012). We know Frances Wolfreston (1607–77) as one of the greatest female book collectors of her time.1 The volumes from her library are scattered over at least twenty-five institutions and private collections today and can usually be identified by her inscription, ‘frances wolfreston hor [or her] bouk’. However, following a preference for ‘clean’ copies of rare books, many dealers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries would ‘wash’ volumes to obliterate ownership marks. Only careful sleuthing today has turned up copies of the 1625 quarto of Hamlet and several other 207

208

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

books where the inscriptions were washed but revealed through new image-processing software. They show that Wolfreston’s library was even larger than originally thought (Lindenbaum 2018b). These ghostly remains of women’s presence are only two examples of the difficulties in identifying women owners of early modern books. While some women, like men, wrote their names on a title page, or later used stamps or bookplates, many women wrote their names on inside pages, in the margin, or at the end of books. Furthermore, many libraries have not noted provenance of any gender when cataloguing their books, and when they did, as at the Folger Library, older cataloguing procedure demanded that every name in a provenance file be traced to some other source, such as a biographical dictionary. Most of these women never appeared in a biographical dictionary or any similar source, and if they did, it would have been under their husband’s name. Thus, they were often ignored. Had the inscription in Plays (1668) been known, Margaret Cavendish would have been recorded, but who was Mary S? Only in recent years, when cataloguing early books, have Folger staff entered women’s names, thus making it possible to search the Folger Copy Notes field in the online catalogue by entering ‘Jane’, ‘Mary’, ‘Frances’, ‘Katherine’, ‘Isabelle’, etc. to discover a trove of lost women owners. What might we learn by excavating the presence of women from early modern objects such as books, and how might that excavation enrich our study of the objects themselves as well as the people who used them? My work falls at the intersection of two current historico-literary endeavours: a re-examination of material objects and their meanings, and an extensive attempt to identify women book owners through inventories, book lists, online catalogues and other resources. In recent years, the subject of material culture has broadened beyond the vision of Igor Kopytoff, who taught us to understand the ‘biography of things’ as ‘the way they are culturally redefined and put to use’ (Kopytoff 1988: 67); in other words, to recognize that people give meaning to things that can have lives of their own. Scholars such as Patricia Fumerton (1999), Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass (2000), and Dinah Eastop (2010), among many others, have expanded this concept by suggesting that we look at reciprocal relationships between objects and subjects to see how they construct and give meaning to each other. Eastop

PATTERNS IN WOMEN’S BOOK OWNERSHIP, 1500–1700

209

defines material culture as ‘the processes by which things and people interact’ (2010: 145). Most of the objects discussed in this chapter were not owned by well-known people, or indeed, by people who are even identifiable beyond their names. Yet the ownership of these books and the ways in which they are marked and used allow the objects to help us learn more about those who owned them. Books, as Natalie Zemon Davis has rightly noted, are the ‘carrier[s] of relationships’ (1975: 192). My work also adds to the creation of a women’s bookscape, explored by Leah Knight and Micheline White in their Introduction to Women’s Bookscapes in Early Modern Britain (2018). Broadening a definition of the term coined by bibliographer and historian James Raven, they define women’s bookscapes as ‘a cultural topography of female reading, ownership, and circulation of books’ in the early modern period (2018: 6). This endeavour continues on a number of fronts and has appeared in publications such as Private Libraries in Renaissance England, articles such as Kitamura Sae’s on women readers of Shakespeare (2017), databases, and blogs such as Early Modern Female Book Ownership. The following overview is based on my searches for women’s names in books dating from the STC and Wing periods (1450– 1700) in the Folger Library’s online catalogue. This process allowed me to build spreadsheets identifying 289 STC period titles inscribed by 346 different women, and 475 Wing period titles inscribed by 494 different women.2 What kinds of information can be gleaned from such a sampling of objects that were part of everyday life? Patricia Fumerton has reminded us that ‘the sense of the everyday is very much caught up in . . . physicality’, and the physical character of these items – their size, binding, condition, markings – tells us a lot about the books themselves and those who used them. Fumerton adds, ‘Everyday life . . . expands to include not only familiar things but also collective meanings, values, representations, and practices’ (1999: 5). What kinds of questions can we ask of these texts that will help us to learn about early modern women and their books?

What were women reading? First of all, we want to know what kinds of books women owned or had access to in their households. Not surprisingly, half of the

210

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

books are religious in nature, ranging from copies of the Bible and various prayer books to sermons, Calvin’s Institutes of Christian Religion and several titles by that best-selling author, Richard Sibbes. As Coolahan and Empey remark, ‘religious or theological items were central to women’s reading’ (2018: 240). Nevertheless, although such books are common, Joseph Black reminds us that women’s devotional collections can usefully reveal historical shifts in ‘religio-political controversy’, both among Protestant sects and between Protestants and Catholics (2018: 225). We have long known that women were a mainstay of the recusant community in England, but the books that they owned and circulated add another layer to the recovery of this group and their continuance into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As John Bossy wrote: ‘On few points in the early history of English Catholicism is there such a unanimous convergence of evidence as on the importance of the part played in it by women, and specifically by wives’ (1976: 153).3 The survival of such books flies in the face of a decree issued upon the confiscation of Catholic books in 1641 and reported in the Journal of the House of Lords. Those that were deemed ‘neither good nor wholly bad – were “to be sold to Noblemen, Gentlemen, and Scholars, but not to Women” ’ (quoted in Smith 2012: 174). Nevertheless, as documented in the Folger Library, women did own books of hours, primers, lives of saints Aloysius Gonzaga, Bonaventure and Teresa of Avila; a copy of The Mirror of Our Lady, Luis de Granada’s On Prayer and Meditation, Ignatius of Loyola’s Manuall of Devout Meditations, Francis de Sales’s Introduction to a Devout Life and John Heigham’s popular Life of our Lord and Saviour. Many of these titles were widespread and not particularly controversial. Unlike Protestant women who owned and were encouraged to read the Bible, Catholic women tended to own devotional manuals, psalters and other books by Catholic writers (Coolahan and Empey 2018: 240–1). In the seventeenth century, Quakers came on the scene, adding substantially to the publication of religious books and pamphlets and to the number of women authors and owners.4 Elizabeth Bathurst’s book, Truth’s Vindication (1683), was owned by Alice Blackmon, while William Penn’s 1673 treatise, Quakerism a new nick-name for old Christianity, was owned by Mary Southworth, who wrote her name on a front flyleaf. She is probably the welleducated Mary Southworth, a poet, who married fellow-Quaker

PATTERNS IN WOMEN’S BOOK OWNERSHIP, 1500–1700

211

Henry Mollineux in 1685. His name is also in the book as owner in 1712, but Mary died in 1696.5 A collection of treatises by Stephen Smith under the title The True Light Discovered (1679) is inscribed ‘Hannah Walker her friends’, suggesting that the book was a gift from her friends – perhaps when she joined the Society of Friends, or Quakers? Another large category of books owned by women comprises what we would consider ‘literature’: titles by authors such as Boccaccio, Cervantes, Chaucer, Donne, Herbert, Jonson, Lyly, Shakespeare, Sidney, Spenser and Wroth. Of these, Shakespeare and Sidney were by far the most popular among women owners. While some of that skewing is due to the exceptionally large collection of both authors in the Folger Library, the evidence is nevertheless plainly there. Ten copies of the First Folio, four of the Second, two copies of Shakespeare’s Poems and a copy of Hamlet were owned by women, in addition to twelve copies of Philip Sidney’s Arcadia. In the later seventeenth century, we can add three copies of the Third and six copies of the Fourth Folio, plus copies of Julius Caesar and Othello. Indeed, the century sees an upswing in plays owned by women, including works by eleven dramatists other than Shakespeare.6 In addition, women owned poetry by Cowley, Herrick, Milton and Waller; Anna Weamys’s continuation of Sidney’s Arcadia (1651); Maria Mancini’s rather scandalous Memoirs (1679); a historical romance, The Princess Cloria (1665), and a take-off on Cervantes, The Mock Clelia [or] Madam Quixote (1678).7 Such physical evidence counters more than a century’s worth of advice to women against reading ‘bookes of Poetrye, nor suche tryfelynge bookes’, as is suggested in the English translation of Juan Luis Vives’s The Office and Duetie of an Husbande (Vives 1555?: [Pviiiv]). In De Institutione Foeminae Christianae, which appeared in English c. 1529 as The Instruction of a Christen Woman, Vives inveighed specifically against women reading ‘ungracious bokes’ such as the romances of Amadis, Lancelot and King Arthur, as well as the works of Ovid (2002: 25–7). Nevertheless, by the later sixteenth century, the tide was turning and women read all sorts of imaginative literature. Beyond religious books and works of literature, women owned chronicles and histories by Hall, Holinshed, Plutarch and Selden, and biographies of Marguerite de Valois and Sir Thomas More. This evidence supports the observation by D. R. Woolf that ‘women

212

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

were very much interested in the past and contributed . . . to . . . the “social circulation” of historical knowledge by reading’, discussing history and writing privately about it (1997: 647). Less surprising is women’s ownership of herbals and household books by Gerard, Parkinson, Partridge, Turner and Peacham – the latter a copy of The Compleat Gentleman. And of course they also owned Elizabeth Jocelin’s A Mother’s Legacie and Vives’s Instruction of a Christen Woman.8 Later books include Worlidge’s System of Horticulture (1688) and Sir Kenelm Digby’s Closet cookery book, printed in 1669 by Ellen Cotes and owned by Elizabeth Blount. These fall in with Richard Brathwaite’s recommendation in his conduct book, The English Gentlewoman, that a woman should read books ‘vsefull for direction of her houshold affaires’ (1631: Ggr), including herbals.

Doodlers, inscribers, collectors In addition to identifying what kinds of books women owned, this overview allows us to uncover multiple ways in which women interacted with books. By looking at where and how they wrote their names, we can determine what I call intentional versus accidental ownership of these objects. In their Introduction to the collection Everyday Objects, Hamling and Richardson write that ‘objects may well be hidden from the historical record in cases where they were not self-consciously considered by those who produced or consumed them’ (2010: 7). There is no doubt that the writing of some women’s names is little more than doodling, while others make a conscious claim to ownership by adding ‘her book’, and still others add their own verses or comments. Fortunately for us, the cataloguers who worked on these books generally noted the doodlers as well as the inscribers, thus allowing us to identify a broader range of early modern women who interacted with books. In addition, we sometimes see a layering of ownership over generations: corporate ownership in families, giftgiving and a few actual collectors. The collectors include Frances Wolfreston, who owned eleven Folger books; Frances Digby, Viscountess Scudamore, who owned four; and at least four women who owned two or more each: Ann Carter, Isabel Smith, Anna Moreton and Joyce Breedan.

PATTERNS IN WOMEN’S BOOK OWNERSHIP, 1500–1700

213

As we have seen, Frances Wolfreston is well-known as an early collector of more than 200 volumes. Frances Digby, Viscountess Scudamore (1685–1729), was the patron of Alexander Pope, among other writers, whom she entertained at her estate Holme Lacy (Atherton 2011). The early books at the Folger with her bookplate are not literary, however, but copies of Coke’s law reports, and William Gilbert’s book on magnetism. But the other four women – Ann Carter, Isabel Smith, Anna Moreton and Joyce Breedan – are unknown: they represent the ‘middling sort’ who are often lost to history, like most of the other women in my spreadsheets.9 How can books owned by such women help us recover a sense of middle-class reading life in the past? Ann Carter owned two Protestant treatises: Samuel Crook’s The Guide Unto True Blessedness (1625), and John Hull’s Lectures Upon the Lamentations of Jeremiah (1620). The first she signed ‘Ann Carter her booke’, but it was also owned by Margaret Fulford and two men from the Jarvis family; such multiple ownership would be expected in a catechism. The second she presented to William Moth on 26 December 1692. Moth wrote about this presentation inside the front cover, and Martha Moth signed and dated her name on the title page, 1729. Perhaps Ann Carter was an older relative or family friend who gave William the book as a Christmas or New Year’s gift; other scribbled verses in the book suggest that William was a boy at the time he received it. Isabel (or Isabella) Smith owned copies of two Catholic books, Richard Smith’s Treatise of the Sacrament of Confirmation (Douay, 1629), and the Office of the Blessed Virgin, published in 1616 by the exiled English Catholic press in St Omer. In the first, she has inscribed her name on the front flyleaf with a simple request asking us to ‘Pray for’ [something]; the rest of the inscription is difficult to read. In the Office of the Virgin, Isabel and a second woman, Mary Walton, have both inscribed their names with ‘her book’. This volume shows signs of hard use, and Isabel’s inscription is hidden under Mary’s on the verso of the title page. The book is a duodecimo, small enough to be carried in a pocket, and someone has added prayers in a clear hand that is different from the others, while a child has practiced printing ‘IANUARIE’ on the first page of the church calendar. This is a prayer book that was used often, added to and passed from owner to owner. Like a small cross or religious medal showing the wear of frequent handling, the book has become a relic of Catholic worship where the object’s sacredness has passed

214

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

to its owners, and their identity to the object, through their reception of its text and handling of its pages. Anna Moreton is of interest to us as the owner of a secular as well as a religious book. We know that such a mixture of genres is not uncommon among women such as Frances Wolfreston, Frances Egerton and Lady Anne Clifford, who had large libraries, but it is revealing to see it in someone presumably from the middle classes, who is not well-known. Anna owned a copy of Calvin’s Commentarie on . . . Hebrewes (1605), but she also had a copy of the Latin translation of Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde (1635). Perhaps the latter belonged first to her brother or husband, as Richard Moreton’s name appears in the book, but Anna wrote hers on the verso of the title page. Was she also learning Latin?10 In the case of Joyce Breedan, her ‘library’ was a collection of fifteen Quaker pamphlets bound together, dating from 1667 to 1674. She wrote her name and the date 1688 in the back of the book. The pamphlets include several by George Fox and William Penn, but others are more obscure. The book shows hard use, its front cover and first leaves almost detached; perhaps Joyce circulated it among a group of Friends. While the multiple titles owned by these women suggest interest in books of similar religious persuasion – Protestant, Catholic, Quaker – there is at least one example of an eclectic reader, Anna Moreton. As with many books in this survey, these are relics bearing the signs of familial and communal ties in their multiple ownerships, passed from hand-to-hand as gifts, circulated among friends and family members from children to adults, and between husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, parents and children. The signs left behind – signatures, scribblings, torn leaves, decorative or worn bindings – are markers left for us to ‘read’, for they speak silently of the early modern people who used these books, not the great and well-known but those who might have been lost to history were it not for the books they collected and marked.

Women’s signatures and what they tell us An interesting case study can be seen in another collection of thirtyfive Quaker tracts by Margaret Fell, James Naylor and William

PATTERNS IN WOMEN’S BOOK OWNERSHIP, 1500–1700

215

Dewsbury, among others, which were bound together into a small portable library with a handwritten list of contents in the front. The flyleaf contains an inscription ‘Jane Waite her booke’ followed by another stating: ‘Given to Ann Marshall xbr ye 6th 1695 / This intended for Anna Allenson / If shee survive me Anne Marshall’ (see Figure 10.1). A recent scholar discussing books owned by the medieval Paston family writes that ‘the participation in a culture where texts are loaned, gifted or read in shared communal practices allows the subject to accrue what one might term a socio-dialect’ (Perry 2010: 312). The socio-dialect of this book involves a community of Quaker women who were likely attached to the Women’s Meeting of York. An Anna Allenson is listed as part of this group in 1686, along with Mary Waite, a Quaker evangelist and writer. Mary was the wife of Thomas Waite, Quaker bookseller in York, to whom Jane Waite may have been related (Enright 1996). A Jane Waite loaned York Meeting £50 in 1696 for ‘the freehold of the Meeting House premises’ (Allott 1978: 20). It is possible that many of the pamphlets were acquired from Thomas Waite’s shop. Records show an Anne Marshall from Furness in Lancashire, which, like York, was a major seedbed of Quakerism. Both Quaker men and women travelled widely, and from the 1650s began meeting together in the north of England before finally establishing a yearly meeting in London in 1668. It is highly possible that Jane Waite, Anne Marshall and Anna Allenson knew each other through this community. The practice of creating a codex by binding together

FIGURE 10.1 John Whitehouse, The doctrine of perfection vindicated (1663). Item 1 in STC 265587. Front endleaf 1v/ 2r, detail. Used by permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library.

216

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

carefully chosen texts is what Whitney Trettien describes as treating ‘books as containers to hold and store the fragmented remnants of an intensive reading process’. The choosing and sharing help define this community of women (Trettien 2018: 1149). The placement of women’s signatures can also provide important information about the ways in which they engaged with books. In the same copy of John Heigham’s Catholic Life of Our Saviour (1634), for example, Mary Burditt wrote her name on the inside front cover across from the title page, Alice Wright inscribed her name and the date ‘July 24, 1786’ on a back pastedown, but Anne Guldeford wrote her name boldly and clearly in a late seventeenth-century hand across from the dedication to the Reverend Mother Clara Mariana, Abbess of the English Poor Clares in France. We expect signatures inside the front and back covers, but Anne Guldeford’s placement carries more significance, as though she wanted to be associated with the Reverend Mother. Similarly, although Dorothy Wylde wrote her name several times in a 1593 edition of Sidney’s Arcadia, her most careful inscription ‘Dorothy Wyld her booke / 1645’ appears just across from Sidney’s dedication ‘To My Deare Lady and Sister, The Countesse of Pembroke’. The dedication to Mary Sidney Herbert appears to have held special significance for women: in the 1605 edition of the Arcadia, Elizabeth Compton wrote her name on the top right corner of the same dedicatory page, while in the 1628 edition, we find ‘Elizabeth Whitfeild her Booke 1651’ appearing again across from the dedication. Perhaps the most elaborate claim of ownership is in Mary Joyner’s 1633 copy of the Arcadia, where she has carefully written her name to form part of the decorative title-page frame.11 The significance of women’s markings in Sidney’s Arcadia has been well studied by Heidi Brayman, but these examples do point to the importance of signature placement as one marker of meaning for early modern readers (Brayman 2005: 137–95).

Books as gifts The custom of handing down books as gifts, such as those recorded in the collection of Quaker tracts mentioned above, suggests a lineage of readers among friends, and especially families. Frances

PATTERNS IN WOMEN’S BOOK OWNERSHIP, 1500–1700

217

Wolfreston recorded on her copy of a 1550 Chaucer that she received it from her mother-in-law, Mary Wolfreston (Wiggins 2008: 29). Both Ann Bacon of Northamptonshire and Rachel Leighton received Bibles from their fathers, while Anne Dalton’s mother gave her a copy of Bayly’s Practice of Piety (1640), which was later owned by two other women, Charlotte Bale and Mary Ann Footman. But perhaps no book speaks more eloquently to Natalie Zemon Davis’s comment that books are the ‘carrier[s] of relationships’ than a copy of John Barclay’s political novel, Argenis. The 1625 English edition was owned by ‘Mary Bisshope’, who inscribed her name and date on the title page, ‘March ye 16th 1691’, with ‘Christ[ian] Bisshopp’ above. At the very bottom of that page beneath the imprint, one of her female descendants added: ‘Harriet Anne Bisshopp writes her name in this Book June 18th 1798, 107 yrs after C. & M. Bisshope. May the preceeding generations of this Name, meet in a blessed Eternity!’ (see Figure 10.2).

FIGURE 10.2 John Barclay, Barclay His Argenis (1625). STC 1392 copy 3. Leaf A2r, detail. Used by permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library.

218

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

Women as annotators Women embrace books most fully when they, like Harriet Bisshopp, add their own notes or comments. These may respond directly in some way to the text, or they may be additions that simply mark the book as a repository for special remembrances. About the time they were married in 1551, Mary Dudley and Henry Sidney used a copy of Hall’s Union of the Two Noble Houses of Lancaster and York (1548) to celebrate their own union, each writing verses on blank pages. More than 100 years later, Rose Meeks wrote her name and a verse towards the end of Shakespeare’s Poems (1640), next to William Strode’s poem ‘A Blush’, one of the non-Shakespearian verses included in the collection. She wrote ‘Rose Meeks hir Boo[k]’, then responding to the ending of Strode’s poem, which asks that the woman’s blushes ‘Fly . . . backe into her face’ and change ‘White Lylly, to a Rose’, Rose counters Strode’s line with a couplet from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 35: ‘Rosies have thorns and silver fontans mud an Lothsom cancers ly in sweetes bud.’ Next to the poem, she also adds the name ‘Robert Reed’ – perhaps her secret love? Is the reader named Rose objecting to Strode’s implication of sexual arousal in a woman, or is she angry at her own lover, who may have seemed sweet but turned out to betray her? Multiple possibilities lie in her scribbled notes.12 A more direct literary opinion appears in a compilation of plays, including Nathaniel Lee’s Sophonisba (1660): ‘This is my Beloveed Play Ann Boner.’ Elizabeth Boggis is a final example of a woman adding her own notes to a book. In 1787 she purchased a 200-year-old copy of the Geneva Bible that in the seventeenth century was in the Newby family. She wrote in the front: ‘Elizth. Boggis, bought by her on 22 April 1787, being the day preceding this His Majesty Geo. returned publick thanks at St Paul’s to God for his recovery from the [heavy?] malady of insanity.’ In addition to noting the recovery of King George III, she also appears to have been the person who wrote meticulous notes about which ministers she or a member of her family heard preach on certain passages on specific dates.13 These kinds of inscriptions record the responses of an individual woman to a national event, and also register the importance of the church in her life. Rose Meeks and Elizabeth Boggis were not important persons like Mary Dudley and Henry Sidney, but they are middle-class women brought to life through the books that they owned and annotated.

PATTERNS IN WOMEN’S BOOK OWNERSHIP, 1500–1700

219

Other kinds of annotations signal more complex relationships between readers and texts. Lady Anne Clifford owned a copy of the 1631 edition of John Selden’s Titles of Honor. She wrote on the title page: ‘I beegan, to ourloke this Booke the 18 of Febuarary and I did make an ende of rading, or over Loking itt all over the first of Marche folloinge 1638.’ I have written about this book elsewhere, noting that Lady Anne was what we would call a multi-tasker: she frequently had one of her secretaries read to her while she was doing something else. This book is full of underlinings and marginal marks, probably made by her secretaries, but obviously at her command. By ‘over looking’ I think she meant that she went back over the book, perhaps as the chapters were read, and made sure the passages were marked as she wanted them to be. She added a few notes herself, and there are a number of original paper bookmarks stuck inside its pages (Ziegler 2019). Some readers were also authors, which led them to an especially intense engagement with the text. One example is the 1668 edition of Plays by Margaret Cavendish with the hidden inscription, mentioned at the beginning of this essay. Detailed observation shows that there are seventeen places where Cavendish had carefully corrected the printed text before giving it to ‘Mary S’; these range from the correction of printer’s errors to the addition of paper slips indicating which portions were written by her husband (Wolfe and Ziegler 2012). Another writer, Eleanor Davies, Lady Douglas, made many corrections in copies of her prophetic pamphlets published in the 1640s and 1650s. These annotated pamphlets were collected and bound together by her daughter, Lucy Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon.

Bringing owners alive Aside from such well-known women as Clifford and Douglas, there are hundreds of others whose identities are revealed in the marks they left in their books. Sometimes their signatures seem merely to be claiming a place among members of a household who interact through a book. At other times their naming is emphatic and purposeful, as in the signatures carefully placed in Sidney’s Arcadia and Heigham’s Life of our Saviour; while in still other instances, women add notes or verses to their names, acknowledging a gift, writing a memorial, or inscribing popular verses of the sort also written in books by men or

220

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

on samplers by other women: ‘Mary Smith is my name and England is my nation . . .’; ‘Mistris Edwrds Is my name With hande and p[e]n wite the same’; ‘Ann Ashfold har boock god give har grace their in to look . . . ’.14 Such women come alive if we try to read the stories beyond the text in the physical remains of books that are touched, inscribed and shared by so many women and their families. There is something personal about books that have been well-handled. When we look at them as objects, they convey a sense of intimacy about their owners, no matter what their social class. As Trettien has remarked, ‘when objects produced at one time are manipulated by readers at another, they become more than that: they become small-scale cultural interventions, more akin . . . to media technologies.’ They have lives of their own that accrue over time, creating ‘a narrative that . . . pleats the past, present, and future’ (Trettien 2018: 1137, 1138).

Notes 1

On women collectors, see the essays of Elizabeth Kolkovich and Lori Humphrey Newcomb in this volume, and Empey 2019 on Bridget Bennet. See also Lindenbaum 2018a and b.

2

Both searches offer large samplings, but more could be added.

3

See also Rowlands 1985: 149–80; P. Crawford 1993: 58–65; and J. Crawford 2014: 94.

4

‘Pamphleteering was, first and foremost, an activity in which women participated, as authors, messengers and distributors’ (Peters 2005: 129). On the preparation of tracts and distribution among wide Quaker networks, see ibid., 43–72.

5

See Mortimer 1973: 125–47.

6

The playwrights are Dryden, Ford, Jonson, Lee, Lower, Otway, Payne, Stirling, Tate, Vanbrugh and Waller.

7

On women as owners of romances, see Eckerle 2013: 44ff.

8

However, out of six copies of Vives at the Folger, only one shows ownership by women.

9

Coolahan and Empey divide their ‘thirty-seven female bookowners’ into three classes: the aristocracy, the gentry and the ‘middling sort’ (2018: 231–2).

10 See Allison Wiggins’ comments on this volume and others owned jointly by men and women in Wiggins 2008: 30, 31.

PATTERNS IN WOMEN’S BOOK OWNERSHIP, 1500–1700

221

11 For a reproduction of the Arcadia title page, see Figure 9.1; for the significance of this inscription and the Countess of Pembroke’s contributions to the romance, see Sarah Wall-Randell’s essay in this volume. 12 For more on this inscription, see Roberts 2003: 169. 13 For a detailed discussion of Folger STC 2129 copy 1 belonging to Elizabeth Boggis, see Stallybrass 2002: 51–60. The note by Elizabeth is hidden under an endpaper pasted down inside the binding. 14 A sampler at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge by Phoebe Bunn includes an inscription: ‘PHEBE BVNN IS MY NAME/AND WITH MY NEEDLE I W/RATT THIS SAME 1658.’

References Allott, S. (1978), Friends in York: The Quaker Story in the Life of a Meeting. York, England: William Sessions Limited. Atherton, I. (2011), ‘Scudamore Family’, ODNB. Black, J. L. (2018), ‘Women’s Libraries in the Private Libraries in Renaissance England Project’, in L. Knight, M. White and E. Sauer (eds), Women’s Bookscapes in Early Modern England, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 214–30. Bossy, J. (1976), The English Catholic Community 1570–1850, New York: Oxford University Press. Brathwaite, R. (1631), The English Gentlewoman, London: B. Alsop and T. Fawcet for Michaell Sparke. Brayman Hackel, H. (2005), Reading Material in Early Modern England, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Coolahan, M-L. and M. Empey (2018), ‘Women’s Book Ownership and the Reception of Early Modern Women’s Texts, 1545–1700’, in L. Knight, M. White and E. Sauer (eds), Women’s Bookscapes in Early Modern England, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 231–52. Crawford, J. (2014), Mediatrix: Women, Politics, & Literary Production in Early Modern England, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Crawford, P. (1993), Women and Religion in England 1500–1720, London and New York: Routledge. Davis, N. Z. (1975), Society and Culture in Early Modern France, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 189–226. Early Modern Female Book Ownership (2018–). Available online: https:// earlymodernfemalebookownership.wordpress.com (accessed 16 May 2019).

222

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

Eastop, D. (2010), ‘The Conservation of Garments Concealed within Buildings as Material Culture in Action’, in T. Hamling and C. Richardson (eds), Everyday Objects: Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture and Its Meanings, Farnham, Surrey and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 145–56. Eckerle, J. (2013), Romancing the Self in Early Modern Englishwomen’s Life Writing, Farnham, Surrey and Burlington, VT: Ashgate. Empey, M. (2019), ‘Bennet [née Howe], Bridget (fl. 1668–1699), ODNB. Available online: https://doi-org.ezproxy.amherst.edu/10.1093/ odnb/9780198614128.013.112780 (accessed 18 September 2019). Enright, A. (1996), ‘Introduction to A Testimony for Truth against all Hireling-Priests . . . 1655; A Warning to all Friends who Professeth the Everlasting Truth . . .’, Emory Women Writers Resource Project. Available online: http://womenwriters.digitalscholarship.emory.edu/ essay.php?level=div&id=quaker_000 (accessed 16 May 2019). Fumerton, P. (1999), Renaissance Culture and the Everyday, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Hamling, T. and C. Richardson, eds. (2010), Everyday Objects: Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture and Its Meanings, Farnham, Surrey and Burlington, VT: Ashgate. Jones, A. R. and P. Stallybrass (2000), Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Knight, L., M. White and E. Sauer (eds) (2018), Women’s Bookscapes in Early Modern Britain, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Kopytoff, I. (1988), ‘The Cultural Biography of Things’, in A. Appadurai (ed.), The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 64–92. Lindenbaum, S. (2018a), ‘Hiding in Plain Sight: How Electronic Records Can Lead Us to Early Modern Women Readers’, in L. Knight, M. White and E. Sauer (eds), Women’s Bookscapes in Early Modern England, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 193–213. Lindenbaum, S. (2018b), ‘Written in the Margent: Frances Wolfreston Revealed’, The Collation, 21 June. Available online: https://collation. folger.edu/2018/06/frances-wolfreston-revealed (accessed 16 May 2019). Mortimer, J. E. (1973), ‘An early Quaker Poet: Mary (Southworth) Mollineux’, Journal of the Friends Historical Society, 53 (2): 125–47. Perry, R. (2010), ‘Objectification, Identity and the Late Medieval Codex’, in T. Hamling and C. Richardson (eds), Everyday Objects: Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture and Its Meanings, Farnham, Surrey and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 309–20. Peters, K. (2005), Print Culture and the Early Quakers, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.

PATTERNS IN WOMEN’S BOOK OWNERSHIP, 1500–1700

223

Private Libraries in Renaissance England (1992–). Available online: https://plre.folger.edu, and http://wmpeople.wm.edu/site/page/rjfehr/ home (accessed 16 May 2019). Roberts, S. (2003), Reading Shakespeare’s Poems in Early Modern England, Houndmills, Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Rowlands, M. B. (1985), ‘Recusant women 1560–1640’, in M. Prior (ed.), Women in English Society 1500–1800, London and New York: Methuen, 149–80. Sae, K. (2017), ‘A Shakespeare of One’s Own: Female Users of Playbooks from the Seventeenth to the Mid-eighteenth Century’, Palgrave Communications 3, Article number: 17021. Smith, H. (2012), ‘Grossly Material Things’: Women and Book Production in Early Modern England, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stallybrass, P. (2002), ‘Books and Scrolls: Navigating the Bible’, in J. Andersen and E. Sauer (eds), Books and Readers in Early Modern England: Material Studies, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 51–60. Trettien, W. (2018), ‘Media, Materiality, and Time in the History of Reading: The Case of the Little Gidding Harmonies’, PMLA 133 (5): 1135–51. Vives, J. L. (1555?), The Office and Duetie of an Husband, Thomas Paynell (trans.), London: John Cawood. Vives, J. L. ([1529?] 2002), The Instruction of a Christen Woman, R. Hyrde (trans.), V. Beauchamp, E. H. Hageman and M. Mikesell (eds), Urbana and Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press. Wiggins, A. (2008), ‘What Did Renaissance Readers Write in their Printed Copies of Chaucer?’ The Library 9 (1): 3–36. Wing, D. G. (comp.) (1982–98), Short-title Catalogue of Books printed in England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and British America . . . 1641–1700, 2nd ed. rev., New York: Index Committee of the Modern Language Association of America. Wolfe, H. and G. Ziegler (2012), ‘A newly uncovered presentation copy by Margaret Cavendish’, The Collation, 6 January. Available online: https://collation.folger.edu/2012/01/a-newly-uncovered-presentationcopy-by-margaret-cavendish (accessed 16 May 2019). Woolf, D. R. (1997), ‘A Feminine Past? Gender, Genre, and Historical Knowledge in England, 1500–1800’, The American Historical Review 102 (3): 645–79. Ziegler, G. (2019), ‘Lady Anne Clifford Reads John Selden’, in K. Acheson (ed.), Early Modern English Marginalia, London and New York: Routledge, 134–54.

224

11 Reader, maker, mentor: The Countess of Huntingdon and her networks Elizabeth Zeman Kolkovich

Despite excellent work on women’s engagement with books in the past twenty years, the history of reading in early modern England still primarily focuses on men.1 To gain a broader view of book use in the period, we need to recover more examples of female readers. Elizabeth Stanley Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon (1588–1633), was a bookish woman who loved intellectual discussion and actively shaped local literary culture. Although we have found no ownership marks, marginalia or catalogue to help us identify her books and habits, her family archive reveals evidence of her reading in her five devotional manuscripts, her many letters, her husband’s household inventory, and the printed dedications and manuscript poetry that male authors wrote about her. Like Margaret Hoby (Lamb 1999: 63–94; Crawford 2014: 86–120), Hastings was an engaged reader. She did not passively accept the ideas in her devotional reading; instead, she interpreted and revised these texts. Her reading was eclectic, pragmatic, discerning and transformative, and she imagined it as a shared experience rather than a purely solitary practice. This chapter uncovers Hastings’s making and reading of books using a broad range of evidence, and it demonstrates how women’s reading fostered religious and social communities. 225

226

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

Hastings as an author and ‘maker’ of books For Elizabeth Hastings, reading and writing went hand in hand, as her five surviving manuscript miscellanies reveal.2 To make these miscellanies, Hastings compiled fragments of existing manuscripts and printed books together with her own commentaries. Juliet Fleming has argued that early modern men and women cut texts as they read, either with scissors or (as with Hastings) ‘with eyes and mind’, to forge unexpected connections and make something new (2015: 454). One of Hastings’s manuscripts is a collection of prayers and sermon notes written in her hand that is now held at the Huntington Library. Its occasional blank leaves, different inks and scripts, additions crammed in the top margin or scribbled sideways, and lack of a title or organizational method suggest that Hastings compiled it over a period of time without expecting a broader audience. She cited several sermons that were ‘takne imperfectly owt of my Table bookes’ – small, portable books in which she must have been writing regularly.3 Hastings dated her entries between 1621 and 1631 and transcribed passages from books printed in the early 1630s. These dates indicate that she made this prayer book in the last decade of her life; her funeral sermon claims that she read and wrote ‘till within very few dayes before her death’ (F. 1635: F3r). The other four manuscripts, also at the Huntington Library, are presentation copies of a work titled Certaine Collections of the Right Honorable Elizabeth Late Countesse of Huntingdon for Her Owne Private Use (Hastings 1633a,b,c,d). All four include the same contents written by the same scribal hand in slightly different arrangements, and all four are the same size with the same binding. They gather biblical verses, passages from printed sermons and excerpts from other religious texts. Although their contents do not significantly duplicate the entries in Hastings’s personal prayer book, they address similar topics: sin, God’s mercy and the transformative effect of prayer. Their title is misleading because they were not only ‘her owne private’ books: they were made collaboratively for a community of readers. They are not in Hastings’s hand; someone must have transcribed them from an original that no longer survives.4 Evidence indicates that the scribe did so posthumously. The books’ title identifies them as the work of the ‘late’ Countess; one is dated

THE COUNTESS OF HUNTINGDON AND HER NETWORKS 227

the year of her death, and another has her portrait pasted onto the flyleaves to mark the volume’s commemorative function.5 These books seem to have circulated within the family. One became part of the Bridgewater Library, which in 1633 was still the family library of Hastings’s brother-in-law John and sister Frances; this copy may have been given to Frances or one of their children (Hastings 1633a). A second was probably given to Hastings’s daughter-in-law, Lucy, and eventually belonged to her granddaughter-in-law, Elizabeth (1633c). The other two copies remained in the Hastings family archives and perhaps belonged to Hastings’s husband or children (1633b,d). As Hastings mentally cut apart texts authored by others, she also wrote back to them. The four presentation manuscripts include passages that appear to be Hastings’s original commentaries on the misery of man, the church, repentance, fasting, affliction and death. Her meditations advocate submission to God through prayer and fasting, speak of God’s elect, and argue that humans must repent to achieve salvation. In the margins, she cites biblical verses to support her claims. She does not use first-person pronouns, which is unusual for this kind of contemplative writing. Instead, in urging ‘us’ to ‘examine o[u]r selves’, Hastings writes from the perspective of a group of devout followers (1633b: 27r).6 She imagines a community that is not explicitly gendered but seems sympathetic to a woman’s perspective. For example, Hastings does not interpret the story of Original Sin as demonstrating the weakness of women through Eve, as did some early modern commentators. She focuses instead on ‘Adam’s transgression’, explaining that ‘for Adams sinne wee sinned all, hee falne, all mankind fell in him’ (1633b: 14v). It is possible that Hastings took these passages from sermon notes in her table books without attribution, but the miscellanies present them to future readers as her own. They construct Hastings’s voice as a guiding force in ordering a religious community. Besides compiling her devotional books, Hastings read and wrote letters. Her family papers include about twenty letters written to her – all including information about finances or petitions for her help – that reveal her role in managing her household’s fiscal concerns and underscore her influential position in her correspondence network. Forty-six letters survive that she wrote to her husband, other family members, and the men who helped her with legal and

228

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

financial matters. In her correspondence, Hastings fretted about the quality of her writing and expressed concern for her readers. She apologized multiple times for sending ‘nothing worthe your reading’ and once begged her husband in a postscript to ‘burne all my letters, for I am ashamed of the badnes of them, being so wyldly wryttne; yett if you can reade them, and belive what they reporte, which is no more then I will ever approve, itt is as much as I desyer’ (Hastings n.d.b, e). This letter survives because her husband instead kept her letters: he is probably responsible for preserving and disseminating her religious miscellanies as well. Hastings’s husband did not share her negative evaluation of her letters, which are neither bad nor scandalous in their style and content. The ‘wyldly wryttne’ letter simply assures her husband that their child is well, expresses sorrow for a recent death and sends her ‘true affection’ (Hastings n.d.b). Humble qualifications were conventional among letter-writers, especially women, and Hastings may have anticipated shrewd readers because she was one herself.

Hastings as a discerning, erudite reader In her five miscellanies, Hastings represented herself as a pious, learned reader as she engaged with some of the best-known religious writers of her time. Besides the King James Bible, she cited wildly popular books by Lewis Bayly (The Practise of Pietie, 1612) and Henry Smith (Sixe Sermons, 1615), along with printed sermons and devotional guides by the moderate Calvinist Joseph Hall, the influential puritan William Perkins and the lesser-known nonconformist minister Arthur Hildersham.7 She selected passages from Sins Overthrow (1633) by John Preston, another moderate Calvinist who has been called a ‘conforming reformer’ (Moore 2007: 23), and Lancelot Andrewes’s XCVI Sermons (1629). Andrewes’s theological views developed from Calvinist to anti-Calvinist, and Hastings cited sermons from his later period, when he espoused a Laudian perspective (McCullough 2008). These ministers did not agree with one another on all theological matters, nor did Hastings necessarily share all of their views. Instead, she used fragments of their texts that resonated with her. Literate women often owned and read devotional books, but the eclecticism of Hastings’s religious reading is notable.8 It is difficult

THE COUNTESS OF HUNTINGDON AND HER NETWORKS 229

to pin down her religious identity using conventional labels. In their inclusive approach to multiple Protestant beliefs, Hastings’s manuscripts resemble the cut-and-paste devotional books of women in the Little Gidding community, which Whitney Trettien identifies as enabling ‘a more capacious Christian communalism’ along with ‘reading strategies in which a variety of opinions and approaches does not weaken but strengthens the collective’ (2018: 1136, 1143). Some of Hastings’s selections might have been inspired by style rather than theology. Andrewes, for example, was known for his eloquent preaching and commitment to scholarship.9 Most of the ministers Hastings cites were also in her local network. Joseph Hall was born nearby and attended the local grammar school (McCabe 2008), Lancelot Andrewes served as chaplain to the previous Earl of Huntingdon, and Hastings and her husband patronized Arthur Hildersham, whom she cites at great length (Spinks 2004). Through her miscellanies, Hastings participated in an open-ended dialogue with popular and local ministers about the Church of England’s relative conformity. Her reading was as much an intellectual exercise as a spiritual one. Hastings engaged with the material she read, interpreting and adapting passages to suit her purposes. In addition to transcribing some passages and paraphrasing others, she sometimes restructured texts (Burke 2012: 57). She used quotes by Hall to resist untoward ambition: ‘It is noe shame not to know all things, but a just shame to over reach in any thinge’ and ‘I will not hope without feare least I should deceive my selfe with too much confidence’ (1633b: 26r). When citing from Hildersham’s Doctrine, she transformed his question-answer format into prose passages with topic headings to make his text match her book’s style, producing a more pragmatic, less pedantic version.10 When quoting Lewis Bayly on how to consider one’s unworthiness, she repeated most of his instructions but excluded his description of self-flagellation: ‘smiting thy breast with thy fists, and bedewing thy cheekes with thy teares’ (Bayly 1613: Hh11r–v).11 Instead of using Bayly’s recommended prayer about human wickedness and shame, Hastings ended her passage by emphasizing redemption and healing (1633b: 7r). Hastings did not simply take in others’ ideas; she transformed them into books that supported her own and others’ devotional study. This reading method was advocated and modelled by the texts themselves, which guided their readers through a studious devotional practice. In a section on how

230

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

to read the Bible, Bayly recommends reading a chapter and meditating on how its teachings facilitate a holy life. Hastings did exactly that. Inspired by ministers who advocated preparation and knowledge, she embraced the role of erudite reader.12 Because Hastings’s miscellanies represent her as following God and the advice of male ministers, they affirm her authority in reading and writing without challenging conventional ideals. My analysis expands on Victoria E. Burke’s argument that Hastings paradoxically found her voice by ‘minimizing her own agency’ (2012: 48). I would add that Hastings’s use of her books encourages us to deconstruct binaries about early modern reading. Hastings was both pious and intellectually engaged, obedient and independent-minded. Early modern conduct books frequently described women readers as vulnerable and passive while recommending pious texts for women’s consumption. Richard Brathwaite’s English Gentlewoman warned female readers against ‘Books treating of light subjects’, which are ‘Nursuries of wantonesse’ because ‘they instruct the loose Reader to become naught’; he instead advocated ‘bookes of instruction’ that help prevent temptation (1631: T2r, A5r). Hastings indeed read instructional guides to godly worship. She showed deep familiarity with the King James Bible, quoting some verses verbatim and others with minor changes that suggest she may have written them from memory. Her miscellanies represent this kind of reading as necessary for serving God. One of her prayers asks forgiveness for ‘my negligence in reading, & my want of retention when I have heard thy word reade or preached’ (1633b: 4r). Hastings’s manuscripts reveal that her reading practice was, by our current standards, far from negligent. As Hastings positions herself as a religious tutor in these manuscripts, she does not gender her audience. Most of the books she cites address a male readership in their preliminaries or main text. The exception is Hildersham’s Doctrine, appended to William Bradshaw’s A Direction for the Weaker Sort of Christians, an instructional text about preparing for communion, which Bradshaw wrote for and dedicated to Lady Grace Darcy. As its first reader, Darcy had already given the text ‘some entertainment’ in her ‘closet’, and Bradshaw explains that her ‘favourable acceptance of [his notes] in private, hath made them thus bold to come foorth in publike’ (1609: A2v). Bradshaw advises Lady Darcy concerning her reading of his and Hildersham’s texts:

THE COUNTESS OF HUNTINGDON AND HER NETWORKS 231

I shall not need to admonish you of the use of either of these Treatises: Themselves, how little soever, are in that point able to speak for themselves. Onely take heed (good Madam) lest in their withdrawing of you from the damnable sinne of profaning this holie Sacrament, you be not by misconstruction brought unto the wicked and superstitious adoration thereof. 1609: A2v, A3r As he worries that Darcy might learn to revere the sacrament too deeply, as a ‘wicked and superstitious’ Catholic might do, Bradshaw casts himself as the wise tutor and his dedicatee as the childlike student for whom reading might be dangerous. Elite women are the ‘weaker sort of Christians’, and Bradshaw is the guide they need. The title given to Hastings’s miscellanies (‘for her owne private use’) might encourage us to imagine her, too, as a woman quietly and passively learning from religious texts in her closet, yet she represented herself as a tutor of others. She imagined a more inclusive group of readers by occasionally revising Bayly’s singular male pronouns to ‘us’, and she condensed long texts to present concise lessons for her pious community. Hastings understood her reading as a way to evaluate multiple approaches, as well as an integral part of her social and spiritual contributions to the familial and local networks she valued. There is considerable evidence that those in her networks shared reading materials.13 The 241-book library list of Hastings’s sister, Frances Egerton, Countess of Bridgewater, identifies John Preston’s The New Covenant, or the Saints Portion as a gift from Hastings (Brayman Hackel 2005: 248–53, 281), and the two sisters both owned or read books by Andrewes, Hall and Bayly.14 Other family members shared books as well. In a letter to her son’s father-in-law, Hastings thanks him for sending ‘your lynes and bookes’, and in its postscript, Hastings notes that her son, a university student, has ‘borrowed bookes of mee’ (n.d.c). An inventory of her husband Henry’s household taken after she died identifies ‘The visibility of the Church’ (probably a 1624 treatise by George Abbott) as ‘lent’ to his daughterin-law and ‘Boswelles workes of Armor’ as ‘lent’ to his son (Household Stuffe 1639: 21r, 23r) In a verse epistle that playwright John Fletcher wrote to Elizabeth Hastings, he attached a postscript in prose: ‘There were certaine Bookes Maddame that S[i]r Thomas Beamont mentioned, and (as hee told mee) For your Ladiship, w[hi]ch shall

232

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

bee very shortely sent downe, and some others to attend them. . . . so I commytt yow to your Closett’ (n.d.). An epitaph by Lucius Cary, Viscount Falkland, also alluded to Hastings’s closet when he praised her ‘wisdome of so large and potent sway, / Romes Senate might have wisht, her Conclave may’ (F. 1635: A2v). Because the word ‘conclave’ meant both an ecclesiastical assembly and a private chamber (OED n. 1, 4), these poems identify Hastings’s closet as the location of her reading and the place from which she coordinated her religious and literary network.15 Hastings probably also shared books with her husband, Henry. About five years after she died, Henry inventoried his ‘household stuffe at Donington house’ (1639). A section of this inventory, labelled ‘In My Lordes Closet Bookes’, lists about ninety books by author or title, along with some tantalizingly untitled manuscripts listed simply as ‘written’ and ‘paper’ books (Household Stuffe 1639: 18r, 23r–v). The titled books are nearly all about religion or government; Henry’s list shows his interests in English royal and military history, global cultures, statutes, ecclesiastical and common law, and Protestant sermons. His titles include, for example, John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments, the anonymous Leicester’s Commonwealth and John Stow’s Survey of London. Henry seems less interested in literary fiction; there is only one identifiable book of poetry, a volume of Horace’s Odes. Additionally, Henry’s list indicates that he owned copies of the books his wife read by Bayly, Hildersham and Hall, as well as another sermon by Andrewes. His inventory reveals that Elizabeth Hastings had a separate closet, but since the items listed in ‘the Chamber that was my Ladies Closet’ include only a bed and bedding, stools, carpet and other furniture, some of his wife’s books may have been moved to his closet in the years following her death (1v). It is possible that the couple had ‘his’ and ‘hers’ copies or that Henry took Elizabeth’s books for his own after she died, but I doubt that the couple kept their books completely separate. Closets were not necessarily private, and husbands and wives sometimes used one another’s (Brayman Hackel 2005: 42–3). Many writers praised Henry and Elizabeth’s close relationship and shared faith, and their correspondence reveals that they regularly consulted one another for advice, made household decisions together and took turns travelling to lobby for their joint interests.16 Especially because they exchanged books with others, I suspect that they shared books too.17

THE COUNTESS OF HUNTINGDON AND HER NETWORKS 233

Hastings as a mentor: Influential, intimidating, playful Writers who looked to Elizabeth Hastings as a patron represented her as a shrewd reader and mentor. Many of the male authors she patronized or those who sought her patronage emphasized her knowledge rather than her need for guidance. When John Davies dedicated The Holy Roode, or Christs Crosse to Hastings, her mother and her two sisters, he praised their ‘great Minds’ and hoped they would read it (1609: A2v). Davies exalted these women as moral examples, unlike those who were susceptible to vice. John Brinsley’s The Second Part of the True Watch describes Hastings as a patron who engaged with his text before it was published. He thanks her for her ‘most favorable acceptance’ of his ideas and uses words such as ‘perswading’ and ‘imboldened’ to describe how she inspired his book’s publication by approving its content (1607: A2v–A3r). Although literary dedications demonstrate how authors imagined Hastings’s reading and might not reveal her actual practice, Davies’s and Brinsley’s descriptions of her as a shrewd reader and mentor of a learned community resemble her self-representation as an erudite religious tutor in her miscellanies. Her funeral sermon – written by an ‘I. F.’ or ‘J. F.’ and sometimes attributed to minister and poet Joseph Fletcher – also supports this characterization. It remembers her as ‘an unwearied reader of the Oracles of Gods sacred word’ and explains how she used this reading to improve her family and community: ‘the State thereof hath beene much advanced, by her instruction and incouragement in this house, which hath beene long honoured, for honouring of God.’ The sermon claims her husband benefited from ‘her Counsells’ and spoke often of ‘how much he hath in the estate of the minde beene bettered by her’ (F. 1635: E4r–v). Further evidence that contemporaries viewed Hastings as the centre of a literary and religious network can be found in a composite volume known as the Skipwith manuscript, now held at the British Library as Additional Manuscript 25707. This manuscript, which includes 186 leaves in various hands, is associated with the Skipwith family of Cotes, Leicestershire, which is approximately twelve miles from Donington and fifteen miles from Hastings’s other estate at Ashby-de-la-Zouch. In addition to poems by and to members of the Skipwith family, the manuscript contains a few leaves of pageants

234

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

signed by William Skipwith that were probably performed for Hastings and the women in her network (Skipwith n.d.: 134r, 173v–175v; Knowles 1992). The manuscript features poems by John Donne, John Fletcher, Francis Beaumont, Thomas Carew, Ben Jonson and others, including the minor poet and preacher Thomas Pestell. Pestell was a classmate of Hastings’s husband at Cambridge, and Thomas Beaumont arranged his appointment to the rectory of Cole-Orton, Leicestershire, in 1611 (Buchan 1940: xxxi). Pestell later became vicar of Packington, another Leicestershire village about two miles from Ashby – an appointment that Hannah Buchan attributes to the patronage of Elizabeth Hastings (1940: xxxiv). Pestell’s poem in the Skipwith manuscript is written not to Hastings, but to a fellow male poet who knows and attempts to praise her. Pestell describes his ‘feare’ (a word he uses repeatedly) that he will disappoint Hastings and become ‘dull, as leade, or stone’ rather than eloquent or witty ‘when I, or preach, or praye, / Or reade before her’ (Buchan 1940: 87–8, lines 45–52). He represents Hastings as an intimidating mentor who is so learned or pious that he experiences performance anxiety in her presence. The poem also suggests that Hastings surrounds herself with witty performers and articulate readers of religious texts. Pestell writes to a poetic collective that shares a religion, a reverence for Homer, a distaste for the court and a desire to write ‘flattering Poems’ about Hastings, whom none can adequately praise (Buchan 1940: 89, lines 81–9). Upon Hastings’s death, Pestell penned two elegies, one of which imagines her hearse ‘wrapt in sheets of verse’ with deceased poets Philip Sidney, Francis Beaumont and John Donne praising her in a communal ‘Quyre’, punning on ‘choir’ (collective singing voices) and ‘quire’ (sheets of paper folded into a book) (Buchan 1940: 7–8, lines 8, 31).18 These lovely, bookish images serve as an appropriate tribute to an influential patron and avid reader. In Pestell’s view, what best commemorates Hastings is a book. Pestell’s poem and the Skipwith manuscript hint at a broader range of Hastings’s reading interests than is documented in her miscellanies. While those miscellanies and some dedications written to her present the image of a saintly, attentive reader of religious texts, other evidence reveals a woman who read witty poetry and smoked a tobacco pipe while gambling at table games.19 A verse epistle by John Fletcher addresses this side of Hastings in a familiar, playful tone. His poem lampoons the patronage system in which he

THE COUNTESS OF HUNTINGDON AND HER NETWORKS 235

felt obliged to participate, explaining that he ‘must write, yett hange mee if I knowe / of what; or to what End’ and deciding, ‘Lett mee then / write something (Maddame) lyke those honest men / that have no busines; Something that affordes / some favor to the wrighter’ (n.d.).20 He identifies the topics he will not tackle in this poem: the ‘Knights, and Lords’ of chivalric romance, Anglo-Spanish relations and military plans, and recent news of court entertainments. Yet in parenthetical asides and commentary, he makes his own positions clear, advocating for war with Spain and criticizing the court for its indulgent masques that might not ‘bee paid for ten yeere hence’. Fletcher wishes himself at Ashby, a place of support (‘Brawne and Brakett’, in his words), and makes a bookish joke about the Ashby cook, Ralph Goodwin, having an exclusive licence to make pies ‘cum privelegio’, the phrase used for books whose printing was authorized by the Crown. This poem reveals that Fletcher expected Hastings to appreciate learned jokes about the patronage system, the court, books and his familiarity with her household. Fletcher emphasizes Hastings’s ‘power’, her goodness like Eve ‘before the fall’ and her influence, ‘That of my all / service, and prayers; are originall’. His last word (‘originall’) casts Hastings as both muse and creator, inspiration and author. Although Fletcher’s poem projects more confidence than Pestell’s does, both men identify Hastings as an influential patron and sharp-witted reader. John Donne also underscores the power of Hastings’s influence. He mentions her in at least fifteen letters to Henry Goodere in 1609 to 1625 (Flynn 2014: 29–33). Goodere, another author included in the Skipwith manuscript, counted himself part of Hastings’s network. Although Donne had worked for Hastings’s stepfather, Thomas Egerton, when she was young, he wrote anxiously about seeking her preferment when she was an adult, until he eventually earned ‘her noble favours’ (Donne 1651: Z1r). He wrote two surviving verse letters to Hastings: a 130-line poem primarily about love (‘That Unripe Side of Earth’) and a seventy-line poem about science, faith and women (‘Man to God’s Image’). The love poem promises something innovative for a discriminating reader: since he will not ‘vexe your eyes to see / A sighing Ode, nor crosse-arm’d Elegie’, he asks Hastings not to play the part of a cruel Petrarchan mistress, but to share her love and favour openly (Donne 1635: N6r). In ‘Man to God’s Image’, Donne recognizes Hastings’s authority as a patron when he calls himself ‘your true subject’ and ‘but your Recorder’

236

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

while identifying her as the poem’s rightful author: ‘tis / Not I, but you and fame, that make this verse’ (Donne 1633: N2v–N3r). However, this puzzling, misogynistic poem offers little praise or flattery. Instead, it argues (or perhaps jokes) that women lack rational souls and therefore should not hold church or state office, nor can they learn to be morally good: an odd way to petition a woman who saw herself as an educated Protestant mentor. There is no evidence that Hastings received the poem, nor can we know how she would have responded to it. Donne, Fletcher and Pestell illustrate three different ways of navigating the same experience: seeking the favour of a learned, powerful female patron who was a judicious reader, mentor and ‘maker’ of authors and books. Case studies have been centrally important to the history of reading, and Elizabeth Hastings offers a noteworthy instance. She read pious texts, as we might expect, but not to learn submission. Instead, she understood her reading as a social way to engage with multiple perspectives and to build communities united by shared practices rather than uniform beliefs. Hastings’s example illustrates that reading, writing and patronage were all ways to ‘make’ books: important labour for an educated early modern woman. If we hope to understand this labour more fully, we have plenty of work left to do. Many of the literate women and men in Hastings’s wide familial and geographic networks have never been studied as readers. What did they read? How might their reading have built communities within and across genders or generations?21 To what extent were Hastings’s reading tastes and practices gendered or typical within her network? More evidence probably exists than we realize. While Hastings’s family archive is especially robust, the papers and libraries of many other elite families may hold evidence of women’s book use in scattered places – sometimes even ‘hidden’ in plain sight, in our most-used repositories. As we seek traces of more women readers, we should continue investigating how their reading built communities and how their networks shaped reading practices.22

Notes 1

For scholarship on women’s reading, see especially Roberts 2003: 20–61; Brayman Hackel 2005: 196–255; Sherman 2008: 53–67; and Knight et al. 2018.

THE COUNTESS OF HUNTINGDON AND HER NETWORKS 237

2

These five manuscripts are listed in the References as Hastings 1625–33 (sermon notes) and Hastings 1633a,b,c,d (presentation manuscript), where I have arranged the presentation copies alphabetically by shelfmark. Hastings 1633b is also available in microfilm in Renaissance Commonplace Books from the Huntington Library (Adam Matthew, 1994), on the third reel. Although I examined the manuscripts afresh myself, my discussion is indebted to Victoria Burke’s descriptions in Perdita (2005). When I cite early modern texts in this chapter, I retain original spelling but standardize i/j, u/v and the long s. I also capitalize book titles.

3

Hastings 1621–33: 6r. She cites six ministers by their surnames: Awte, Kemp, Miller, Aderly, Beal and Burridge. For more on table books, see Stallybrass et al. 2004.

4

There is evidence of Hastings’s hand in Hastings 1633c: 34v, where the compiler has reused a piece of paper on which Hastings took sermon notes.

5

Hastings 1633a is dated; 1633b includes her portrait. Hastings 1633c was probably the first copy prepared; it has more scribal corrections, includes recycled sermon notes, and ends with a different meditation.

6

I quote from Hastings 1633b because it shares its order with another copy (1633a) and is in excellent condition with legible script. The manuscripts’ arrangements and variants deserve further attention. Burke similarly notes that Hastings’s meditations lack personal contemplation (2012: 56).

7

These books include Joseph Hall, The Old Religion a Treatise (1628) and Meditations and Vowes (1605), Arthur Hildersham, The Doctrine of Communicating Worthily in the Lords Supper (1609) and William Perkins, Works (1631). Because Hastings does not identify which edition of Bayly’s book or Hall’s Meditations she used, I give the years of each first edition. When quoting from Bayly, I use the 1613 edition because it is the earliest available on Early English Books Online.

8

See Georgianna Ziegler’s chapter in this volume.

9

My discussion of early modern ministers, especially Andrewes, was made possible by conversations with Hannibal Hamlin and Daniel Knapper.

10 Burke (2012: 54) makes the same observation, but argues that Hastings’s restructuring ‘aims a popular text at a more sophisticated audience’. 11 This passage remains in later editions through the 1630s.

238

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

12 Lamb (1999) similarly notes that Margaret Hoby adapted reading techniques from male authors who addressed ungendered or male readers. 13 For more on these women’s networks, see Wilkie 2009. Lori Newcomb also discusses shared reading practices in her chapter in this volume. 14 Femke Molekamp identifies these sisters as salient examples of the importance of community in early modern women’s religious reading, noting that Elizabeth and Frances appear together in several dedications (2013: 88). 15 Brayman Hackel provides further examples of women’s books kept in a closet, which she describes as ‘a discrete and gendered space’ (2011: 139). 16 See e.g. Hastings n.d.a,d. 17 David McKitterick notes that married couples sometimes bought books together or inscribed books jointly (2000: 361). 18 These elegies survive in two manuscripts: Houghton Library, Harvard University, English 228 (Pestell’s poetry) and Bodleian Library, Oxford, Malone 14 (a verse miscellany). 19 A 1627 bill shows she spent 6 pence for one dozen ‘Tobacco-pipes’ and 10 shillings, 6 pence to play cards and table games at four occasions with male and female guests. A note from February 1630 charges her 8 shillings ‘To play at Inn & Inn’, a dice game. Although she could have bought the tobacco pipes for guests, at least one bill labels the tobacco as hers. See Hastings Financial 1619: 4, 34. 20 This undated letter, which was sent and received, must have been penned between 1604 (when Hastings ascended to the title ‘Countess of Huntingdon’) and 1625 (when Fletcher died). 21 Work on reading networks is more visible in scholarship on medieval and eighteenth-century England (e.g. Erler 2002; Williams 2017). However, a recent collection, Women’s Bookscapes in Early Modern Britain, includes four essays on women’s religious reading communities and four more on women’s collections. Margaret J. M. Ezell’s afterword notes that we are starting to replace ‘the isolation and singularity of early modern women writers and readers imagined by previous generations’ with ‘connected networks, patterns and habits of reading’ (2018: 277). This is a promising avenue for further study. 22 I thank Tara Lyons, Erin McCarthy and Valerie Wayne for their feedback on earlier versions of this essay.

THE COUNTESS OF HUNTINGDON AND HER NETWORKS 239

References Bayly, L. (1613), The Practise of Pietie, London: T. Snodham for J. Hodgets. Bradshaw, W. (1609), A Direction for the Weaker Sort of Christians, London: W. Hall for S. Macham. Brathwaite, R. (1631), The English Gentlewoman, London: J. Haviland. Brayman Hackel, H. (2005), Reading Material in Early Modern England: Print, Gender, and Literacy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brayman Hackel, H. (2011), ‘The Countess of Bridgewater’s London Library’, in J. Anderson, E. Sauer and S. Orgel (eds), Books and Readers in Early Modern England, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Brinsley, J. (1607), The Second Part of the True Watch, London: F. Kingston for S. Macham. Buchan, H. (1940), The Poems of Thomas Pestell, Oxford: Blackwell. Burke, V. (2005), ‘Elizabeth Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon’, Perdita. Available online: http://web.warwick.ac.uk/english/perdita/html/pw_ HAST01.htm (accessed 29 September 2018). Burke, V. (2012), ‘ “My Poor Returns”: Devotional Manuscripts by Seventeenth-Century Women’, Parergon 29 (2): 50–8. Crawford, J. (2014), Mediatrix: Women, Politics, and Literary Production in Early Modern England, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Davies, J. (1609), The Holy Roode, London: J. Windet for N. Butter. Donne, J. (1635), Poems by J. D., London: M. Flesher for J. Marriot. Donne, J. (1651), Letters to Severall Persons of Honour, London: J. Flesher for R. Marriot. Erler, M. C. (2002), Women, Reading, and Piety in Late Medieval England, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ezell, Margaret J. M. (2018), ‘Afterword: Mapping Early Modern Women’s Literary History’, in L. Knight, M. White and E. Sauer (eds), Women’s Bookscapes in Early Modern Britain: Reading, Ownership, Circulation, Ann Arbor, MI : University of Michigan Press, 274–7. F., J. (1635), A Sermon Preached at Ashby De-la-Zouch in the Countie of Leicester: At the Funerall of the Truely Noble and Vertuous Lady Elizabeth Stanley, London: W. Jones for T. Paine. Fleming, Juliet (2015), ‘The Renaissance Collage: Signcutting and Signsewing’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 45 (3): 443–56. Fletcher, John (n.d.), [Letter to Elizabeth Hastings], Hastings 13333, San Marino: Huntington Library. Flynn, D. (2014), ‘Donne and Elizabeth, Countess of Huntingdon, Revisited: The Evidence of Donne’s Letters’, John Donne Journal: Studies in the Age of Donne 33: 27–61.

240

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

Hastings, E. (1621–33), [sermon notes], Hastings Religious, box 1, folder 13, San Marino: Huntington Library. Hastings, E. (1633a), Certaine Collections of the Right Honorable Elizabeth Late Countesse of Huntingdon for Her Owne Private Use, Ellesmere 6871, San Marino: Huntington Library. Hastings, E. (1633b), Certaine Collections of the Right Honorable Elizabeth Late Countesse of Huntingdon for Her Owne Private Use, Hastings 15369, San Marino: Huntington Library. Hastings, E. (1633c), Certaine Collections of the Right Honorable Elizabeth Late Countesse of Huntingdon for Her Owne Private Use, Hastings Literature, box 1, folder 6, San Marino: Huntington Library. Hastings, E. (1633d), Certaine Collections of the Right Honorable Elizabeth Late Countesse of Huntingdon for Her Owne Private Use, Hastings Religious, box 2, folder 8, San Marino: Huntington Library. Hastings Financial Papers (1619), box 8, folder 4, San Marino: Huntington Library. Hastings, E. (n.d.a), [Letter to Henry Hastings], Hastings 4815, San Marino: Huntington Library. Hastings, E. (n.d.b), [Letter to Henry Hastings], Hastings 4820, San Marino: Huntington Library. Hastings, E. (n.d.c), [Letter to Sir John Davies], Hastings 4831, San Marino: Huntington Library. Hastings, E. (n.d.d), [Letter to Henry Hastings], Hastings 4838, San Marino: Huntington Library. Hastings, E. (n.d.e), [Letter to Henry Hastings], Hastings 4840, San Marino: Huntington Library. Household Stuffe at Donington House (1639), Hastings Inventories, box 1, folder 1, San Marino: Huntington Library. Knight, L., M. White and E. Sauer (eds) (2018), Women’s Bookscapes in Early Modern Britain: Reading, Ownership, Circulation, Ann Arbor, MI : University of Michigan Press. Knowles, J. (1992), ‘Marston, Skipwith and The Entertainment at Ashby’, English Manuscript Studies 3: 137–92. Lamb, M. E. (1999), ‘Margaret Hoby’s Diary: Women’s Reading Practices and the Gendering of the Reformation Subject’, in S. King (ed.), Pilgrimage for Love: Essays in Early Modern Literature in Honor of Josephine A. Roberts, Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 63–94. McCabe, R. A. (2008), ‘Hall, Joseph (1574–1656), Bishop of Norwich, Religious Writer, and Satirist’, ODNB . Available online: doi-org.proxy. lib.ohio-state.edu/10.1093/ref:odnb/11976 (accessed 25 January 2019). McCullough, P. E. (2008), ‘Andrewes, Lancelot (1555–1626), Bishop of Winchester’, ODNB . Available online: doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/520 (accessed 28 January 2019).

THE COUNTESS OF HUNTINGDON AND HER NETWORKS 241

McKitterick, D. (2000), ‘Women and their Books in Seventeenth-Century England: The Case of Elizabeth Puckering’, The Library 1 (4): 359–80. Molekamp, F. (2013), Women and the Bible in Early Modern England: Religious Reading and Writing, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Moore, J. D. (2007), English Hypothetical Universalism: John Preston and the Softening of Reformed Theology, Grand Rapids, MI : Eerdmans. Roberts, S. (2003), Reading Shakespeare’s Poems in Early Modern England, Houndmills: Palgrave. Sherman, W. (2008), Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England, Philadelphia, PA : University of Pennsylvania Press. [Skipwith manuscript] (n.d.), Additional Manuscript 25707, London: British Library. Spinks, B. D. (2004), ‘Hildersham [Hildersam], Arthur (1563–1632), Church of England Clergyman’, ODNB . Available online: doi. org/10.1093/ref:odnb/13256 (accessed 28 January 2019). Stallybrass, P., R. Chartier, J. F. Mowery and H. Wolfe (2004), ‘Hamlet’s Tables and the Technologies of Writing in Renaissance England’, Shakespeare Quarterly 55 (4): 379–419. Trettien, Whitney (2018), ‘Media, Materiality, and Time in the History of Reading: The Case of the Little Gidding Harmonies,’ PMLA 133 (5): 1135–51. Wilkie, V. (2009), ‘ “Such Daughters and Such a Mother”: The Countess of Derby and her Three Daughters, 1560–1647’, PhD diss., University of California Riverside. Williams, A. (2017), The Social Life of Books: Reading Together in the Eighteenth-Century Home, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

242

12 Frances Wolfreston’s annotations as labours of love Lori Humphrey Newcomb

The Staffordshire gentlewoman Frances Middlemore Wolfreston (1607–77) signed her books with four words evincing pleasure in literacy and ownership: Frances Wolfreston hor bouk. More than 200 books that she signed now have been located, giving her a fuller archival trail than any other seventeenth-century British woman reader of the ‘middling sort’. Most of the titles she signed are secular, and half can be described as literary, including several early editions of Shakespeare’s play quartos and narrative poems, most famously the first edition of Shakespeare’s first publication, the 1593 Venus and Adonis (see Figure 12.1). Wolfreston’s choices show us that an early modern woman could claim the pleasure in reading that male conduct writers long had discouraged: in 1631, the very year of Wolfreston’s marriage, Richard Brathwaite commented that ‘Venus and Adonis are unfitting consorts for a Ladies bosome’ (quoted in Lee 1895). Moreover, Wolfreston took steps to share that pleasure reading, as we know from her will of 1676, which provided for her books to be kept together for the use of her sons and daughters: And I give my son Stanford all my phisicke books, and all my godly books, and all the rest conditionally if any of his brothers 243

244

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

FIGURE 12.1 The title page of the 1593 edition of Venus and Adonis (STC 22354), with the characteristic signature of Frances Wolfreston. The only known copy of the first work by Shakespeare to appear in print, this volume remained in family hands until 1805. The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, Arch. G. e. 31 (2).

FRANCES WOLFRESTON’S ANNOTATIONS

245

or sisters would have them any tyme to read, and when they have done they shall returne them to their places againe, and he shall carefully keepe them together. quoted in Morgan 1989: 201 The bequest, like other writings by early modern women, aligns reading with maternal duty, implying that in amassing books, signing them, sorting them by subject and putting them in ‘their places’, Wolfreston has laboured on her family’s behalf. Surprisingly, however, this gift is made without any explicit charge to use the books for education or devotion; the siblings can ‘have them any tyme to read’ with the only condition being to ‘returne them to their places’. If any lesson is implied by the bequest, it lies in the collection – the gathering and sharing of those valued books.1 The terms of the bequest, in light of the hundreds of lovingly signed books, urge Wolfreston’s beloved children to carry on as lovers of reading and to follow her example in maintaining that collection, with Stanford as chief curator.2 In much past scholarship, Wolfreston’s library has been valued chiefly for the extremely rare literary texts it preserved. Today we can appreciate that the library remained intact until 1856, which was long enough for it to be reconstructed now, because Wolfreston passed down her ethic of care for all of her books: her wide-ranging interests and tolerances; her consistency in signing her books; her bequeathing the library to her children; the books’ long retention on the family estate; and even the family’s decision to auction off most of the books en masse, thus yielding the collection’s first catalogue. Our marvelling at the books’ survival, then, should not reduce Wolfreston’s collecting practices to a happy domestic accident. This essay further extends the significance of Wolfreston’s deliberate readerly labours from her collections to her annotations – which I here define as any words marked in her hand beyond her usual signature. In light of her bequest, I read these annotations not just as notes to self, but as recommendations to future generations. The annotations are inventive, like the bequest: they record her responses to plays and other works seemingly without self-doubt, establishing a readerly authority over varied material and for a varied circle of fellow readers. Her practices of annotation reward analysis within multiple larger systems as well: a book trade disrupted by the Civil War, new formats for cheap print, the rise of

246

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

the country house library and the expansion of literacy. As owner, reader, collector and active annotator, Wolfreston demonstrates the vital role of women in building the networks of readers that moved printed fiction and drama, and Shakespeare in particular, to the centre of the British book trade and the literary canon.

Recovering Wolfreston’s annotations Book collectors have been taking note of Wolfreston since 1856, when Sotheby & Wilkinson offered at auction hundreds of books from her family’s estate. The era’s gentleman collectors marvelled at the number of early Shakespeare quartos there along with unique survivals of ephemeral works. Amazed that priceless literary titles had been preserved by a mere provincial gentlewoman, several collectors left anecdotes about her presumed naivete. William Carew Hazlitt frequently repeated his claim that the family (by then spelled Wolferstan) had no idea of the collection’s economic value, with the unspoken corollary that the original collector must have had no idea of its literary value. In the twentieth century, as rare-book repositories snapped up private collections, librarians and scholars became newly aware of the Wolfreston provenance, yet without grasping the extent of her annotations. Too often critics simply saw her large collection as a curiosity, ‘a special case . . . [or] anomaly’ (Wiggins 2010: 89). For instance, Alan H. Nelson’s 2005 round-up of ‘Shakespeare and the Bibliophiles’ reports (erroneously) that she owned 960 volumes, without mentioning annotations (55). Jean-Christophe Mayer’s 2018 study of Shakespeare’s Early Readers repeats this erroneous count and classifies Wolfreston only as an owner of Shakespeare, not as an annotator or critic (38). David Pearson’s working list of English book owners says only that she is ‘noteworthy as an early English female book owner, who regularly marked her ownership’ (2015). The first scholar to quote annotations beyond her signature was Johan Gerritsen, whose brief 1964 article on this ‘minor, provincial figure’ admitted that ‘[o]ccasionally . . . there is proof that Frances not only bought, but also read’ the books she signed (1964: 271, 272). It was Bodleian librarian Paul Morgan who, in a classic 1989 article on Wolfreston, reconstructed her biography and systematically compiled many of her annotations. Working from the Sotheby &

FRANCES WOLFRESTON’S ANNOTATIONS

247

Wilkinson auction catalogue, he located more than 100 books with signatures of Wolfreston or her relatives, as well as a few other books that, like the Venus and Adonis first edition purchased by Edmond Malone in 1805, had left the family’s hands before the 1856 sale. In this century, search engines have enabled the identification of more books signed by Wolfreston in libraries worldwide, and social media has brought to light comments written in copies at the Boston Public, Folger, Houghton, Huntington, University of Illinois, Illinois State, Penn, Princeton and Pforzheimer libraries, and elsewhere (see Werner 2008a, b; Wiggins 2010; Pratt 2015; Moschella et al. 2015; Keener 2017; and Lindenbaum 2018b, among others; and the discussion in Bourne 2017). Sarah Lindenbaum’s online database (2019) now includes some 230 located items as well as listing yetunlocated items from the 1856 catalogue, but it does not transcribe Wolfreston’s annotations. Most remarkably, in 2010 the Bodleian acquired a ten-year run of printed almanacs with marginal notes in Wolfreston’s hand (Galligan 2011). These annotations not only are evidence of Wolfreston’s reading practices but also record further means of book circulation in the reading community she built, as I will explain. Collectively, Wolfreston’s annotations reveal how steadily and inventively she laboured to ensure that not just she, but others as well, could continue to engage with books.

Selective collecting, shared reading The many annotated items found among Wolfreston’s now-scattered treasures document a self-aware reader who recognized the distinctive uses of various genres, including almanacs, chapbooks, playbooks, histories and romances. Wolfreston’s reading was demonstrably selective in two senses: first, her purchases reveal definite tastes; and second, her annotations document those tastes on her own terms. Wolfreston built her library around used copies, as did most avid readers in this period (see Mandelbrote 2006): although the consistent use of her married name suggests that the collection took shape after her marriage in 1631, she owned numerous imprints from before that date. The collection is inclusive but not mongrel, a mixture of genres and formats more familiar among provincial gentlemen of the period (Birrell 1991). Poetic treasures and incunabula are mingled with chapbooks that sold for

248

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

a penny or two. Indeed, Wolfreston’s collection has proven invaluable in reconstructing the survival of ‘penny merries’, and the new form of ‘penny godlies’, the brief devotional titles that became the core of the Ballad Partners’ chapbook stock (Watt 1991: 296–7). Even her manner of marking her ownership was idiosyncratic, as she almost always signed her name not on the title page or a flyleaf, but on the first page of the main text. The main exceptions to this practice are a few larger-format books, still in early calf or vellum bindings, that are signed on the upper front pastedown (Lindenbaum 2018: 201), and a few penny books signed on the title page. Wolfreston’s careful signing of most books at the start of the main text, rather than decorating title pages with signatures as her sons and other male book owners of the period did, may avoid competing with the printed books’ authors. Yet it may also emphasize her familiarity with the contents instead of mere possession of the volumes. In claiming Wolfreston’s inscriptions and annotations as deliberate choices, I acknowledge previous scholars’ cautions about interpreting early modern readers’ marks as anything more than signs of ‘use’ (Sherman 2008), and instead join Rebecca Olson in advocating ‘responsible speculation’ about the activities of readers (2019). The elusive nature of book annotations has been summed up by Jason Scott-Warren: ‘here is the reader, the “real” reader that recent work in the field has placed center stage; and yet he or she is not reading but doing something else entirely, something that appears to lead nowhere’ (2010b: 365). Still, he insists, even egotistical signatures and rude comments are evidence of readers’ interactions. Some marks are so minimal that we cannot assign them to any reader in particular. For instance, the late Sasha Roberts proposed that the ‘faded vertical lines’ alongside ‘notoriously bawdy’ passages in the 1593 Venus and Adonis were Wolfreston’s marks (2003: 46). Wolfreston did comment elsewhere that other ribald works were ‘prity mery’, but vertical marks are not characteristic of her annotation style. On the other hand, caution about the evidentiary status of readers’ marks can exacerbate neglect of the literate experiences of women. Women’s signatures in early books have gone unrecorded in library catalogues; their annotations have not been attributed; or when noted, they have been dismissed as ‘use’. As we are now realizing, to divide ‘use’ from ‘reading’, as though reading is nonpurposive, is a Kantian dream, bound up in exceptionalist claims for literature. Carefully accumulated, the evidence of Wolfreston’s

FRANCES WOLFRESTON’S ANNOTATIONS

249

annotations reveals patterns of use, a sustained practice of reading that is at once personal and socially engaged. Responsible speculation can push the meaning of readers’ marks even further, towards recognizing them as acts of writing. Recent work on inscribed almanacs and other uses of printed books for personal accounts has argued that such book annotations may move beyond evidence of reading to constitute a form of life-writing (Smyth 2016). That argument clearly applies to Wolfreston’s almanacs, which record a decade of events with precision and flashes of wry humour (Newcomb and Lindenbaum 2015; Newcomb 2016). To sum up: a given annotation may be the merest trace of use, but responsibly contextualized, it may also communicate something about the writer to herself and to an actual or imagined circle of book readers. Wolfreston’s annotations, I speculate, reveal a selfhood constituted through a documentable circle of readers in the family and beyond. Indeed, this volume’s recovery of women’s work with books allows us to note how individual reading practices led to shared practices, in and beyond the home. Wolfreston’s proud signature, the survival of books with both her signature and that of her sons, and the honouring of her bequest in further generations all imply a comfortable acceptance of her book collecting. The collection and its annotations bring to light a larger circle of influence in which men and women quietly shared secular reading, a practice improvised in provincial towns and country houses in the era before circulating and subscription libraries. Gifts of books from family members were recorded in several of Wolfreston’s annotations, including the Egerton family Chaucer folio from ‘hor motherilaw’ (Wiggins 2010: 79). In the almanac volume, Wolfreston notes one book purchase of a ‘playbouk’ and a broadside ballad; and one instance of loaning out her own books in a list of ‘plays lent’ to an elderly kinsman in her neighbourhood. Nor was she the only woman in her circle to lend books, as Figure 12.2 shows. On the front pastedown of Cervantes’s Travels of Persiles and Sigismunda (1619) she wrote, ‘Frances Wolfreston hor bouk geven hor by hor sister ursly medelmore’; below in a larger, looser hand is the signature ‘U. Middlemore’ and, in what seems to be the same ink, the phrase ‘3 bokes lent’ (Palmer 2015). Thus the bequest of an apparently personal library sits within a larger web of collection, curation and borrowing among her contemporaries and descendants.

250

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

FIGURE 12.2 Annotations in the front pastedown of Travels of Persiles and Sigismunda (1619), an English translation of Cervantes’ romance (STC 4918). At the top, Frances Wolfreston records a gift from her sister, Ursula Middlemore. Below and presumably earlier is Ursula’s signature and then a note, most likely by Ursula, ‘3 bokes lent’. The William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, Los Angeles, PQ 6329 .T77 1619 *.

Indeed, in a recent survey of early modern provincial collecting practices, Giles Mandelbrote questions the usefulness of the terms ‘private’ and ‘personal’: To describe these as ‘private’ libraries obscures the extent to which books were being borrowed, lent and exchanged; to describe them as ‘personal’ does not perhaps adequately reflect the silent choices exercised by wives, sons and daughters, nor the steady incremental effect of inheritance. 2006: 178 Wolfreston’s practices reveal a blind spot in Mandelbrote’s assumption that librarianship was a patriarch’s activity: in this case

FRANCES WOLFRESTON’S ANNOTATIONS

251

Frances the ‘wife’ made her own library, chose her books, and recommended them to her ‘sons and daughters’ and to her sister. Widowed in 1666, Frances Wolfreston moved from the estate that passed from her husband to her eldest son Francis Wolferstan (1638–1712). But the books she signed were hers, and at her own death she left them as an inheritance to be shared.3

Wolfreston’s labours of annotation As Scott-Warren (2010b) and H.J. Jackson (2005) remind us, in eras of book sharing, annotations might be considered as more public than private. Even the self-examining marginalia of godly readers, seemingly so interior, was a performance for others in the household who might profit from such an example. Yet, surprisingly, few scholars have imagined Wolfreston’s annotations being read by others. Arnold Hunt, another of Wolfreston’s bibliographers, observed that her inscriptions evinced pride in her library (2010); her marking of copies as gifts implies some pride in her being known as a reader as well. In a more conversational instance of annotation, Wolfreston wrote in a copy of Love Will Find Out the Way (Q3, 1661), ‘I doe not lik this’, and someone else, probably her eldest son, wrote below, ‘It is no matter whether you do or noe’ (Pratt 2017). The retort claims the last word, but Wolfreston’s will (in two senses of the word) found a way to preserve the record of both opinions. Apart from the almanac volume, Wolfreston typically added just one annotation, ranging from a single phrase to a few sentences, to a given book. In this and other respects, her marginalia contrast with those of the period’s most prolific annotators. They do not conform to the humanist model of ‘studying for action’, à la Gabriel Harvey (Jardine and Grafton 1990), nor to the godly obsession with examining the soul, as seen in Margaret Hoby’s papers (Camber 2010). Wolfreston did not mark sententiae, which schooltrained writers of the period singled out for copying into commonplace books. Nor did she, on the evidence seen so far, sketch, translate, censor, argue with the text, cut the text for performance, mark textual or performance cruxes, create character lists or tables of contents, add manicules, slips, or errata lists, quote or cite the Bible, or compose her own confessions or prayers. Unlike

252

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

other readers of the period, she does not record the dates that books were acquired, verify completed reading with ‘read’ or ‘legi’, or systematically assign books a shelfmark or sequence number. When Wolfreston’s surviving annotations are considered en masse, however, meaningful patterns emerge, and even terse comments take on distinctive force. One characteristic form of brief annotation addresses provenance – the price of the book in shillings and/or pence, the site of its purchase (‘of a soldar’ or ‘at London’), or its gift from a relative. Other brief annotations provide an assessment, usually in a short phrase marking mood or subject matter. These judgements appear on playbooks, jestbooks and querelle des femmes titles, but not on godly books. Longer annotations take just two forms: certain playbooks have plot summaries, usually on the title-page verso, and she copied verses from another title into a handful of other prose works. These longer annotations tell us most about her interpretive and intertextual awareness, and I elaborate on them in what follows. The annotations in the almanacs are of a different order. Wolfreston used ten issues of the Poor Robin almanac, spanning the last decade of her life, to record the life events of her family members, neighbours, dogs and horses, her own travel and that of her children, the expenses of rearing her nephews, and in particular, the accomplishments of her youngest son Stanford as he entered the clergy. Such heavy use of almanacs for daily notes was common in this period before the development of memorandum books (Smyth 2016). Wolfreston’s topics are similar, for instance, to those noted by the Derbyshire gentleman George Sitwell between 1671 and 1721 (Sitwell 1890). Wolfreston included fewer business transactions and more details about births (godparents, hour of birth), but this is a difference of degree, not kind. Some almanac owners seemed to account for every penny, but Wolfreston unfortunately did not – unlike Richard Stonley, the Teller of the Exchequer who recorded buying Venus and Adonis and three dozen buttons on 12 June 1593 (Nelson 2005: 59–62; Scott-Warren 2010a: 236). Still, there are three important mentions of books in Wolfreston’s ten years of extant almanacs. She notes the date that Stanford rode off to his new benefice with a horseload of books. She records the purchase in 1673 of ‘the Indian queen a playbouk’ and ‘wits outwitted’, probably a broadside ballad.4 More importantly, the last page of the almanac for 1670 bears this list, reproduced in Figure 12.3:

FRANCES WOLFRESTON’S ANNOTATIONS

253

FIGURE 12.3 Verso of the last leaf of William Winstanley’s Poor Robin almanac for 1670 (Wing W 2189), from a series of almanacs used by Frances Wolfreston for record-keeping. On this page she has made a list of playbooks lent to a kinsman. The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, Ms. Don. E 246, folio 122v.

254

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

Thes plaie boucks I lent to cosen robart comarford’5 the sad shepard a contention for oner and riches vitto[ria?] corambona the tragidy of charls the two trogins the foxe the tragidy of king john and mate [?] the english intiligensar every man in his humer These plays are probably Ben Jonson’s Sad Shepherd, Volpone, and Every Man In his Humour; James Shirley’s masque Contention for Honour and Riches; Jasper Fisher’s True Trojans, a university play; Richard Brathwaite’s Mercurius Britannicus, or The English Intelligencer, a tragicomedy; and three tragedies, John Webster’s White Devil, Robert Davenport’s King John and Matilda and George Chapman’s Charles, Duke of Byron.6 The list tilts towards genres Wolfreston seldom annotated herself – humour comedy, historical tragedy, university drama – demonstrating that her collection was wide-ranging enough to cater to preferences distinct from her own, including those of an elderly gentleman. Much as her will established, in effect, a family library, Wolfreston’s practice of lending books anticipates eighteenthcentury phenomena: bookshop rentals, book clubs and the eventual rise of circulating libraries. The practice of lending confirms that her annotations were always potentially public: they serve as both notes to herself and recommendations to others, male and female. In her widowhood, as her eldest son filled her former home with polemical, astronomical and antiquarian titles, and as her youngest son seeded his own library with her medical and theological books, she made herself a resource, even an authority, for literary readers. Even more than her inscriptions in books’ main texts, her annotations privilege readership over ownership, affective experience over literary production and intertextual linkages over authorial attribution. These preferences contrast with the conventional practices of the period, which were amply visible in the heavy annotations that her two university-educated sons left on their own books. Wolfreston’s lighter annotation style introduced more succinct, sociable, non-didactic modes of commentary.7

FRANCES WOLFRESTON’S ANNOTATIONS

255

I have suggested that Wolfreston was interested more in the experience of reading than in the materiality of books. She kept most of her books in their minimally stab-stitched forms, although Aaron Pratt speculates that she may have separated some plays purchased in collections, perhaps for lending to others (2015). Her books were to be kept ‘carefully’ ‘together’, but their conditions of binding apparently mattered little to her. Similarly, her assessments foreground emotional engagement with the plot rather than the prestige of the title. For example, she calls Robert Mead’s comedy The Combat of Love and Friendship (1654) ‘a very prity one, all of love & copells of lover’, and famously comments that Othello (in its 1655 edition) is ‘a sad one’ (Werner 2009). The register of these evaluations is affective, inviting viewers of the comment to their own readerly engagement: ‘prity’ for comedy and romance, ‘merry’ for jestbooks, ‘exceding’ for her favourites. She deployed these adjectives carefully, sometimes amending praise with a qualifier like ‘resnably’. She differentiated between the pleasures of two Thomas Heywood comedies: The English Traveler is a ‘prity one’ (Keener 2015), while How to tell A Good Wife from A Bad is an ‘exceding prity one’. Her plot summary of Shirley’s Dukes Mistris (1638) reads in full: ‘the duk tarnd a way his one duches and loved one that was betrothed by Bevoloio but when he came (for her she left the duke and went with him) and then th dukes contins trobled him and he touk her for duches a gaine).’ Out of a convoluted and violent plot, Wolfreston highlighted a story of a marriage saved with the wife as protagonist. Her comment at the start of Taming of the Shrew praises the induction (not, as we might expect, the main plot) for its metatheatrical cleverness: ‘a very prity mery one of a [. . . ?] begar found by a lord who persuaded him he was a lord, and this play was playd befor his new lordship’ (Moschella et al. 2015). A less evaluative but still visceral engagement appears in the Merchant playbook, where she writes in the trial scene that ‘the rich jue would have his £ of flesh of his creditor’ (Moschella et al. 2015). Here Wolfreston denotes ‘pound’ with the symbol for currency rather than the abbreviation ‘lb’. In her almanac, too, she calculates the ‘carriage’ of a ham in pence per ‘£’ of weight. The reference to a ‘£ of flesh’ may resist bloody literalization of the bond, or, regrettably, it may naturalize prejudice within the household economy. Collectively, Wolfreston’s annotations highlight romantic and sexual themes and the experiences of female figures. A brief note on

256

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

the unique copy of The Good Womans Champion, or A Defence for the Weaker Vessell (1650?) describes it as ‘in prais of women, a good one’ (Morgan 1989: 204). This note and her signature are unusually not at the text’s opening, or even on the title page or its verso, all of which afford plenty of room, but on the next page of the text, A3r. Perhaps they signal a special interest in that page, where God’s words to Adam are cited in women’s defence. This single-sheet octavo work names and critiques several earlier querelle des femmes texts, including the ‘scandals daily divulged abroad in fantastick Pamphlets & Verses such as the Bear-baiting of women, the Parliament of Women, the Woman-hater, the Gossips meeting, the Crab-tree Lecture, Vinegar and Mustard’ (A2r). Roberts, observing that Wolfreston herself owned Swetnam the Womanhater, wondered in 2003 if Wolfreston’s curiosity about ‘diverse and conflicting views on the role, representation, and status of women’ might have affected how she ‘read Shakespeare’ (53–4). Annotations found since then confirm that Wolfreston’s curiosity about women spanned her favourite genres. Since Wolfreston consistently assesses texts, not authors, we may well ask how she read drama rather than how she ‘read Shakespeare’. This apparent lack of interest in authorial reputations goes against the commercial and scholarly tide. Even her contemporary Francis Kirkman, the rapscallion bookseller who turned his passion for reading into a commercial lending library, aggressively attributed plays to authors, becoming an unlikely pioneer of English literary bibliography (Newcomb 2004; Hooks 2016: 146–58). In some cases, Wolfreston must have been aware of authorial identity despite not commenting upon it. For example, she owned three books by female authors – Catherine of Siena, Dorothy Leigh and Lady Mary Wroth – in copies that are noticeably well-worn. Yet in her written annotations, Wolfreston mentions women only as literary characters; she leaves unmentioned the gender of authors, her own gender or the genders of possible future readers. Instead, by pointing to women characters while leaving her collection to all her sons and daughters, she may have encouraged male as well as female readers to take an interest in the ‘role, representation, and status of women’. Wolfreston’s annotations attend to genre and intertextuality more than authorship. Her copy of Heywood’s Second Part of the Iron Age (1632) is marked ‘this and the forst part of the destruktions

FRANCES WOLFRESTON’S ANNOTATIONS

257

of troy tragides both very prity ons and good ons for that storay) [sic] and i think trower then the old history bouk’ (Gerritsen 1964: 273). This annotation compares the play at hand, its prequel and its source, a medieval prose romance first published in English in 1474, all without naming their authors.8 As Kitamura Sae recently suggested, some early modern women who read fiction extensively were quick to spot what we now call ‘sources’ (2013). For instance, Margaret Cavendish and, later, Charlotte Lennox, critically analysed Shakespeare’s adaptation from prose (Thompson and Roberts 1997). In contrast, Wolfreston’s remark links prose and dramatic versions of the Trojan ‘storay’ without dividing them along lines of authorship. In a handful of significant instances, Wolfreston cross-copied one text into another, generating complex associations across forms and genres, again without marking boundaries between authors. As Jackson notes, before public libraries, ‘readers made the most of the books that passed through their hands . . . copying passages that they wanted to preserve from one into the other for safe keeping and future reference’ (2005: 142). Wolfreston’s copied passages, all of which add verse to prose works, may even have been preserved for memorization. She copied into Timothy Bright’s 1613 treatise on melancholy the first two stanzas of a poem that Robert Burton appended to The Anatomy of Melancholy (all editions after 1628), beginning ‘When I go musing all alone’ (1977: 11). Unattributed, Burton’s lines bring a suffering first-person voice to the treatise. The most extensive examples of her adding verse to prose are six penny pamphlets (all extremely rare survivals), into which she transcribed short poems and excerpts from Francis Quarles’ popular collection of lyrics (organized into four ‘books’), Divine Fancies Digested into Epigrams, Meditations and Observations, published in 1632 and reprinted eleven times by 1675.9 Morgan, who found four of these inscribed penny books at the British Library, assumed that all four were devotional ‘tracts’ (1989: 204) and identified Quarles as the poet (1990). Since then, I have identified further verses from Divine Fancies that were copied by Wolfreston into two other British Library penny books. Taken as a set, they are surprising: of the six printed items, two are in fact penny merriments, not penny godlies; and the lines inscribed from Quarles, especially as excerpted, range in tone from devotional to jocular. At times, Wolfreston’s placement of the Quarles extracts is

258

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

downright salty, as in her copy of Andrew Jones’s Morbus Satanicus (1662), a little tract on the sin of pride.10 Wolfreston uses the title page for a financial calculation totalling £146, apparently unconcerned by its misogynist woodcut of a flamboyantly immodest woman. The end of the tract, too, vituperates against female pride, and yet directly below that passage, Wolfreston copies out Quarles’s poem ‘On Man’ (Divine Fancies, Book II, poem 15): By Nature, Lord, men worse then Nothing be; If lesse then Nothing, if compar’d with Thee; If lesse and worse then Nothing, tell me than, Where is that Somthing, thou so boasts, proud Man? Liston 1992: 61 In the context of the tract’s harping on female pride, it is tempting to read Wolfreston’s appropriation of Quarles’s poem as a reminder of male pride. Nor are Wolfreston’s selections from Quarles easily consonant with the tone of the penny merries. The anonymous pamphlet ‘Good Counsel to Be Had at Cheap Rate’ (1663) proffers wellworn advice: be patient; avoid cursing. On its last leaf, Wolfreston records poems from Quarles that pointedly condemn secretmongering and excess drink. Another anonymous pamphlet, ‘Mirt[h] in Abundance’ (1659), is unapologetically a jestbook, comprised of jokes about men drinking, wenching and wrangling. She calls it ‘a prity merry one’ on the title page. Yet she uses its last page to copy two of Quarles’s most piercing versifications from the New Testament: his poem on Peter’s three denials, which move ‘our Saviour’ to ‘teares’ (Book III, poem 5 in Liston 1992: 107), and another on the kisses given to Jesus by Mary Magdalene and Judas, which ‘[d]iffer as farre, as did the Parts they kist’ (Book II, poem 27 in Liston: 1992: 114). In all, lines from twenty-two different poems, all from two books of Quarles’s volume, are packed into the scant white space of these six pamphlets. Two items, penny godlies published by Elizabeth Andrews, The Dying Mans Last Sermon (1661) and A Godly Sermon of Peters Repentance (1663), have outer leaves filled so densely that the paper is disintegrating. Using the same ink for both tracts, Wolfreston copies poems on the blank rectos of their frontispieces (which in both cases reproduce an image of a patriarch holding a book), and on the versos of their

FRANCES WOLFRESTON’S ANNOTATIONS

259

final leaves, which advertise Andrews’s stock of penny godlies. Multiple reckonings are in tension: the tract’s spiritual guidance, the bookseller’s advertised catalogue and Wolfreston’s gatherings from Quarles. When, in Peters Repentance, the last page of manuscript is orientated upside-down from the printed text, the readerly ‘use’ threatens ‘to lead nowhere’ (Scott-Warren 2010b: 365), except to expedient use of available white space. Taken as a whole, Wolfreston’s choices from the Divine Fancies are purposeful and individualized. Quarles is among the period’s most-copied poets, with a large footprint in the Union First-Line Index, but most of the poems that Wolfreston chose to copy are not greatest hits, appearing otherwise only in one manuscript miscellany (the Bodleian’s MS.Rawlinson.poetry.90), amongst vast swathes of Divine Fancies. Wolfreston, unlike other miscellanists of the period, selects many of Quarles’s poems about biblical women: she excerpts poems about Mary Magdalene, Queen Ester and the Queen of Sheba. In one instance, Wolfreston added some context for her excerpt, writing that ‘Abram was commanded by god to ofer his dear sone isaak for a sarkrifis’ before quoting Quarles’s couplet of consolation from ‘On Abraham’ (Book II, poem 48). Wolfreston may have copied these verses in haste, but she prepared them carefully for re-reading by herself and perhaps by others.

Marking as literary appreciation Without dismissing Wolfreston’s use of devotional texts, it is clear from her rates of annotation that the pleasure she was most eager to cultivate and share was the reading of playbooks and poetry. Out of the roughly 400 pre-1677 books in the auction catalogue are about 100 playbooks. We have no evidence that she ever saw a play, commercial or amateur: her only known visit to London was in 1657, when the public theatres were dark. Instead, her habits of purchasing and annotating drama specify a reading audience for playbooks that was developing beyond the metropolis (Erne 2013; Depledge 2018). Of the thirty-five playbooks located to date, at least a dozen bear annotations, a rate notably higher than that for her nondramatic books. The 1856 auction catalogue lists ten playbooks attributed to Shakespeare, and she owned nine playbooks by Thomas Heywood, and seven by James Shirley. Furthermore, her

260

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

playbooks by these three authors are the most likely to have annotations. Given that Wolfreston never noted an author’s name, what can her annotations tell us about her relationship to the emerging literary canon? Beyond the ten Shakespeare playbooks, the 1856 catalogue lists a 1616 edition of Lucrece, and the 1636 (sixteenth) edition of Venus and Adonis, in octavo.11 Adding the 1593 Venus and Adonis first edition, Wolfreston owned three early imprints of Shakespeare poems. These choices correlate strikingly with Emma Depledge’s listing of the new Shakespeare editions published between 1632 and 1659 (2018: 17). Of the eight playbooks on Depledge’s list, Wolfreston owned five, including the third quarto of King Lear (1655) published by Jane Bell; of the four poetry reissues, she owned that 1636 Venus and Adonis. In other words, although Wolfreston bought plenty of used books, she may have sought out freshly published editions for her Shakespeares. She thus exemplifies the readership recorded by Depledge, which kept Shakespeare marketable even during the Caroline and Commonwealth eras. Wolfreston’s taste confirms an emerging scholarly speculation that female readership helped to sustain Shakespeare’s reputation through this tumultuous century. If Wolfreston learned to watch for Shakespeare’s name, she probably began with the poems. Her fascination with Elizabethan lyric is evident. In addition to her Lucrece and two editions of Venus and Adonis, she owned copies of two of the few print miscellanies of the period that included poems attributed to Shakespeare. Sadly, her copy of Robert Chester’s Loves Martyr (1601) is missing the leaves with ‘The Phoenix and the Turtle’ (Morgan 1989: 205). However, her copy of John Bodenham’s pastoral anthology, Englands Helicon (1600), is complete, and thus includes the sonnet correctly attributed there to ‘W. Shakespeare’: ‘On a day – alack the day –’ (from Love’s Labour’s Lost). Wolfreston briefly annotated two other poems in the Bodenham volume that allude to Venus. In the margin next to I.G.’s ‘Faire Phillis and her Sheepheard’, she has assigned a ballad tune, apparently for household singing, and beside the next poem, H.C.’s ‘The Sheepheards Song of Venus and Adonis’, clearly an imitation of Shakespeare’s poem, she has written ‘[sa]me tune’ (Roberts 2003: 47). Verses like these were the height of fashion in the 1590s and still well-regarded in the 1630s (Hooks 2016: 61), but would fall into

FRANCES WOLFRESTON’S ANNOTATIONS

261

obscurity by the end of Wolfreston’s life. Venus and Adonis came into print only once between the 1636 sixteenth edition and the poem’s gradual eighteenth-century recovery (at first in anthologies and supplements, and then fully incorporated into Shakespeare’s works by Malone). The intervening seventeenth edition, published in 1675, was described by Sidney Lee as ‘a diminutive volume of the chap-book order’ (1895: 73). A further rationale for his contempt was that the publishers, listed ‘F. Coles, T. Vere, J. Wright, and J. Clark’, made up the Ballad Partners cartel, considered by most the bottom of the London book trade. Today we can remark that this chapbook-style edition, although ephemeral, reached wide audiences, and that its printing is credited to Elizabeth Hodgkinson, in what may have been the first job of her widowhood. For au courant readers of the late seventeenth century, Shakespeare was ‘now primarily a playwright’ (Hooks 2016: 176), and the narrative poems had become ‘forgettable’, almost ‘forgotten’ (Duncan-Jones and Woudhuysen 2007: 9). Wolfreston’s taste, by encompassing the poems as well as the plays, prefigures much later versions of the Shakespeare canon. Indeed, her curation of Venus and Adonis may have countered what Lee called ‘the penalty the work paid for its popularity and approachability’ (1895: 54) during its period of critical disregard. What matters most to a history of women’s work with books is not Wolfreston’s taste for any particular author, but her confidence in documenting and sharing her experiences: literate labours on behalf of the sheer love of reading. In certain respects, Wolfreston’s practices resonate more with the Romantic readers described by H. J. Jackson than with the ‘studied action’ generally thought to typify early modern readers. Jackson writes that early nineteenth-century readers, who inscribed passages idiosyncratically in their favourite books, ‘were not consumers; they behave more like custodians or contributors or uninvited collaborators’ (Jackson 2005: 143). Two centuries earlier, by contributing guidelines to future readers, Frances Wolfreston took custody of her books not just as property, but as affective experiences to be shared.

Notes 1

I would like to thank my own sister, Amy Jo Humphrey, for this insight.

262

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

2

Wolfreston makes her love for her children explicit in another remarkable section of her will, about her adult middle son Middlemore and his (unspecified but recurring) ‘affliction’: ‘I desire you in this my last request to you all, that you will have a naturall tender love and affection as I have every had to you all, and to be kinde to him’ (quoted in Morgan 1989: 201). Middlemore signed this will and several of his mother’s books, suggesting his continued inclusion in a community of readers.

3

The database of Private Libraries in Renaissance England includes only libraries with period inventories; Wolfreston’s library is excluded because hers has not been found. Perhaps she was modelling another shared practice by assuming that her children would care for the books without such a formality.

4

This play, now attributed to John Dryden, was published as one of Four New Plays by Sir Robert Howard in a 1665 volume with separate title pages.

5

Robert Comberford (c.1594–1671) was from a leading Tamworth family, slightly grander than the Wolfrestons but brought low by the Civil War. The kinship connection would have been distant.

6

All these titles first appeared in print before 1642, although most also appeared in later editions. Of the nine titles, none has been located with Wolfreston’s signature; only one, King John and Matilda, occurs in the Sotheby’s list. Such are the risks of book-lending.

7

Early modern women readers, less likely to have been formally educated, may have been well positioned to adopt new reading practices (Newcomb 2004a).

8

The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, translated from French by Raoul Lefèvre and published by William Caxton at Bruges in 1474, was the first book printed in the English language. In the seventeenth century, further reprints were called The Ancient History of the Destruction of Troy.

9

This title is not in the 1856 catalogue, but two other works by Quarles were, and are extant with Wolfreston’s signature at the Huntington Library.

10 A full-colour reproduction of Wolfreston’s copy of Morbus Satanicus is available at http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_100026 899028.0x000001#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=4&xywh=-460%2C101%2C3107%2C1789. 11 The count of ten includes a Q2 Sir John Oldcastle (1600 [1619]), attributed to Shakespeare on its title page but not accepted as such even in 1856. Morgan located seven Shakespeare books with

FRANCES WOLFRESTON’S ANNOTATIONS

263

Wolfreston’s signature. More recently, Lindenbaum has uncovered Wolfreston’s signature in a 1625 Hamlet at the Folger Shakespeare Library. She has matched Folger copies of the 1636 Venus and Adonis and 1637 Romeo and Juliet to the Sotheby’s sale via their provenance, although no signatures or annotations are visible (Lindenbaum 2018b). Also see Georgianna Ziegler’s essay in this volume.

References Birrell, T.A. (1991), ‘Reading as Pastime: The Place of Light Literature in Some Gentlemen’s Libraries of the 17th Century’, in R. Myers and M. Harris (eds), Property of a Gentleman: The Formation, Organisation and Dispersal of the Private Library, 1620–1920, Winchester: St. Paul’s Bibliographies, 113–31. Bourne, C. (2017), ‘Marking Shakespeare’, Shakespeare 13 (4): 367–86. Burton, Robert (1932), The Anatomy of Melancholy, Holbrook Jackson (ed.), London: J.M. Dent. Camber, A. (2010), ‘Readers’ Marks and Religious Practice: Margaret Hoby’s Marginalia’, in J. N. King (ed), Tudor Books and Readers, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 211–31. Depledge, E. (2018), Shakespeare’s Rise to Cultural Prominence, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Duncan-Jones, K. and H.R. Woudhuysen (eds) (2007), Shakespeare’s Poems, London: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare. Erne, L. (2013), Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Galligan, F. (2011), ‘Poor Robin almanacks, 1666–1679, 1690, 1693, and 1702–5’, Bodleian Library Friends Newsletter. Available online: https://studylib.net/doc/7288214/friends-of-the-bodleian---bodleianlibraries (accessed 25 March 2019). Gerritsen, J. (1964), ‘Venus Preserved: Some Notes on Frances Wolfreston’, English Studies 45 (3): 271–4. Hooks, A. G. (2016), Selling Shakespeare: Biography, Bibliography, and the Book Trade, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hunt, A. (2010), ‘Libraries in the Archives: Researching Provenance in the British Library Invoices’, in G. Mandelbrote and B. Taylor (eds), Libraries within the Library: The Origins of the British Library’s Printed Collections, London: British Library, 363–84. Jackson, H. J. (2005), ‘“Marginal Frivolities”: Readers’ Notes as Evidence for the History of Reading’, in R. Myers, M. Harris and G. Mandelbrote (eds), Owners, Annotators and the Signs of Reading, London: The British Library, 137–52.

264

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

Jardine, L. and A. Grafton (1990), ‘ “Studied for Action”: How Gabriel Harvey Read his Livy’, Past & Present 129: 30–78. Keener, A. (2017), ‘A “prity one”: Frances Wolfreston’s Copy of Thomas Heywood’s The English Traveller (1633)’. Available online: https:// andrewkeener.net/tag/marginalia (accessed 23 March 2019). Kirwan, P. (2015), Shakespeare and the Idea of Apocrypha, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lindenbaum, S. (2018a), ‘Hiding in Plain Sight: How Electronic Records Can Lead Us to Early Modern Women Readers’, in L. Knight, E. Sauer and M. White (eds), Women’s Bookscapes in Early Modern Britain: Ownership, Circulation, Reading, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 193–213. Lindenbaum, S. (2018b), ‘Written in the Margent: Frances Wolfreston Revealed’, 21 June. Available online: https://collation.folger. edu/2018/06/frances-wolfreston-revealed (accessed 23 March 2019). Lindenbaum, S. (2019), ‘Frances Wolfreston Hor Bouks’. Available online: https://franceswolfrestonhorbouks.com (accessed 10 June 2019). Liston, W. T. (ed.) (1992), Francis Quarles’ Divine Fancies: A Critical Edition, New York, Garland Publishing. Mandelbrote, G. (2006) ‘Personal Owners of Books’, in G. Mandelbrote and K. A. Manley (eds), The Cambridge History of Libraries in Britain and Ireland, II (1640–1850), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 173–89. Mayer, J.-C. (2018), Shakespeare’s Early Readers: A Cultural History from 1590 to 1800, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Morgan, P. (1989), ‘Frances Wolfreston and ‘Hor Bouks’, The Library (6th series) 11 (3): 197–219. Morgan, P. (1990), ‘Correspondence: Frances Wolfreston’, The Library (6th series) 12 (1): 56. Moschella, J., S. Lindenbaum and L. H. Newcomb (2015), ‘Frances Wolfreston and “Hor” Playbooks at the BPL’, Boston Public Library: Collections of Distinction. Available online: https://www.bpl.org/ distinction/2015/12/21/frances-wolfreston-and-hor-playbooks (posted 21 December 2015). Nelson, A. H. (2005), ‘Shakespeare and the Bibliophiles: From the Earliest Years to 1616’, in R. Myers, M. Harris and G. Mandelbrote (eds), Owners, Annotators and the Signs of Reading, London: The British Library, 49–73. Newcomb, L. H. (2004a), ‘Gendering Prose Romance in Renaissance England’, in Corinne Saunders (ed.), A Companion to Romance, Oxford: Blackwell, 121–39. Newcomb, L. H. (2004b), ‘Kirkman, Francis’, ODNB. Available online: https://doi-org.proxy2.library.illinois.edu/10.1093/ref:odnb/ 15672.

FRANCES WOLFRESTON’S ANNOTATIONS

265

Newcomb, L. H. (2016), ‘ “Hor Nam is Frances”: A Book Collector Writing Her Life’ at ‘The Idea of a Life, 1500–1700’, Centre for Early Modern Studies, Oxford University. Available online: https://www. ideals.illinois.edu/browse?type=author&value–ewcomb%2C+Lori+H. Newcomb, L. H. and S. Lindenbaum (2015), ‘Marking Lives: Women Readers and Print Almanacs’, Workshop at Attending to Women: Marking Time, University of Milwaukee (unpublished). Olson, R. (2019), ‘The Continuing Adventures of Blanchardyn and Eglantine: Responsible Speculation about Early Modern Fan Fiction’, PMLA 134: 298–314. Palmer, P. (2015), ‘Inscription of Frances Wolfreston’. Available online: https://twitter.com/ClarkLibUCLA/status/564496207955763200 (accessed 8 February 2015). Pearson, D. (2015), ‘English book owners in the seventeenth century: a work in progress listing’. Available online: https://bibsocamer.org/ wp-content/uploads/Pearson_BSA.pdf. Pratt, A. T. (2015), ‘Stab-Stitching and the Status of Early English Playbooks as Literature’, The Library 16 (3): 304–28. Pratt, A. T. (2017), ‘Drama fan Frances Wolfreston’. Available online: https://twitter.com/aarontpratt/status/908332776587489280 (accessed 14 September 2017). Roberts, S. (2003), Reading Shakespeare’s Poems in Early Modern England, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Sae, K. (2013), ‘The Role of Women in the Canonisation of Shakespeare: From Elizabethan Theatre to the Shakespeare Jubilee’, PhD thesis, King’s College, London. Scott-Warren, J. (2010a), ‘Books in the Bedchamber’, in J. N. King (ed.), Tudor Books and Readers, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 232–52. Scott-Warren, J. (2010b), ‘Reading Graffiti in the Early Modern Book’, Huntington Library Quarterly 73 (3): 363–81. Sherman, W. H. (2008), Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Sitwell, G. (1890), ‘Pocket almanacks at Renishaw, 1671–1721’, Journal of the Derbyshire Archaeological and Natural History Society 12: 193–227. Smyth, A. (2016), ‘Money, Accounting, and Life-Writing, 1600–1700: Balancing a Life’, in A. Smyth (ed.), A History of English Autobiography, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 86–99. Thompson, A. and S. Roberts (eds) (1997), Women Reading Shakespeare, 1660–1900: An Anthology of Criticism, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Watt, T. (1991), Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550–1640, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

266

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

Werner, S. (2008a), ‘Frances Wolfreston, Book Collector’, Wynken de Worde. Available online: https://sarahwerner.net/blog/2008/09/franceswolfreston-book-collector (accessed 23 March 2019). Werner, S. (2008b), ‘Frances Wolfresston hor bouk’, Wynken de Worde. Available online: https://sarahwerner.net/blog/2008/08/franceswolfresston-hor-bouk (accessed 23 March 2019). Werner, S. (2009), ‘Is Othello a sad book?’, Wynken de Worde. Available online: https://sarahwerner.net/blog/2009/05/is-othello-a-sad-book (accessed 23 March 2019. Wiggins, A. (2010), ‘Frances Wolfreston’s Chaucer’, in P. Hardman and A. Lawrence-Mathers (eds), Women and Writing, c.1340–c.1650: The Domestication of Print Culture, Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 77–89.

13 Afterword: Widows, orphans and other errors Helen Smith

A widow is a mistake: product of a lack of time, skill or care. It is a typographical term, used to describe a short line at the end of a paragraph. At its most egregious, a widow stands alone at the top of a page. Orphans, by contrast, are premature arrivals: the first line of a new paragraph, sitting unaccompanied at the foot of a column or leaf. In this usage, these are not early modern terms. For the first use of ‘widow’ in this sense, the OED cites the S. S. McClure Co’s 1904 Manual of Rules for Compositors. There, the term is diminutive: ‘Care should also be exercised to overcome “widdies” at the top of pages’ (McClure 1904: 25; cited in ‘widow’, n. 10). The McClure Company’s scare quotes suggest that the word should be familiar to readers: that the author of the Rules is reporting, rather than inventing, the jargon of the printing house. ‘Orphans’ is more modern still: the OED gives its first use in this context as the December 1980 issue of Office magazine, which promises to tackle ‘Elimination of widow and orphan lines’ – not the most festive of sentiments for a Christmas issue (n. and adj., 2.c). These terms give a name to an older problem. In the first printers’ manual in English, published in parts in 1683–4, Joseph Moxon, hydrographer, globe-maker and master printer, runs through a list of errors of the page: ‘Nor do good Compositers account it good 267

268

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

Workmanship to begin a Page with a Break-line’ (1962: 217). He explains the techniques a compositor can use to avoid this unsightly mistake, padding out preceding lines with extra spaces, or cutting unnecessary words to squeeze danglers onto the line above. Moxon’s twentieth-century editors annotate this section of the text with confident authority: ‘English printers,’ they say, ‘call a break-line at the head of a page a “widow”: Dutch printers call it a whore’s son” ’ (1962: 217). In England, the line is a relict, something left behind; in Holland, it is altogether illegitimate, the unwelcome product of a casual, commercial relationship, out of place, and inclined to cause problems.

And secondly, Miss Henrietta C. Bartlett, whose share in my labours has been so considerable that in all fair justice her name should have appeared on the title page. De Ricci 1921: xiii1

Orphans are children who have lost at least one parent. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, petitioning widows described themselves as responsible for the well-being of the orphans left behind at their husbands’ deaths. In his popular Italian-English dictionary A World of Words (1598), John Florio defines ‘Hórfano’ as ‘an orphan, a fatherlesse child. Also a precious stone that glisters in the darke’; John Minsheu in A Dictionary in Spanish and English (1599) translates ‘Enechádo’ as ‘a childe laide out, an orphan’. In social terms, the orphan is ‘laid out’ or abandoned; for modern editors, fiddling with page design, an orphan is poor layout, words out of place. Widows are women whose husbands have died. Florio gives us ‘Vedoua, a widow. Also alone, destitute or without’; ‘Vedouanza, widow-hood. Also lacke of things’; ‘Vedouare, to widow, to bereaue, to diuide, to leaue alone, to make widow, to depriue, to leaue desolate, to destitute, to make comfortlesse, to diuorce or take ones deere thing from, to deuide or take a way, to separate, to leaue alone’. ‘Vedouetta’, he says, means ‘a sillie poore little widdow’. As

AFTERWORD

269

a verb, ‘to widow’ focuses not on who is still present, but on that which has been cut off. It is, in Florio’s definitions, a bleak and haunting term. What remains? The chapters in this volume by Elizabeth Zeman Kolkovich, Lori Humphrey Newcomb and Georgianna Ziegler are powerful in restoring the bonds some early modern women created through books and reading, uncovering how women brought ‘dear things’ – books, families, friends – together, considered the comfort of others (as much a spiritual as a physical term in this period), and used practices of sharing, collecting, annotating and copying to do the work of addition and multiplication, rather than division or taking away. Erika Boeckeler considers how a woman might mark the absence of a husband from a title page, making her widowed status more overt. Boeckeler’s chapter deals most explicitly with questions of visual culture which recur at a number of points throughout this volume, from Valerie Wayne’s and Martine Van Elk’s thoughtful readings of the portrait which adorns our cover to Heidi Craig’s concern for the disparity between images of clean, attractive rag-pickers, and the indigent experiences of their real-life counterparts. Boeckeler’s chapter also, like those of Alan Farmer, Sarah Neville and Van Elk, in a valuable comparative contribution, highlights what widows might bring with them: the printing house inheritances they sometimes carried forward under their own names or brought to new partnerships (marital or otherwise) with other stationers.

First and foremost, we must acknowledge the pivotal role played by Sue Anne Batey Blackman, who was a coauthor in all but name. Baumol et al. 2003: ix

A widow, says the OED sternly, is ‘a woman whose spouse has died and who has not married again’ (n. I.1.a.). Not so, says William Alley, Bishop of Exeter, writing a meditation on the first epistle of St

270

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

Peter in 1565: ‘Saint Hierome him selfe, to whose charge this errour was layd, that he would not haue a widow to marry again, writeth in one of his epistles: Non damno bigamos, trigamos, nec octogamos, I do not condemn them that marry twise, nor thrise, nor eight tymes.’ In case there is any misunderstanding, Alley adds a clarifying note: ‘yet this is to be vnderstanded, that they marry successiuely, one after an other’ (1565: Dd1r). The implication is that to be widowed once is to be a widow forever, even if a woman moves forward into further marriages. In 1589, Thomas Cooper wrote a lengthy response to the pseudonymous pamphleteer Martin Marprelate. In doing so, he highlighted the importance of widows to questions of print inheritance. Citing the 1586 Star Chamber decree limiting the number of master printers and presses in London, Cooper affirmed the honesty of Archbishop Whitgift in naming Thomas Orwin as a master printer: ‘Hee erected no newe Printer, contrary to that decree: but vsed meanes by vvay of persvvasion for that partie, commended to him by his neighbors, to be a very honest and poore man, hauing maried also the vvidovve of a Printer’ (1589: G1v). The woman Orwin married in order to succeed to the position of master printer was the multiply widowed (and wedded) Joan Sturgis Kingston Robinson Orwin, whose long career is discussed by Neville and Boeckeler in this collection. Widows were crucial to the structures of inheritance that underpinned and perpetuated the early modern book trades. Able to inherit the property, and sometimes the networks, of their husbands, a number of widows became stationers in their own right; some remarried, enabling their spouses to equip themselves with the tools and stock of their predecessors in marriage and in trade, but also securing their own business futures. Widows, typographic or fleshly, carry on lines; they intrude into consciousness, taking up space.

I have also to thank Mrs. Dorothy Thompson, an historian to whom I am related by the accident of marriage. Each chapter has been discussed with her, and I have been well placed to borrow not only her ideas but material from her notebooks. Thompson 1963: 14

AFTERWORD

271

The chapters in the first part of this collection are concerned primarily with women’s roles as book producers. Charting the activities and representation of England’s poverty-stricken ragwomen, Craig offers a bravura example of how far this attention to women’s cultural and practical agency can fruitfully extend. Part 2 considers women’s unacknowledged roles as editors and even coauthors, as in Sarah Wall-Randell’s reading of the paratextual positionings surrounding The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia. The chapters in the final part offer a stimulating variety of methodologies for uncovering women’s readerly activities. The lines between reading and making are, however, blurred in generative ways. In Kolkovich’s chapter, for instance, the scripture-reading, tobaccosmoking Countess of Hastings is as much a writer as a reader. Earlier in the collection, Molly Yarn tells the story of Katharine Lee Bates, a woman editor of Shakespeare who was both reader and maker, and whose thoughtful editing and writing were inseparable from her commitments as a teacher. Let me add another crossing of lines: an example of a woman printer becoming a marginal writer and commentator. Writing on the biblical book of Malachy, in 1641 (a text concerned with the status and rights of widows), Richard Stock showed himself alert to paratexts and publication history. He describes Acts 6.1, which he cites in defence of his thesis that God has a particular care for widows, as ‘A place [i.e. a biblical verse] pertinently observed and used by the Widow of Iohn Knobbarus the Printer, in her Epistle Dedicatory to the Bishop of Antwerp, before the late Iesuite Bresserus his booke De Conscientia’ (1641: Fff2v). ‘John Knobbarus’ was Jan or Joannes Cnobbaert, born in Antwerp in 1590, whose wife, Maria de Man, continued the business after his death, describing herself as ‘viduam Joannis Cnobbari’.2 Defending widows from oppression, Stock is aware of women’s textual interventions, and brings a woman printer’s apposite reflection to the view of English readers.

272

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

[M]y wife Patricia . . . has been a superb research assistant, having read almost as many soldiers’ letters and diaries as I have. Along with those soldiers, she deserves to be named a co-author of ‘For Cause and Comrades’. McPherson 1997: xv

Rebecca Olson’s concept of ‘responsible speculation’ recurs throughout this book, overtly in Wayne’s introduction and Newcomb’s affectionate tracing of Frances Wolfreston’s bookish habits, and implicitly in the willingness of contributors to consider the possibilities and limits of their evidence, and find moments where suggestion and imagination offer methodological rewards. Kirk Melnikoff’s chapter provides a stimulating case study, moving between productive hypothesis and careful reading to produce a persuasive account of the tight-knit connections between Isabella Whitney and her printer, while Wall-Randell asks how far it is acceptable to push her claiming of Mary Sidney as co-author of The Arcadia, and, perhaps, as pseudonymous author of its paratexts. It is certainly tempting to speculate on the question of if and how women stationers read the books they printed, published or sold. What, for instance, did the widow of John Herford think of The censure and iudgement of the famous clark Erasmus of Roterodam (STC 10450), which she printed for Robert Stoughton in 1550, and which, as its long title explained, dealt with the topic of ‘dyuorsemente betwene man and wyfe’? In line with the chapters of Van Elk and Boeckeler, we can ask how a paratext as simple as a woman printer’s name, or the word ‘widow’ on a title page or in a colophon, might work on readers. Erasmus’s controversial treatise, translated by Nicolas Lesse, closes by bringing readers of its colophon face-toface with a working (or, in Wayne’s term, labouring) woman, whose widowed status invokes both a prior marital partnership and significant social, legal and financial independence. The widow Herford’s printing offers us a moment at which the works of Europe’s arch-humanist were subtly mediated for English readers by a woman. To speculate (from the Latin ‘to spy out, watch, examine, observe’), albeit responsibly, is to risk both errancy and error, modes

AFTERWORD

273

with which the bookwomen in this volume were not unacquainted. As Ziegler points out in her chapter, Margaret Cavendish took great care to correct printers’ errors in almost every surviving copy of her biography of her husband, as well as in presentation copies of CCXI Sociable Letters. Cavendish’s published works are frequently accompanied by errata lists. In her collected plays of 1662, she explains to the reader: These be the most considerable errors of the Press, which make any alteration in the sense, or may occasion a mistake in the Readers; many other of lesse note are obvious to the eye; as misspellings, omissions, misplacing of Letters, syllables, and sometimes words: but all these are too numerous to be here set down, and so inconsiderable, that they may be by every common Reader at once observed and corrected. 1662: 683 In Philosophical and physical opinions, Cavendish’s discussion of print-house error segues into a defence of her own errancy. She reflects, ‘if there be any other faults of indiscretions in it, I the Author am to be pardoned by reason somwhat of it was writ in the dawning of my knowledge, and experience, and not having a clear light I might chance to stamble in dark ignorance on molehills of errors’ (Cavendish 1655a: A4r). Error is, after all, innate to women: ‘I think it is against Nature,’ protests Cavendish in The Worlds Olio, ‘for a Woman to spell right’ (1655b: O3r). Embracing her erratic trajectory, Cavendish defends and illuminates the scrutiny experienced by early modern women in print and in person, even as she reproduces the gendering of error with which I opened this widow-laden Afterword.

The author’s greatest debt of gratitude is due his wife not only for her encouragement but for the active part that she played in shaping the book. She read the entire manuscript and found many grammatical and mathematical errors which she corrected by frequently rewriting whole sections. Eisen 1969: ix

274

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

I have interspersed this Afterword with examples culled from Twitter’s #thanksfortyping hashtag. Collectively, these nods of acknowledgement highlight two dynamics: how, precisely, we understand what it means to ‘author’ or ‘create’ a text; and how readily women’s contributions to scholarship in a wide range of fields continue to be overlooked and overwritten. Some twenty years ago, Leslie Howsam noted the disjunction between a book history that has an attention to gender built into it – that is eager to identify and study ‘outstanding anomalies in a cultural field dominated by men’ (1998: 1) – and a feminist book history, whose methodology is shaped by an ongoing concern for sex, gender and their interrelations. Instead of discovering exceptions that confirm the rule, we need, Howsam argued, to shift how we think about books and making, and how we approach our own scholarship. Yarn’s chapter in this volume offers one compelling frame through which to approach Howsam’s challenge. Her description of an emerging women’s editorial practice which rebuts, in Mary Cowden Clarke’s terms, ‘the abuse, spite and arrogance’ inherent in men’s pointed footnotes (see p. 194 above) also looks forward to the question of what feminist book history might be and do. Katharine Lee Bates’s marriage of analytical, emotional and creative responses, and her oscillation between the delights and despairs of research, provides a model for book historical labour. Newcomb’s chapter title, and her practice, provide another. Are the ‘labours of love’ she describes simply the efforts of her subject, Frances Wolfreston? Or might this phrase also describe the care the contributors to this volume have taken in recovering the labours of the women whose bookish careers they are tracing, and the kinds of network-making they are at pains to unfold? Newcomb offers us a vocabulary for thinking about our own emotional entanglements with our research, and with the bookwomen of the past. As Valerie Wayne points out at the close of her introduction, this volume is not without its omissions. Multiple challenges remain for those working in this field, including, most pressingly: how do we open up the archival recoveries of women’s bookish interventions to questions of race and to the particulars of gender and sexuality beyond questions of life-stage and marital affiliation? How do we

AFTERWORD

275

query what masculinity, in its many forms, means and has meant, whether in the cut-and-thrust of bibliographical practice or the particularities of the early modern printing house, library or paper mill? These collected essays nonetheless do important work, building a contemporary network that values female interlocutors and commentators, a labour that is reflected in its collective bibliography, as well as the specifics of its varied and rewarding chapters.

To the beloved and deplored memory of her who was the inspirer, and in part author, of all that is best in my writings – the friend and wife whose exalted sense of truth and right was my strongest incitement, and whose approbation was my chief reward – I dedicate this volume. Like all that I have written for many years, it belongs as much to her as to me. Mill 1969: 4

The essays presented here do a great deal of work in revealing the extent to which Howsam’s ‘outstanding anomalies’ may be more usual than we have thought. The more we look for women in the historical record, the more we discover them; the more we are willing to speculate in responsible but provocative ways, the more we realise that it is the idea of the anomaly which is anomalous. You can only discover so many exceptions to the rule before the rule itself loses its force. In their variability and scope, the chapters collected here show what it might mean to commit ourselves to thinking flexibly across the lived realities of women in the rag, book and writing trades, and about the women who read and used the resulting books. They ask us to consider the kinds of representation, scholarly practice, and disputes that have brought into view the gendered rhetorics and assumptions attached to widows, orphans and other forms of womanly error. And they encourage us to dwell upon the interplay between these concerns, seeking new ways to think about, respond to and handle the books and pages we have inherited from our early modern mothers.

276

WOMEN’S L ABOUR AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK

Notes 1 Like the rest of the extracts which punctuate this afterword, this acknowledgement derives from the #thanksfortyping hashtag on Twitter, which aims to highlight women’s contributions to scholarship. This example was shared by Adam G. Hooks. 2 CERL Thesaurus, http://thesaurus.cerl.org/record/cni00035668.

References Alley, W. (1565), Ptochomuseion [sic]. = The poore mans librarie Rapsodiae, London: John Day. Baumol, W. J., A. S. Blinder and E. N. Wolff (2003), Downsizing in America: Reality, Causes, and Consequences, New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Cavendish, M. (1662), Playes written by the thrice noble, illustrious and excellent princess, the Lady Marchioness of Newcastle. London: A. Warren for John Martyn, James Allestrye and Thomas Dicas. Cavendish, M. (1655a), The Philosophical and physical opinions, London: for J. Martin and J. Allestrye. Cavendish, M. (1655b), The Worlds Olio, London: for J. Martin and J. Allestrye. Cooper, T. (1589), An admonition to the people of England, London: Deputies of Christopher Barker. Eisen, M. M. (1969), Introduction to Mathematical Probability Theory, New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Florio, J. (1598), A Worlde of Wordes, London: Arnold Hatfield for Edward Blount. Howsam, L. (1998), ‘In My View: Women and Book History’, SHARP News 7: 1–2. Manual Containing Rules Governing Compositors in the Composing Room of the S. S. McClure Co. (1904), New York: S. S. McClure Co. McPherson, J. M. (1997), For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mill, J. S. (1969), On Liberty and Other Writings, Stefan Collini (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Minsheu, J. (1599), A Dictionary in Spanish and English, London: Edmund Bollifant. Moxon, J. (1962), Mechanick Exercises on the Whole Art of Printing, 2nd edn, Herbert Davis and Harry Carter (eds), New York: Dover.

AFTERWORD

277

de Ricci, S. (1921), The Book Collector’s Guide: A Practical Handbook of British and American Bibliography, Philadelphia, PA and New York: The Rosenbach Company. Stock, R. (1641), A learned and very usefull commentary upon the whole prophesie of Malachy, London: T. H. and R. H. for Daniel Frere and William Wells. Thompson, E. P. (1963), The Making of the English Working Class, London: Victor Gollancz.

278

INDEX

This index covers all of the essays in this collection, their notes and appendices; it excludes the frontmatter preceding the essays and items in the References. Italic numbers refer to page numbers of illustrations. The surnames of early modern women changed frequently in a society that required they assume their husbands’ surnames when they married. Yet women remained the same human agents throughout those patronymic mutations. This index recognizes the continuity of their identities in the midst of shifting signifiers by listing early modern women by their birth names in its main entries when those are known. Cross-references are provided to their married names and the names and titles under which they later became known. Main entries further identify early modern women as wives or widows, provide the names of husbands where possible, and on occasion mention other family members. When it is unclear whether a wife outlived her last husband, she is listed as wife. This approach is designed to help users learn more about those they are seeking and convey information that may be helpful for further archival research. Early modern men are also indexed under their titles when appropriate but are not identified in relation to their wives’ names because men’s names remained largely stable regardless of whom they married. A., I. The Good Womans Champion, 256 Ackere, Hester Jacobs van, (widow of Jacob de Jonge), 134 Adams, Elizabeth (wife of Thomas Adams), 57, 62 Adams, Thomas, 86, 91 advertisements: of books, 121, 155, 164, 176, 200, 259; of booksellers, 120–1, 158 affection, 163, 262, 272; in marriage, 9, 69, 228

affective reading, 14, 254, 255, 261 age: of apprentices, 90, 91; differences in, 9; of women, 39; see also youth agency, 3, 11, 106, 164, 165, 172, 173, 179, 180, 230; authorial, 3; printers’, 98; women’s, see female agency Agrippa, Heinrich Cornelius, 183 Albacar, Martín Cortés de, 100 Albro, Sylvia Rodgers, 31 Alexander, Gavin, 175, 179, 182, 183

279

280

INDEX

aliens, 18, 158; Returns of Aliens, 20; see also foreigners; immigrants Allde, Edward, 125 Allde, Elizabeth, see Oulton Allde, Elizabeth Allde, John, 148 Allde, Margaret (wife of John Allde), 62 Allen, Hannah, 119, 121, 138 Allen, William, 7 Alley, William, 269–70 Allot, Mary (wife of Robert Allott), 59 allusions, textual, 16, 147, 150, 155, 156, 158, 197 Alwes, D. B., 166 amanuenses, 16, 176; see also secretaries; scribes America, 18, 188, 189, 190, 198; literacy in, 189 Ames, Richard, The folly of love, 39 Amsterdam, 1, 12, 116, 117, 119, 120, 121, 123, 124, 126, 128, 129, 130, 131 Andrewes, Lancelot, 228, 229, 231, 232, 237 Andrews, Elizabeth (widow of John Andrews), 258, 259 Anne, Queen of Great Britain, 36 annotations, 218, 247, 248, 249, 250, 251, 252, 253, 255, 268, 275; in almanacs, 252, 253; attribution of, 248; audience for, 254; at bawdy passages, 248; business transactions as, 252; of births, 252; as collaboration, 261; as commentaries, 226, 227; defined, 245, 249; legi, 252; marginal, 36, 218, 219, 247; memorials, 220; scribbles, 213, 214, 218, 226; to self, 245, 254

annotators, women, 1, 4, 12, 18, 33, 218–20, 248; see also Middlemore Wolfreston, Frances; Stanley Hastings, Elizabeth Antwerp, 7, 271 Apollodorus, 150 apprentices, 3, 8, 22, 53, 55, 69, 79, 85, 87, 90, 91, 92, 147, 158; contracts, 79; of Dutch women stationers, 12, 130–7, 138, 139; marriages, 8, 50, 51, 53, 68, 69; of widow publishers, 5, 12, 54, 55, 62–7, 69, 71; women, 22 Arber, Edward, Transcript of the Stationers’ Registers, 6, 8, 18, 21, 50–1, 53, 58, 68, 69, 70, 72, 78, 83, 85, 87, 90, 91, 92, 146 Arcerius, Geesje, see Coopers, Geesje Arcerius, Johannes, 132 Arcerius, Samuel, 132 archives and archival work, 2, 4, 5, 10, 11, 13, 17, 19, 97, 110, 189, 190, 191, 192, 198, 200, 225, 227, 236, 243, 274 Arentsz, Catharina, see Wijnenberg, Catharina Ariosto, Ludovico, 9, 18 Aristotle, 87 Armada pamphlets, 7, 18, 21 Armstrong, G., 90 Arnold Bruyningh, Mercy (widow of Joseph Bruyningh), 120, 132, 139 art history, 1, 2, 95, 96, 108 Ashfold, Ann, 220 assigns, 64, 72, 77, 125, 126 Atherton, I., 213 Athias, Joseph, 122 Aubrey, John, 175

INDEX

auctions and auction catalogues, 245, 246, 247, 259 authors: composition by, 4, 7, 127, 147, 154, 167, 168, 170, 174, 177, 256; false, 179; intention of, 172, 181; labouring, 3, 4; male, 4, 148, 225, 233, 238; overlooked, 22, 273; of pamphlets, 220; Quaker, 210; relationship to publishers and printers, 15, 96, 119, 120, 121, 122, 127, 129; see also co-authors, women authors, women, 2, 3–4, 12, 123, 145–61, 163–85, 207, 210–11, 219, 220, 221, 226–30, 252–3, 255, 256, 259, 271, 272; see also Sidney Herbert, Mary; Whitney, Isabella authorship: attribution of, 14, 21, 100, 157, 158, 173, 174, 176, 178, 179, 183, 233, 254, 256, 259, 260, 262; early modern conceptions of, 3–4, 165–6, 167; ignored, 256–7, 260, 261; indicated by possessive in title, 163–4; laureate, 3–4, 155; meaning of, 167; relation to authorization, 178, 180; see also pseudonyms Awdley, Elizabeth (widow of John Awdley), 78 Awdley, John, 78 Awdley, Sampson, 78 Bacon, Anne, see Cooke Bacon, Anne Bailey Charlewood Roberts, Alice (widow of John Charlewood, wife of James Roberts), 11, 12, 63, 68, 69, 81–6, 89, 90, 91, 104–6, 108, 111–12 Baker, Richard, 60

281

Baldwin, Anne or Abigail, 119, 138 Baldwin, William, 111 Bale, Charlotte, 217 Ballad Partners cartel, 248, 261 ballads, 58, 71, 149, 157, 190, 249, 253, 260; concerning women, 148–9; publishing, 147, 148, 159 Bancken, Margaretha van, 1, 19, 115–16, 121, 138 Barclay, John, Argenis, 217 Barker, R., 126 Barnard, J., 68 Barnes, Joseph, 57 Baron, S., 81 Barrett, Hannah, see Cotton Barrett, Hannah Barrett, Tim, 29, 42 Bartlett, Henrietta C., 268 Bates, Jane, 192 Bates, Katharine Lee, 14, 15, 187–203, 271, 274; ‘America the Beautiful’, 15, 188, 198, 200; humour, 191; journal entries, 191, 192, 196, 200; pedagogy of, 194, 196, 197, 199; as war correspondent, 15 Bathurst, Elizabeth, Truth’s Vindication, 210 Bayly, Lewis, The Practise of Pietie, 217, 228–32, 237 Baynes, Paul, 60 Beale, Dorothea, 190 Beale, John, 56 Beaumont, Francis, 234 Beaumont, Sir Thomas, 231, 234 Becket Vavasour, Alice (widow of Leonard Becket, wife of Nicholas Vavasour), 69 Becon, Thomas, 60 Bedford, Thomas, 60 Beerninck Elzevier, Anna (widow of Daniel Elzevier), 133

282

INDEX

beggary, 1, 34, 35, 36; see also indigence Beilin, Elaine, 166, 173 Bell, Jane (wife of Moses Bell), 260 Bell, Maureen, 5, 10, 11, 48, 51, 53, 54, 68, 69, 79–80, 96, 97, 98, 109, 117, 118, 119, 123, 124, 125, 138, 139 ben Gurion, Joseph, 100 Bennet, Bridget, 220 bequests, 2, 78, 145, 245, 249; see also wills Bergh, Joanna van den, see Wastelier, Joanna Bergh, Johannes van den, 131 Berrie, Thomas, 149, 155, 157 Berthelet Payne, Margery (widow of Thomas Berthelet, wife of Richard Payne), 52, 68, 69, 104, 110, 111, 112 Bible, books in: Galatians, 6, 8; Greek New Testament, 6, 20; Isaiah, 40; Malachy, 271; Psalms, 83; New Testament, 258 Bibles, 17, 100, 189; annotations in, 218; English, 122, 126; Geneva, 218; King James, 228, 230; women readers and owners of, 210, 217, 218 biblical passages, in miscellanies, 226, 227, 228, 230, 252, 259 bibliographers, 52, 76, 81, 82, 89, 187, 209, 251 bibliographic analysis, 2, 11, 21, 79, 81, 89, 147–8; history, 11, 21, 97 bibliographies, 2, 71, 109, 172, 173, 196, 201, 256, 275; literary, 256; see also resources for research Bidwell, J., 34, 36

Bing, Alice, see Burton Waterston Coldock Bing, Alice Bing, Isaac, 53 Birrell, T. A., 247 birth name (maiden name), 6, 20, 90, 97, 109, 115, 130, 131–7, 182 Bishop, Elizabeth (wife of Edward Bishop), 62, 71 Bishop, Richard, 58 Bisshopp, Harriet Anne, 217, 218 Black, Joseph, 210 Blackman, Sue Anne Batey, 269 Blackman, William, 17 Blackmon, Alice, 210 Blackmore, Edward, 17 Blaeuw, Hendrickje (widow of Gijsbert de Groot), 122, 133 Blayney, Peter W. M., 4, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 68, 70, 79, 80, 82, 83, 90, 92, 100, 109, 110, 111, 112 Blond Edwards, widow (widow of Manassas Blond, wife of George Edwards), 69 Blond, Manassas, 69 Blount, Elizabeth, 212 Boccaccio, Giovanni, 14, 90, 211 Bock, Ernst, 31 Bodenham, John, Englands Helicon, 260 Boeckeler, Erika Mary, 11, 22, 90, 95–114, 127, 269, 270, 272 Boeteman, Abegail, see Niebergen, Abegail van Boeteman, Pieter Dirckszoon, 131 Boggis, Elizabeth, 218, 221 Boler, Anne (wife of James Boler 1), 57, 59, 60, 62, 71, 72 Boler, James 1, 70 Boner, Ann, 218 book bindings, 16, 17, 25, 42, 209, 214, 221, 226, 248, 255;

INDEX

calf or vellum, 16, 248; decorated, 16, 214; livestock used for, 42; velvet, 16 book buyers, 47, 49, 54, 130, 155, 247, 154, 249, 253 book buying: in America, 190; in Amsterdam, 126; in England, 49, 243 book collectors and collecting, 2, 4, 10, 12, 14, 18, 19, 33, 207, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 216, 218, 219, 220, 238, 245, 246, 247, 248, 249, 250, 254, 256, 269 book formats, 82, 84, 98, 245, 247; duodecimo, 84, 213; folio, 15, 82, 163, 164, 165, 168, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 183, 189, 192, 193, 194, 197, 211, 249, 253; octavo, 80, 82, 147, 149, 152, 256, 260; quarto, 14, 15, 16, 36, 80, 81, 82, 151, 163, 164, 167, 170, 172, 175, 179, 189, 192, 193, 194, 207, 243, 246, 260; sixteens, 20 book history, 2, 4, 12, 16, 17, 18, 33, 71, 108, 118; absence of evidence for women’s participation in, 11, 17, 77, 79, 89, 176; activist, 10; feminist, 10, 11, 274; as international, 18 book owners, 2, 14, 15, 209, 211, 215, 232, 246, 248, 252; women, 4, 10, 12, 14, 199, 208, 207–23, 228, 231–2, 243–66 book production: collaboration in, 3, 12, 13, 16, 19, 47, 59–61, 95, 96, 98, 99, 108, 121, 147, 151, 165, 166, 167, 169, 171, 174, 261; financed 1, 33, 54,

283

147; importance of rag-women in, 33–4, 36–7, 41–2 book trade, 67, 79, 85, 86, 87, 89, 275; bonds between members, 76; class considerations in, 2, 33, 261; international character, 18, 116, 119, 121; joint business ownership in, 47, 120, 139; as male dominated, 76, 79–80, 116, 117; marriages within, 8, 52, 53; place of widows in, 50–72; racial considerations in, 17–18, 23; religious considerations in, 119–20; stationers’ roles in, 49, 55; unpredictability of, 155 bookbinders, 6, 15, 20, 22, 55, 145; female, 17, 117 bookbinding (sewing), 17, 117, 215–16; stab-stitched, 145, 255 bookplates, 208, 213 books: affordable editions, 190; annotations in, see annotations; cataloguing, 208–9, 212, 225, 245, 248; circulation of, 4, 209, 247; confiscated, 5; as gifts, see gifts, books as; inscriptions in, see inscriptions; high-loss genres, 88; joint ownership of, 221, 238; lending, 231, 249–51, 253, 254–5, 256, 262; larger-format, 248; as material commodities, 145, 146, 154, 155; ownership of, see book owners; paratexts in, see paratexts; presentation copies, 226, 227, 237, 273; presentation of, 155, 163, 169, 172, 177, 213; provenance of, 14, 34, 208, 246, 252; as relics of worship, 213, 14; signatures in, 208, 210, 212, 213, 214, 216, 218; size, 209, 226

284

INDEX

books, types: almanacs, 85, 122, 247, 249, 250, 251, 252, 253, 255; catechisms, 56, 71, 91, 112, 120, 213; chapbooks, 247, 248, 261; commonplace books, 156, 159, 237, 252; conduct books, 4, 40, 212, 230, 243; devotional, 13, 16, 120, 166, 194, 210, 225, 227, 228, 229, 248, 257, 259; glossaries, 151, 190; herbals, 212; household, 212; instructional, 230; jestbooks, 252, 255, 258; legal, 100, 101, 213, 232; ‘literary’, 14, 211, 213, 232, 243, 260; plays, 14, 19, 191, 211; primers, 210; prayer books, 56, 71, 210, 213, 226; romances, 211, 220, 247, 253; schoolbooks, 88, 91; series, 15, 121, 151, 187, 190, 191, 193, 196, 197, 198, 200, 201, 253; travel, 88 booksellers, 5, 6, 17, 49, 52, 53, 55–6, 68, 70, 76, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88–9, 92, 98, 112, 125, 152, 156, 215, 256, 259; booksellerpublishers, 120, 125; Dutch, 117, 118, 120, 124, 130, 131–7 booksellers, women, 16, 19, 47, 48, 53, 54–6, 59–61, 61, 62–7, 70, 71, 78, 80–1, 86–7, 89, 107, 108, 117, 120–1, 123–4, 130, 131–7 bookselling: retail, 16, 68, 70, 80, 85, 155; wholesale, 16, 49, 55–6, 57, 59, 68, 70, 80, 85, 92, 147 bookshops, 1, 15, 55, 58, 67, 71, 85, 121, 124, 145, 146, 147, 150, 151, 152, 154, 157, 215; Black Boy, 17, 23; men

acquiring, 8, 52, 53, 54, 61, 69, 123; number of, 60; rentals, 254; Richard Field’s, 2, 156, 158; Richard Jones’s 145–61; Saracen’s Head, 17; shop signs, 17, 104, 111; Turk’s Head, 17; women owners of, see booksellers, women Boom, Aegje, see Weyers, Aegje Boom, Dirk, 131 Boom, Jan Hendrickszoon, 131 Boom, Johanna, see Veeris, Johanna Boro, Joyce, 100, 109 Bosschaert, Margrieta (widow of Paulus Stroobant), 136 Bossy, John, 210 Boswell, Eleanore, 6, 7, 9, 82 Boterenbrood, Hendrik Harmenszoon, 134 Boterenbrood, Machteld, see Daelen, Machteld van Bottoms, Janet, 188 Bouman, Aaltje, see Broers, Aaltje Bouman, Jan Jacobszoon, 131 Bourne, Claire M. L., 247 Bowers, Fredson, 187 Bradock, Richard, 53, 68 Bradock, Richard, wife of, see Robinson Bradock, widow Bradshaw, William, 56, 230–1 Brandt, Maritje, see Jakobs, Maritje Brandt, Marten Janszoon, 120, 131 Brathwaite, Richard, 212, 221, 230, 239, 243, 254 Bray, Jan de, 1, 115, 116, 138 Brayman Hackel, Heidi, 4, 23, 216, 231, 232, 236, 238 Breedan, Joyce, 212, 213, 214 Brennan, Michael G., 166, 167, 175, 179

INDEX

Bresserus, De Conscientia, 271 Breton, Nicholas, 159 Breughel, Gerrit Hendrickszoon van, 131 Breughel, Trijntje van, see Cornelis, Trijntje Bridgewater, John, 227 Bright, Timothy, 257 Brinsley, John, 56, 233 British Book Trade Index, 140 broadsides, 148, 249, 253 Broers, Aaltje (widow of Jan Jacobszoon Bouman), 131 Broers, Willemijntje (widow of Joost Broersz), 132 Broersz, Joost, 132 Broersz, Willemijntje, see Broers, Willemijntje Broome, Joan (wife of William Broome), 57, 62, 68, 71, 107, 108 Broome, William, 57 Brouwer de Jonge, Jan Janssen, 132 Brouwer, Geesje, see Coopers, Geesje Brown, Meaghan J., 7, 8, 20, 21 Browne, Alice (wife of John Browne), 63 Bruno, Giordano, 20 Bruyningh, Joseph, 132 Bruyningh, Mercy, see Arnold, Mercy Buchan, Hannah, 234 Buis, A., 39 Bullens, Jacomina (widow of Gerbrandt Schagen), 136 Burby, Elizabeth (wife of Cuthbert Burby), 63, 125 Burdet, Robert, 151 Burgess, Dorothy, 197 Burgh, Abraham Meijnartszoon van den, 120, 132

285

Burgh, Vroutje van den, see Jans, Vroutje Burghley, Lord, see Cecil, William Burke, Victoria, 229, 230, 237 Burroughs, Jeremiah, Two Treatises, 38 Burton Waterston Coldock Bing, Alice (widow of Richard Waterson, widow of Francis Coldock, widow of Isaac Bing), 53 Burton, Robert, 257 Busby, John, 86, 91 Butter Newbery, Joan 1 (widow of Thomas Butter, widow of John Newbery), 57, 65, 90; influence of, 80–1 Butter, Nathaniel, 80, 81 Butter, Thomas, 80, 81 Buvelot, Q., 138 Bynneman, Henry, 152 Cadman, Thomas, 88 Calhoun, Thomas, 36–7 Calvert, Elizabeth, 119, 121 Calvin, Jean, 6, 47, 48, 54, 91, 128, 214 Camber, A., 251 canon: canonical texts, 33, 41, 76; literary, 4, 18, 174, 246, 260, 261 Carew, Thomas, 234 Carlton, C., 69 Carter, Ann, 212, 213 Cary, Alice and Phoebe, 200 Cary, Lucius, Viscount Falkland, 232 Casteleyn, Abraham, 1, 115–16, 138 Catholic books: confiscated, 210; conspirators, 37; see also Gunpowder Plot

286

INDEX

Catholicism: 18, 122; antiCatholicism, 145, 154; conversion to, 122; English, 7–8, 210 Cavendish, Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, see Lucas Cavendish, Margaret Cawood, John, 100 Caxton, William, 18, 19, 262 Cecil, William, Lord Burghley, 7, 8, 9, 21; CERL Thesaurus, 276 Cervantes, Miguel de, 14, 211, 249, 250 Chapman, George, 254 Charles I, King of England, 194 Charlewood, Alice, see Bailey Charlewood Roberts, Alice Charlewood, Geoffrey, 90 Charlewood, John, 69, 81, 83–6, 89, 90, 91, 110, 111 Charlewood, Richard, 90 Charlton, John, 156 Chartier, Roger, 167 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 14, 150, 211, 214, 217, 249 Chester, Robert, 260 childbirth, 91, 96, 102, 103, 253 Cholmeley, Elizabeth, see Pickering Jackson Redman Cholmeley Cholmeley, Elizabeth Christ, life of: chronology, 16; as male pelican, 99 Cicero, Marcus Tullius, 6, 87, 91 Claas, Catrina (widow of Barent Willems van der Plaet, wife of Dirck Barentszoon Ficke), 135 Clair, C., 5, 18, 20, 24 Clara Mariana, Reverend Mother, 216 Clark, Alice, 3 Clark, J., 261

Clark, Mary 122, 138 Clarke, Helen Archibald, 198, 200 Clarke, Mary Cowden, 194, 274 class, 2, 38, 40, 220; aristocracy 20, 220; in book history, 13, 33; classism, 41; the elite, 2, 33, 170, 188, 231, 236; gentry, 220; low class, 37, 197, 220; middle class, 214, 218; minor-gentry, 15, 146; the poor, 2, 13, 20, 31, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 41, 43, 268, 270, 271; working class, 5, 40, 199; see also beggary; indigence; middling sort; vagrancy Clifford Sackville Buckhurst Herbert, Anne, Countess of Dorset, Pembroke and Montgomery (widow of Richard Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, third Earl of Dorset; widow of Philip Herbert, Earl of Montgomery, fourth earl of Pembroke), 177, 214, 219 Cloppenburgh, Anna, see Sweers, Anna Cloppenburgh, Evert, 132 closets, 176; books kept in, 232, 238; closet plays, 43; reading in, 230, 231, 232 clothing: lending, 40; used in papermaking, 31, 32, 38 Cnobbaert, Jan or Joannes, 271 co-authors, women, 13, 19, 165, 167, 174, 177, 182, 271, 272; see also authors, women co-publishing, 8, 47, 55, 71, 72, 90 Coe, Jane, 122, 138 Coke, Sir Edward, 213 Coker, Cait, 22 Coldock, Alice, see Burton Waterston Coldock Bing, Alice

INDEX

Coldock, Francis, 53, 152 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 190 Coles, F., 261 collaboration: between printer and author, 96, 151; between women, 19, 47, 59, 60; between women and men, 12, 13, 95, 99, 166, 169; familial, 121; in print culture, 97, 108, 174; translation as, 16; see also book production, collaboration in collation, 199; data on, 82, 90 Colwell Jackson, widow (widow of Thomas Colwell, wife of Hugh Jackson), 68 Colwell, Thomas, 52, 68, 148, 151 Coman, Katherine, 192 Comberford, Robert, 254, 262 Commelin, Jan, 132 Commelin, Trijn, see Valckenier, Trijn Jansdochter commendatory poems, 20, 149, 155, 157, 234 commodities: authors as, 83; books as, 145, 156; widows as, 51 communalism: Christian, 229; in reading, 4, 214, 215 communities, 121; gendered, 216, 227; immigrant, 18; religious, 16, 210, 215, 216, 227, 229, 231, 238 community, 13; reading as fostering, 2, 4, 225, 226, 233, 236, 238, 247, 262; stationers as, 61 compilations, 147, 149, 218 compilers, 156, 226, 227, 237, 246 composition of type, 13, 18, 82, 84, 174; compositors, 80, 84, 85, 159, 267, 268; skilled labour, 85

287

Compton, Elizabeth, 216 Cooke Bacon, Anne, Lady Bacon (wife to Sir Nicholas Bacon, mother of Francis Bacon), 16, 217 Cooke Lisle, Joan (widow of Matthew Cooke, wife of Laurence Lisle), 63, 68, 71 Coolahan, M.-L., 210, 220 Cooper, Thomas, 270 Coopers, Geesje (widow of Jan Janssen Brouwer de Jonge, widow of Johannes Arcerius, widow of Samuel Arcerius), 132 copy, 156, 157; copy-text, 172; manuscript, 84, 115, 164, 167, 183, 237; rights to copy, 77, 83, 91, 126 copying: as derivative, 96; of devices, 98; of passages and verses, 4, 14, 256, 257–9, 269; of printed works, 84 Cornelis, Trijntje (widow of Gerrit Hendrickszoon van Breughel), 131 correction(s), 84, 153, 219, 237; correcting, 170, 171, 201 correspondence, 13, 21, 117, 175, 182, 190, 192, 197–9, 200, 225, 227, 228, 231, 232, 235, 238, 272; see also letters Coster, Laurens Janszoon, 116 Cotes, Ellen, 121, 138, 212 Cotton Barrett, Hannah (widow of William Cotton, widow of William Barrett), 55, 57, 62, 71 Cotton, Clement, 60 Countesse of Pembroke’s Arcadia, The, 13, 14, 163–85, 165, 211, 216, 219, 221, 271, 272; authorship debate about, 13, 19, 163–85, 272; hog and

288

INDEX

marjoram device, 165, 176; New Arcadia, 168, 171, 172, 173, 183; ‘Old’ Arcadia, 164, 167, 171, 173, 183; ‘originary authority’ for, 180; prefaces of, 173, 174, 175; Sir Philip Sidney as ‘mayster’ of, 169; versions of, 164, 167, 168, 171, 173, 175, 177; see also Sidney, Sir Philip; Sidney Herbert, Mary courantiers, 121, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 137 court: English, 163, 178, 235; entertainments at, 234, 235; Russian, 115 cover image, 1, 19, 115, 269; sketch of, 116, 138 Cowley, Abraham, 14, 211 crafts, 96; craftsmen, 20; in the home, 78; of women, 3 Craig, Heidi, 15, 16, 29–46, 269, 271 Crawford, Julie, 165–6, 183, 225 Crawford, Patricia, 3, 220 Crook, Samuel, 213 Cunradus, Christoffel, 132 Cunradus, Ytje, see Fockens, Ytje Daelen, Machteld van (widow of Thijmen Dirckszoon Houthaeck, wife of Hendrik Harmenszoon Boterenbrood), 134 Dakins Devereux Sidney Hoby, Margaret, Lady (widow of Walter Devereux, son of 1st Earl of Essex, widow of Sir Thomas Sidney, wife of Sir Thomas Posthumous Hoby), 225, 238, 251 Dalton, Anne, 217 Daniel, Samuel, 168; Delia, 86, 166

Darcy, Lady Grace, see Redich Darcy, Grace Dartford, Kent, 16, 35, 37 Davenport, Robert, 254, 262 Davies, Eleanor, see Touchet Davies Douglas, Eleanor Davies, John, 233 Davis, Joel, 173–4, 183 Davis, Natalie Zemon, 209, 217 Dawson, Gertrude, 138 Dawson, Mary (wife of John Dawson 1), 55, 59, 63 Day, John, 98, 110 De Grazia, Margreta, 33 De Vere Herbert, Susan (wife of Philip Herbert, 4th Earl of Pembroke and 1st Earl of Montgomery), 163 dedications, 9, 13, 149, 155, 156, 163, 166, 168, 169, 170, 176, 216, 225, 233, 234, 238; see also paratexts defences, 151, 271, 273; of women, 149, 256; see also querelle de femmes Depledge, Emma, 259, 260 Dering, Edward, 12, 104, 105 desire, 8, 9, 52, 53, 121, 127, 152, 166, 168, 234, 262 Devereux Rich, Penelope (wife of Robert Rich), 176 devices, printers’, see printers’ devices devotional collections, 210, 211, 214–15, 216, 226 Dewsbury, William, 215 dialogues, 13, 37, 40, 229 diaries, of Katharine Bates, 188, 190, 191, 192, 193, 196, 197, 198, 272 dictation: of annotations, 219; as authorship, 175, 178, 179

INDEX

dictionaries, 118, 120, 175, 176, 183, 268; biographical, 208; see also Bell, Maureen; McKerrow, R. B. Digby Scudamore, Frances, Viscountess Scudamore (widow of James Scudamore, third Viscount Scudamore), 212, 213 Digby, Sir Kenelm, 212 Digges, Leonard, 91 Dionisia le Bokebyndere, 17 Distiller, N., 183 distributor(s), book, 57, 59, 61, 68, 70, 116, 121, 147, 148, 220 Dolan, Frances, 40 Donne, John, 13, 14, 42, 211, 234, 235, 236 Dorset, Pembroke and Montgomery, Duchess of, see Clifford Sackville Buckhurst Herbert, Anne Dorsten, Aaltje van, see Verwou, Aaltje Jans Dorsten, Balthazar Crijnen van, 132 Douglas, Eleanor, see Touchet, Eleanor Dowd, Michelle M., 3 Dowden, Edward, 201 drama, English, 33, 111, 211, 246, 254, 256, 259 Drayton, Michael, 86 Dryden, John, 220, 253, 262 Dudley Sidney, Mary, Lady Mary Sidney (wife of Sir Henry Sidney), 218 Dudley, Robert, Earl of Leicester, 183 Duijst, Maria van, see Smient, Maria Duijst, Nicolaas van, 133 Duijveland, Jacomina van (widow of Aert Dirckszoon Oossaan,

289

widow of Dirck Schouten), 121, 124, 133 Duncan-Jones, Katherine, 167, 171, 261 Dutch book trade, 116, 117, 119, 120, 124, 130; appendix of women stationers, 131–7; compared to English, 115–42; forms of specialization for women, 120–4; international audience for, 116, 119, 121, 126, 138; women’s names on title pages, 12, 125–6 Dutch Republic, 12, 116–27, 138–9 Dyck, Annetje van, see Schoenmaker, Annetje Jacobs Dyck, Joachim van, 133 Early English Books Online (EEBO), 70, 98 East, Lucretia, see Hassell East, Lucretia Eastop, Dinah, 208 ECARTICO, 117, 130 ecclesiastical press licences, 60 Eckerle, Julie A. 220 economic, 19, 61, 70, 120, 122, 246; agents, women as, 3, 60, 61, 77, 78; choices of widow publishers, 50, 60, 78; status, 55, 191 Eden, Richard, 100 editing, 1, 4, 5, 14, 139, 172, 176, 199, 271; as mending, 171, 172, 176 edition-sheets, 2, 11, 47, 82, 83, 86–9, 90, 92, 99, 156; as gauge of output, 82, 90 editions: expanded, 154; first, 8, 10, 55, 70, 83, 84, 87, 146, 149, 157, 164, 189, 237, 243, 247, 260; of Arcadia, 13, 163,

290

INDEX

164, 167, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 178, 179, 182, 183, 216; loss rates, 71, 88, 92; published in Netherlands, 138; recomposed, 84, 95; of reissues, 71, 82, 152, 158, 198, 199, 260; reprints, 47, 54, 55, 56, 70, 71, 82, 89, 90, 91, 95, 127, 147, 148, 154, 187, 189, 257, 262; of Shakespeare, 187–200, 195, 243, 244, 247, 255, 260, 261; silent, 58, 59, 62–9, 71; sold by women booksellers, 55, 56, 57, 59, 62–7, 69–70, 71, 131–7; student, 15; of Isabella Whitney’s works, 156, 157, 158; from women printers, 2, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 21, 47, 48, 52, 59, 61, 62–7, 68, 69, 71, 72, 82, 83, 84, 85, 87, 88, 89, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 106, 108, 105, 107, 108, 110, 111, 112, 131–7; from women publishers, 2, 19, 47, 48, 49, 50, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62–7, 68, 69, 70, 71, 82, 131–7 editor(s), 2, 12, 15, 22, 143, 164, 165, 166, 167, 171, 172, 173, 175, 177, 179, 181, 182, 187–99, 268, 271; as authorities, 193, 194, 199; single-volume, 191; as teachers, 197, 199, 271; women, 187–203 editorial policy, 171, 174, 176, 181 education: in America, 189–92; women’s, 179; see also Wellesley College Edwards, George 1, 69 Edwards, George 1, wife of, see Blond Edwards, widow

Edwards, George 2, 58 Edwards, Richard, 156, 157–8 Eeghen, I. H. van, 120, 122, 130, 138 Egerton Wolfreston, Mary (wife of Hersey Wolfreston, mother-inlaw of Frances Wolfreston), 217, 249 Egerton, Frances, Countess of Bridgewater, see Stanley Egerton, Frances Egerton, Thomas, 235 Ekkart, R. E. O., 138 Eld, Frances, see Simson Read Eld, Frances Eld, George, 36, 52, 68 elegies, 178, 180, 234, 238 Eliot’s Court Press, 47, 57, 58, 70, 71 Elizabeth I, Queen of England, see Tudor, Elizabeth Elk, Martine van, 1, 12, 22, 72, 112, 115–42, 269, 272 Ellinghausen, Laurie, 3, 159 Elyot, Thomas, 91 Elzevier, Anna, see Beerninck, Anna Elzevier, Daniel, 133 emblems, 96, 146; ‘impresa’, 176 embodiment, 13, 18, 40 emendation, 193, 194 Empey, Mark, 210, 220 Enderby, Samuel, 55 endleaf, 215; endpaper, 221 English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC), 70, 90, 122; gender in, 98, 125; as incomplete, 118 engraving, 29, 30 Enright, A., 215 Epictetus, 183 epigrams, 109 epitaphs, 127, 232 Erasmus, Desiderius, 272

INDEX

Erler, M. C., 238 Erne, L., 259 errors, 21, 68, 172, 219, 246, 267, 270, 272, 273; womanly, 275 Europe, 18, 21, 29, 31, 33, 34, 35, 36, 41, 42, 49, 96, 98, 99, 119, 125, 272 Evans, Elizabeth, 38 Evans, Parson, 76 executioner, 37, 38 executors of wills, women as, 76, 77, 78 extracts, 257, 276 Ezell, Margaret J. M., 26, 173, 238 Fairbeard, Sarah (wife of George Fairbeard), 63 faith, religious, 120, 232, 235 Falkland, Viscount, see Cary, Lucius families, 4, 117, 120, 212, 216, 220, 236, 269; dynasties of stationers’, 117; Hastings archive, 13, 213, 227, 236; Lescailje family, 123; Sidney family, 165, 182; Wolfreston family, 244, 245, 247, 249, 252, 254 family, 2, 13, 14, 15, 19, 21, 101, 120, 123, 139, 146, 213, 214, 215, 218, 225, 227, 231, 233, 262; bookshop, 80, 81, 85; enterprise, 80, 126 Farmer, Alan B., 5, 8, 12, 21, 22, 23, 47–73, 89, 91, 92, 109, 118, 122, 246, 269 Fehrenbach, R. J., 148, 157, 158 Felker, Michael David, 150, 158, 159 female agency, 11, 14, 53, 75–7, 86, 95, 96, 108, 130, 271; suppression of, 77, 97

291

feminism, 2, 76, 116, 173, 274 Ferguson, F. S., 98, 111 Ferguson, Margaret W., 4 Feuillerat, Albert, 164 Ficke, Catrina, see Claas, Catrina Ficke, Dirck Barentszoon, 135 fiction, 232, 246, 257 Field, Jacqueline, see Thuit Vautrollier Field, Jacqueline du Field, Richard, 8–10, 11, 18, 21, 22, 68, 69 financial, 228, 258; investment, 118, 147, 148; responsibility, 77, 78, 228, 272; reward, 168 Fisher, Jasper, 254 Fisher, John, 229 Flamen, Sara (widow of François van Lieshout), 135 Fleay, F. G., 198 Fleck, Andrew, 166, 172 Fleet Lane, 104, 147, 158; Street, 17, 104 Fleming, Juliet, 22, 226 Flemish, 23 Flesher, Elizabeth, 138 Flesher, M., 111 Fletcher, John, 13, 231, 234–6, 238 Fletcher, Joseph, 233 Flint, K., 190 Florio, John, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 268, 269 flyleaves: names and inscriptions on, 210, 213, 215, 248; portraits on, 227 Flynn, D., 235 Fockens, Ytje (widow of Christoffel Cunradus), 132 Footman, Mary Ann, 217 foreigners, 6, 18, 20, 23, 158; contributions of, overlooked, 18; letters of denization, 5; see also aliens; immigrants

292

INDEX

forgery, 98, 110 Fortgens, Maria, see Vijver, Maria de Fortgens, Michaël, 133 Fox, George, 214 Foxe, John, Acts and Monuments, 232 France, 5, 8, 34, 216; French, 6, 7, 8, 9, 18, 21, 23, 30, 31, 34, 43, 119, 124, 216, 262 Francke, August Hermann, 120 Fraunce, Abraham, 163, 168 Frisner, Andreas, 110 frontispieces, 207, 258; porcupine, 165 Frye, Susan, 22 Fulford, Margaret, 213 Fumerton, Patricia, 208, 209 Furness, Horace Howard, 15, 198, 201 G., W., ‘A Love Letter’, 147–8 Gaasbeeck I, Adriaen van, 133 Gaasbeeck, Sara van, see Tiewelen, Sara Gage, Jill, 43 Galligan, F., 247 garbage, 30–1, 34; see also rubbish Garnett, James Mercer, 200 Gaskell, Philip, 32, 42 gender, 13, 33, 101, 108, 109, 117, 152, 172, 188, 191, 208, 227, 230, 236, 238, 256, 273, 274, 275; labour, 29, 39, 42; language, 38; obscured, 98, 126; of rag-pickers, 31; roles, 40–1 genealogies, literary, 166, 179, 183 genres, see books, types George III, King of England, 218 Gerard, John, 212 German, Germany, 34, 119, 120, 123, 124, 178

Gerritsen, Johan, 246, 257 Gerritsz, Aefje, see Saskers, Aefje Willems Gerritsz, Hessel, 137 gifts, books as, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216–17, 219, 231, 245, 249, 250, 251 Gilbert, William, 213 girls: girls’ schools, 190; as ragpickers, 16, 33, 35, 37, 41; as typesetters and proof readers, 117 Glazener, N., 198, 200 Goedesberghen, Marritje Gijsberts van (widow of Abel Sijmonszoon van), 136 ‘Good Counsel to Be Had at Cheap Rate’, 258 Goodcole, Henry, 38 Goodere, Henry, 235 Goodwin, Ralph, 235 Goos, Geertruyt, see Ruijf, Geertruyt van Goos, Pieter, 133 Gossips’ Brawl, The, 16, 39–41, 43 Gosson, Alice (wife of Thomas Gosson), 63, 69, 71 Gosson, Edward, 69 Gosson, Edward, wife of, see Surbut Gosson, widow Goulet, Annetje Philips (widow of Jacob Willems van Meurs), 135 Gower, John, 150 Grabowsky, E. M., 123, 139 Grafton, A., 251 Graham, V. E., 99 Granada, Luis de, 210 Gravell, Thomas, 36, 37 Great Britain: literacy in, 189; relations with the Netherlands, 120; Shakespeare publishing in, 188, 189, 190, 198, 246;

INDEX

women’s higher education in, 189 Greek, 6, 20, 181, 190 Greene, Joan (wife of Leonard Greene), 63, 70 Greene, Leonard, 70 Greene, Robert, 111, 164 Greenlaw, Edwin, 164 Greg, W. W., 6, 7, 9, 70, 82 Gregory, Violet, 139 Greville, Fulke, 164, 167, 171–3, 175, 177, 183 Griffin, Anne (wife of Edward Griffin 1), 2, 47, 48, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 67, 70, 71, 72, 138 Griffin, Edward 1, 56 Griffin, Edward 2, 58 Griffin, Joan, 63 Griffin, Sarah, 138 Grocers’ Company, 69, 87, 91 Groenewout, Elisabet, see Wiaerts, Elisabet Abrams Groenewout, Johannes, 137 Groot, Gijsbert de, 133 Groot, Hendrickje de, see Blaeuw, Hendrickje Groot, Lijntje de, see Lootsman, Lijntje Antonis Groot, Michiel de, 133 Grove, F., 111 Gruffith, William, 157 Gruys, J. A., 130 guides: devotional, 194, 228, 229, 230, 259; interpretational, 197 guilds, 3, 76, 120, 138, 158; collective membership in, 124; records as unreliable, 118; women’s association with, 117, 123, 124, 127 Guldeford, Anne, 216 Gunpowder Plot, 36, 37

293

Habib, Imtiaz, 17, 23 Hackel, Heidi Brayman, see Brayman Hackel, Heidi Hall, Edward: Hall’s Chronicles, 211; The Union of the Two Noble Houses of Lancaster and York, 218 Hall, Joseph, 228, 229, 231, 232, 237 Hall, Kim F., 17 Hall, William, printer, 56 Hamlin, Hannibal, 237 Hamling, T., 212 Hammond, Mary, 196 hands, 1, 19, 104, 108, 116, 155, 170, 214, 220; as agents of power, 166, 18; sleights of hand, 108 handwriting, 6, 170, 207, 213, 215, 216, 226, 233, 237, 245, 247, 249 Hannay, Margaret P., 166, 173, 174–5, 178, 179, 182 Harford, Ralph, 72 Harington, Sir John, 9 Harmens, Annetje (widow of Abraham Janszoon de Wees), 122, 137 Harrison, John, 22 Harvey, Gabriel, 251 Hassell East, Lucretia (wife of Thomas East), 63 Hastings, Elizabeth, see Stanley Hastings, Elizabeth Hastings, Lucy, Countess of Huntingdon, 219, 227 Haviland, John, 57, 58, 71, 72 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 200 Hayaert, Valérie, 98 Hazlitt, William, 246 Heath, D. C., 198, 200, 201 Heigham, John, 210, 216, 219

294

INDEX

heir(s), 122, 124, 127, 129, 139, 165, 177; heiress, 39 Heliodorus, Aethiopica, 18 Hell, Maarten, 138, 141 Helme, Anne (wife of John Helme), 57, 63 Herbert, George, 14, 211 Herbert, Henry, Earl of Pembroke, 183 Herbert, Mary Sidney, see Sidney Herbert, Mary Herbert, Susan, see De Vere Herbert, Susan Herbert, William, 179, 183 Herford, John, 272 Herford, Katherine (wife of John Herford), 57, 64, 272 Herrick, Robert, 14, 211 Heywood, John, 104, 111 Heywood, Thomas, 200, 255, 256–7, 259 Hieron, Samuel, 56 Higginbotham, Derrick, 23 Highley, Christopher, 72 Hildersham, Arthur, 228, 229, 230, 232, 237 Hill, Ellen Louise, 198–9 Hinde, Luke, 126 historians, 3, 209, 270; art, 1, 95, 108; feminist, 2, 3, 116; potentially biased, 76, 77, 97, 116 historical awareness, 3, 189, 212; record, 19, 33, 34, 35, 37, 41, 58, 77, 78, 79, 97, 118, 210, 212 history, book, see book history Hobby, Elaine, 110 Hoby, Margaret, see Dakins Devereux Sidney Hoby, Margaret Hodgets, Margaret, 70 Hodgkins, Lousie Manning, 190

Hodgkinson, Elizabeth (widow of Richard Hodgkinson), 261 Hoftijzer, Paul, 116, 117, 119, 120, 126, 138, 139 Hogrefe, Pearl, 51, 69 Holinshed, Raphael, 211 Holland, Henry, The Christian Exercise of Fasting, 87 home, 168, 254; combined with printing houses, 9, 81, 97; primary place of business for crafts, 78; Shakespeare in every nineteenth-century American, 189; site of women’s book labour, 12–14, 19, 249 Homer, 234; Iliad, 150 Honan, Park, 18, 23 Hooks, Adam, 10, 22, 256, 260, 261, 276 Horace, 232 household inventories, 13, 225, 231, 232 Houthaeck, Machteld, see Daelen, Machteld van Houthaeck, Thijmen Dirckszoon, 134 Howard, Sir Robert, 262 Howe, William, 148 Howell, Thomas, 183; H. His Devises, 168–9, 170 Howsam, Leslie, 274, 275 Hudson, Henry, 198 Huguenots, 5 Hull, John, 213 Humphrey, Amy Jo, 261 Hunt, Arnold, 251 Hurlock, Elizabeth, see Tapp Hurlock, Elizabeth Hurlock, Joseph, 69 husbands: collaboration with wives, 78–9, 95, 97, 99, 108, 219; names not on title page after death, see silent editions;

INDEX

names removed from title page, 12, 95, 97, 106–8, 110, 112, 269; second-plus, 11, 33, 51, 52, 53, 55, 70, 75, 76, 80–1 82, 86–8, 89, 97, 106, 115 Hutson, Lorna, 159 Ignatius of Loyola, 210 image technology, 95, 208 images, literary, 152, 176, 180, 234 images: imitation of, in early modern textual culture, 109, 178, 260; meaning, 1, 96–7, 100–3, 116; multiple sizes, 98; visual, 30, 99–100, 110, 112, 258, 269 immigrants, 18, 146; see also aliens; foreigners imprints, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 21, 48, 49, 57, 58, 59, 69, 70, 71, 79, 82, 84, 88, 89, 90, 91, 97, 98, 99, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 118, 124, 125, 126, 127, 130, 139, 217, 247, 260; as important and reliable, 49, 59, 79; as misleading or incomplete, 59, 79, 118, 124–30; practices of English vs. Dutch women stationers in, 124–5; prevalence of the patronymic in, 11, 79, 124–6; single name for partnership in, 58 incunabula, 96, 99, 247 indices, 90, 190; Union First-Line Index, 259 indigence, 33, 35, 37, 269 Inglis, Esther, 16 Ingram, J. P., 159 inheritance, 275; of books, 251; literary, 164; in printing, 12, 51, 56, 80, 96, 123, 269, 270; see also wills

295

initials, 106, 108, 174, 176, 177; husband’s taken out, 95, 106, 107, 108, 112; women’s in imprints, 8, 12, 69, 97, 98, 108, 118, 125, 126 ink, 36, 80, 147, 180, 226, 249, 258 inns of court, 145, 154 inscriptions, 1, 10, 14, 207, 208, 209, 211, 212, 213, 215–20, 221, 238, 248, 249, 251, 254, 257, 261 international, 12, 34, 41, 109, 115, 116, 119, 121, 126, 138 intertextuality, 14, 254, 256 introduction(s), 15, 20, 50, 51, 109, 156, 183, 187, 190, 209, 210, 212, 272, 274; by Katharine Bates, 196, 198 inventories: household, 13, 225, 231, 232, 262; locating women through, 208 Ireland, 7, 189; Irish, 21 Italy, 31, 34; Italian, 176, 183, 268 itinerancy, 55; in the rag trade, 15, 31, 35, 37, 41 Jackson, Elizabeth, see Pickering Jackson Redman Cholmeley Cholmeley, Elizabeth Jackson, Holbrook, 257, 261, 263 Jackson, Hugh, wife of, see Colwell Jackson, widow Jackson, R., 190 Jackson, W. A., 69, 70, 72 Jacobs, Aagje (widow of Joris Jacobszoon Veselaer, wife of Jan Fredricx Stam), 137 Jacobsz, Aaltje, see Wilboords, Aaltje Jacobsz, Jacob, 134 Jaggard, Dorothy (wife of Isaac Jaggard), 64, 71

296

INDEX

Jaggard, Elizabeth (wife of John Jaggard), 64 Jaggard, William, 81, 82, 91 Jakobs, Maritje (widow of Marten Janszoon Brandt), 120, 121, 131 James V, King of England, 17 James VI and I, King of Scotland and England, 20, 36 Jans, Lijsbet (widow of Dirck Corneliszoon Troost), 136 Jans, Vroutje (widow of Abraham Meijnartszoon van den Burgh), 132 Janssonius, Francina, see Offenberg, Francina van Janssonius, Jodocus, 134 Janssonius, Sara (widow of Elizée Weijerstraet), 137 Jansz, Broer, 121, 134 Jansz, Lysbeth (Lijsbeth), see Philips, Lysbeth (Lijsbeth) Jardine, Lisa, 251 Jews, 100, 255; Jewish history, 122 Jocelin, Elizabeth, 212 jokes, 235, 236, 258 Jones, Andrew, 262, 258 Jones, Ann Rosalind, 153, 208 Jones, Richard, 2, 15, 83, 145–59 Jonge, Hester de, see Ackere, Hester Jacobs van Jonge, Jacob de, 134 Jongh, Eddy de, 138 Jonson, Ben, 3, 14, 16, 33, 36, 37, 41, 80, 211, 220, 234, 254; Sejanus, 16, 33, 36, 37, 41 Joyner, Mary, 216 Judson, Thomas, 92 Jugge, Joan ?Merrye (widow of Richard Jugge), 12, 64, 71, 96, 99–104, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112

Jugge, John, 103 Jugge, Richard, 99, 100, 101, 109, 110, 111, 112 Kathman, David, 8, 22, 86, 91 Keener, Andrew, 247, 255 Kemp, William, 164 Kempe Leigh, Dorothy (wife of Ralph Leigh), 256 Kent, site of rag collecting, 16, 33, 35, 37, 41 Kermode, Ewan, 139 Key, Francis Scott, ‘Star-Spangled Banner’, 188 Kieft, Machteld (widow of Joachim van Metelen), 135 King, John, 110 King’s Harmony, 194 Kingston, Felix, 87, 90, 91, 92, 108, 112 Kingston, Joan, see Sturgis Kingston Robinson Orwin, Joan Kingston, John, 52, 86, 87–8, 91–2 Kinnamon, Noel, 166, 167, 175, 179 Kirk, R. E. G. and E. F., 6, 20 Kirkham, Henry, 17 Kirkham, William, 17 Kirkman, Francis, 256 Kleerkooper, M. M., 130 Knapper, Daniel, 237 Knight, Leah, 4, 20, 209, 238 Knowles, J., 234 Kolkovich, Elizabeth Zeman, 13, 16, 220, 225–41, 269, 271 Konijnenbergh, Jacob, 134 Konijnenbergh, Jannitje, see Lootsman, Jannitje Kopytoff, Igor, 208 Korda, Natasha, 3, 31, 68, 77 Korey, A. M., 109 Kreps, Barbara, 97, 109

INDEX

labour: editorial, 14, 15, 164, 166, 170, 171, 174, 176, 180, 187, 188, 189, 191, 194, 195, 196, 197, 199, 200, 274; erased, 42, 77, 199; familial, 14, 121, 214, 231, 236; literary, 14, 259–61; low-status, 31, 33, 41; marital collaboration in, 1, 78, 108, 115–16; of material bookmaking, 2, 18, 76, 79, 236; menial, 42, 178; of rag-women, 29–46; of reading, 236, 261; sexualized, 3, 33; social, 2, 18; textual, 2, 14, 33, 34, 41, 42, 89, 197, 199; writing as, 3–4, 170, 171, 172, 236; see also book trade labour, women’s: as central to English economy, 41; condemnations of, 3, 154; defeminized, 33, 39, 42, 43; derided, 41; uncovering, 1–26, 76, 89, 116, 118; unrecorded or overwritten 2, 77, 79, 174, 274; unvalued or unacknowledged, 41–2, 77, 80, 271 Lalande, Joseph Jérôme Lefrançois de, 29, 30, 31, 32, 34, 35, 42 Lamb, Mary Ellen, 159, 166, 173, 225, 238 lamentations, 82, 148, 157, 178, 213 Latham, Elizabeth, 123 Latin, 176, 214, 272; books, 6, 7, 91, 112, 119, 120, 190, 214; motto, 127 Lavagnino, John, 174 Law Norton Warren, Alice (widow of John Norton 2; widow of Thomas Warren), 69 Law, Matthew, 91 layout, typographic, 99, 268

297

leaves, in books, 6, 58, 82, 149, 163, 167, 169, 170, 177, 214, 217, 226, 233, 248, 258, 259, 260, 267 Lee, Nathaniel, 218, 220 Lee, Sir Sidney, 243, 261 Leeuwen, Rozemarijn van, 139 LeFanu, W. R., 20 Lefèvre, Raoul, 262 legacy, 159, 164, 177, 188 legal cases, 92, 110 Leigh, Dorothy, see Kempe Leigh, Dorothy Leigh, Richard, 7 Leighton, Rachel, 217 Leinwand, Theodore, 20 Lennox, Charlotte, see Ramsay Lennox, Barbara Charlotte Lescailje, Aaltje, see Verwou, Aaltje Jans Lescailje, Aletta (daughter of Jacob Lescailje), 123, 127, 134, 139 Lescailje, Anthony, 123 Lescailje, Jacob, 123, 127, 129, 132, 134, 139 Lescailje, Katharina (daughter of Jacob Lescailje), 12, 123–4, 127, 129, 134, 139 Lesse, Nicolas, 272 Lesser, Zachary, 89, 92 letters: of complaint, 35; dedicatory epistles as, 167–8, 170, 172, 178; of denization, 5–6; letter format, works in, 7, 146, 147–8, 153, 155, 159, 273; letterhead, 37; personal and private, see correspondence letters, in type, 111; foundresses, 117; foundry, 122; see also initials libraries, early modern: of Frances Egerton, 214, 231; of Frances

298

INDEX

Wolfreston, 207, 208, 245, 247, 249, 251, 254, 262; of Lady Ann Clifford, 214; portable, 215 libraries, modern, 146, 246, 248, 256, 275; Bodleian, 105, 238, 244, 246, 253; Boston Public, 247; Bridgewater, 227; British, 233, 236, 257; circulating and subscription, 249; Folger Shakespeare, 9, 14, 36, 42, 165, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 214, 215, 217, 247, 263; Houghton, 21, 238, 247; Huntington, 102, 103, 107, 226, 237, 247, 262; Illinois State, 247; of Joyce Breedan, 214; records, 90; Newberry, 30, 43; Pforzheimer, 247; Princeton University, 247; public, 257; research, 2; University of Chicago, 200; University of Illinois, 247; University of Pennsylvania, 247; Wellesley College Archives, 192; William Andrews Clark Memorial, UCLA, 250 licensing, guilds, 3; book titles, 6, 60; rag-picking activities, 35 Lieshout, François van, 135 Lieshout, Sara van, see Flamen, Sara life-writing, 249 Lindenbaum, Sarah, 208, 220, 247, 248, 249, 263 Lisle, Joan, see Cooke Lisle, Joan Lisle, Laurence, 68 Liston, William T., 258 literacy, 130, 261; illiteracy, 33; women’s, 189, 228, 236, 243, 246, 248, 261

literature, 14, 190, 196, 197, 211, 213, 232, 243, 245, 246, 248, 260 Little Gidding, 16, 194, 229 Lodge, Thomas, 197 Lootsman, Jannitje (widow of Jacob Konijnenbergh), 134 Lootsman, Lijntje Antonis, (widow of Michiel de Groot), 122, 133 Lootsman, Lijntje, see Robijns, Lijntje Lootsman, Theunis Jacobszoon, 135 Lort, Michael, 176 loss-rates of editions, 71, 88, 92 lost editions, probable, 62, 64, 66, 70, 71, 109, 139 Lownes, Emma, see Short Lownes, Emma Lownes, Humphrey, 53, 56, 68 Lucas Cavendish, Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle (wife of William Cavendish), 176, 207, 208, 219, 257, 273 Lucretia/Lucrece, 12, 104, 105, 106, 108, 150 Luther, Martin, 6 Lyly, John, 14, 211 Lyons, Tara, 238 lyrics, 180, 257, 260 McCabe, R. A., 229 McCarthy, Erin, 238 McCullough, P. E., 228 McDowell, Paula, 5, 119, 126 McGrath, L., 158 Macham, Joyce (wife of Samuel Macham 1), 56, 64, 125 Macham, Samuel 1, 56 McKenzie, D. F., 69, 70, 81 McKerrow, R. B., 6, 80, 97, 98, 101, 106, 107, 110, 111, 112;

INDEX

McK printers’ devices, 99, 100, 101, 103–8, 110, 111, 112; McK&F title-page borders, 98, 101, 102, 104, 105, 110, 111; urban and nationalist bias, 98 McKitterick, David, 238 Magnes, Mary, 138 Magnus, Albert, 135 Magnus, Marretie, see Vis, Marretie Claes Maij, Abigaal (widow of Steven Swart), 136 Mainwaring, Roger, 149, 155 male: Christ, 99; Cupid, 101; face, 110; genealogies, 166; institutions, 189; interference, 76; invective, 178; pride, 258; pronouns, 231; rag-gatherers, 38; readers, 151, 230, 256; relatives overriding women’s lives, 2; stationers, 56, 61, 76, 80, 88, 97, 109, 116, 117, 119, 124 Mallet, Elizabeth, 121, 138 Malone, Edmond, 247, 261 Man, Joan (wife of Paul Man), 59, 64, 72 Man, Maria de (widow of Jan or Joannes Cnobbaert), 271 Man, Thomas, 88, 108, 112 Mancini, Maria, 211 Mandelbrote, Giles, 247, 250 manicules, 251 Manners, Elizabeth, see Sidney Manners, Elizabeth manuals, 40, 120, 210 manuscript(s), 16, 165, 171, 172, 173, 177, 190, 192, 193, 225, 226, 227, 230, 232, 237, 259, 273; of the Arcadia, 183; circulation of, 165, 170; copy, 84, 115, 164, 167; devotional, 13, 225, 229; miscellanies, 2,

299

226, 259; of the Sidney Psalmes, 177, 178, 180; Skipwith, 233, 234, 235 map-sellers, 117 Marcus, Leah S., 188, 196 marginalia, 36, 208, 219, 225, 226, 227, 247, 248, 249, 251, 260; see also annotations mark(s): defined, 1, 19, 180; of ownership, 199, 207, 209, 225, 246, 248; punctuation, 68, 150; readers’, 248, 249; shelfmark, 105, 128, 129, 237, 252; watermarks, 36; see also annotations; marginalia Markey, L., 109 Marlowe, Christopher, 183 Marprelate, Martin, 270 marriage: affection in, 9; mastery in, 40–1; occluding women’s identity, 5, 77, 79, 97; portraits, 1, 116; women’s place in, 76; women refusing, 78 marriages: between Catholics and Protestants, 18; between widows and young stationers, 8, 31, 50–3, 76, 77; loveless, 179 Marshall, Anne, 215 Marshe, Thomas, 106, 112 Maruca, Lisa, 5 masculinity, 108, 153, 199, 275; breeches as marker of, 40–1; ‘masculine perspective’, 153 masques, 235, 254 Massai, Sonia, 181 master printers, 8, 50, 51, 52, 68, 83, 85, 86, 88, 90, 118, 267, 270; myth of achieving position by marrying stationers’ widows, 8, 50–2, 68; women as, 52, 85, 86; see also printers, widow

300

INDEX

material, 76, 168; commodities, 18, 145, 196, 208; content, 13, 119, 149, 152, 157, 158, 187, 196, 200, 229, 245, 270; form of print, 13, 83, 89, 99, 180, 229, 231, 245, 255; history, 4, 194, 208, 209; practices of book-making, 2, 18, 76, 79; printing house stock, 88, 96; resources, 2, 29, 34, 40, 41, 42 Matthew, Adam, 237 Matthijsz, Alida (daughter of Paulus Matthijsz), 123, 135, 139 Matthijsz, Maria (daughter of Paulus Matthijsz), 123, 135, 139 Matthijsz, Paulus, 135 Maunsell, Andrew, 111 Maxwell, Anne, 138 Mayer, Jean-Christophe, 246 Mead, Robert, 255 medicine, 35, 87, 254 meditations, devotional, 227, 237, 269 Meeks, Rose, 218 Melnikoff, Kirk, 15, 145–61, 272 Melville, Herman, 43 memorandum books, 252 men: as ensnared by women, 150, 151, 152; as fungible, 75–6; history of reading focused on, 225, 274; in papermaking, 30; short careers of, 69; women defined in relation to, 126 Mendelson, Sara, 3 Mennonites, 115, 120 mentors, 4, 13, 198, 225, 233, 234, 236 mercuries, women as, 16 metaphors, 3, 99, 110 172, 180 Metelen, Joachim van, 135 Metelen, Machteld van, see Kieft, Machteld

Meurs, Annetje van, see Goulet, Annetje Philips Meurs, Jacob Willems van, 135 Middle Ages, 31 middle class, 33, 213, 214, 218; see also middling sort Middlemore (son of Frances Middlemore), 262 Middlemore Wolfreston, Frances (widow of Francis Wolfreston), 2, 4, 10, 14, 194, 207, 212–14, 216, 217, 222, 243–63, 274; annotations by, 2, 10, 14, 194–5, 243–66; bibliographers of, 251; books about women, 255–6; books by women, 256; humour of, 249; ‘prity’ or ‘mery’ as annotations, 152, 248, 255, 257, 258; reproduction of Morbus Satanicus, 262; see also signatures Middlemore, Ursula, 249, 250 Middleton Powell, Elizabeth (widow of William Middleton, wife of William Powell), 52, 64, 68, 71 Middleton, Jane, see Sutton Middleton, Jane middling sort, 2, 13, 14, 20, 121, 154, 213, 220, 243; as urban, 20; see also middle class midwives and midwifery, 3, 99 Miller, W. E., 90 Millington, Joan (wife of Thomas Millington), 65 Milton, John, 14, 180, 211 minister(s), 15, 218, 228, 229, 230, 237, 233 Minsheu, John, 268 miscellanies, 2, 13, 16, 146, 157, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 233, 234, 238, 259, 260

INDEX

misogyny, 41, 50, 53, 150, 236, 258 mock testaments, 159 Molekamp, Femke, 238 Mollineux, Mary, see Southworth Mollineux, Mary monograms, 111, 182 monopoly, 35, 85, 91, 122 Montaigne, Michel de, 176 Montgomery, Countess of, see De Vere Herbert, Susan Moore, Anne (wife of Richard Moore), 59, 65, 71 Moore, J. D., 228 More Roper, Margaret (wife of William Roper), 16 More, Sir Thomas, 211 Moreton, Anna, 212, 213, 214 Morgan, Paul, 245, 246, 256, 257, 260, 262 Mortimer, J. E., 220 Morton, Edward Payson, 200 Morwen, Peter, 100 Moschella, J. S., 247, 255 Moth, Martha, 213 Moth, William, 213 mottos, 96, 99, 100, 101, 108, 109, 110, 127, 129 movable parts, books with, 99, 100 Moxon, Joseph, 267–8 Murphy, Andrew, 188, 189, 190, 191 muse, women as, 13, 166, 168, 177, 235 name(s): allegorical, 100; birth, 1, 2, 20, 90, 97, 109, 115, 130, 131–7, 182; of characters, 41, 43; classical, 151; ciphers, 99; husband’s, 71, 78, 97, 98, 101, 109, 111, 115, 130, 131–7, 208, 247; in imprints, 8, 9, 49,

301

57, 58, 62–7, 71, 84, 86, 88, 89, 97, 99, 106, 111, 112, 117, 124, 125, 126, 130; inscribed by owner, 10, 14, 208, 209–14, 216, 217, 218, 219, 221, 248; patronymic, 11; of Pembroke, Countess of, 182; regional, 31, 42; rebuses, 96, 99; searching for women using, 208; women’s missing or overwritten, 55, 79, 268, 269, 272; of women stationers, 10, 80, 81, 82, 121, 121, 123–4, 139, 269, 272; ungendered through initials, 126; see also spelling Nashe, Thomas, 83, 164, 176, 178 Naylor, James, 214 needles, 17, 22, 30, 31, 32, 221 Nelson, Alan H., 246, 253 Netherlands, 34, 118; Haarlem, 1, 19, 115, 116, 138 networks, 98, 116, 118, 120; 270, 274; reading, 238, 246; see also Quakers; stationers, widow; stationers, women Neville, Sarah, 11, 21, 22, 33, 38, 51, 68, 72, 75–93, 99, 109, 112, 118, 122, 269, 270 Nevitt, Marcus, 5 New Brawl, The, 16, 39–41, 43 Newbery, Joan 1; see Butter Newbery, Joan 1 Newbery, Joan 2 (wife of Nathaniel Newbery), 55, 59, 60, 65 Newbery, John, 80–1, 90 Newbery, Ralph, 80 Newcastle, Duchess of, see Lucas Cavendish, Margaret Newcomb, Lori Humphrey, 10, 14, 194, 220, 238, 243–66, 269, 272, 274

302

INDEX

Newcombe, Dorothy, 138 Newman, E. (widow of Thomas Newman), 65 Newman, Thomas, 65 news publications, 7, 16, 70, 80, 81, 90, 115, 121, 122, 235; advertisers in, 116; publishers of (courantiers), 117, 124, 130; taxes on, 116 Nicolson, William, 126 Niebergen, Abegail van (widow of Pieter Dirckszoon Boetzeman), 131 nineteenth century, 14, 29, 180, 189, 190, 191, 194, 196, 198, 200, 261 nominal ownership, 54, 124; nominal head, 126 nonconformist, 119, 228 Norton Whitaker, Anne (widow of Thomas Norton, wife of Richard Whitaker), 68 Norton, Alice, see Law Norton Warren, Alice Norton, John 1, 48, 68 Norton, John 2, 69 Norton, Joyce (wife of John Norton 1), 47, 54, 55, 59, 65, 138 Norton, William, 8 notes, textual, 15, 190, 193, 194, 195, 198, 199 novels, 31, 188, 189, 217; novella, 197 Nuremberg, 31 O’Callaghan, Michelle, 147, 148, 158, 159 Ockould, Richard, 68 Offenberg, Francina van (widow of Jodocus Janssonius, widow of Hendrick Prins), 134 Ogden, Hester, 70

Oliver, Mary, 65, 68 Olofs, Abraham, 137 Olofs, Elisabet, see Wiaerts, Elisabet Abrams Olson, Rebecca, 10, 22, 248, 272 Oossaan, Aert Dirckszoon, 133 Oossaan, Jacomina, see Duijveland, Jacomina van orphans, 267–8, 275 orthography, 106; see also spelling Orwin, Joan, see Sturgis Kingston Robinson Orwin, Joan Orwin, Thomas, 21, 52, 68, 82, 86, 87, 88, 92, 270 Oulton Allde, Elizabeth (wife of Edward Allde), 55, 59, 62, 125, 138, 148 Overton, Elizabeth, see Sheffard Overton, Elizabeth Overton, Henry, 68, 69 Ovid, 6, 101, 150, 151, 211 Oxenbridge, John, 91 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB), 20, 22, 92, 109 Oxford English Dictionary (OED), 19, 37, 40, 180, 183, 232, 267, 269 pageants, 233 Palmer, P., 249 pamphlets, 147, 150, 151, 152, 154, 157, 159; annotated by women, 256, 257, 258; corrected by women, 219; pamphleteers, 220, 270; printed by women, 7, 8, 10, 18, 21, 80, 120, 125; prophetic, 219; Quaker, 210, 214, 215 paper-making, 29, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 42, 43; cloth used in, 30, 31, 40; clothing used in, 31, 32, 38; rope used in, 34; techniques

INDEX

for, 29, 42; wood-pulp used in, 29, 31–2 paper-mills, 29, 30, 31–7, 43, 275 paper, 15, 16, 18, 29–43, 80, 82, 83, 84, 117, 121, 157, 168, 207, 219, 232, 234, 237, 258, 275; Continental, 35, 36, 42; efficient use of, 84; English, 35, 36, 37; as expensive, 168; royal watermarks on, 36–7; white, 32, 34–5, 36; wrapping, 34, 35 papermakers, 16, 30, 32, 35, 37, 41 papersellers, 117, 133 paratexts, 13, 149, 187, 196, 199, 271, 272; addressed to readers, 13, 21, 147, 149, 150, 152, 153, 154, 155, 170, 171, 172, 174, 175, 178, 181, 273; see also commendatory poem; dedications; half-title; prefaces; running headers parish records, 22, 90 Parkinson, John, 212 Parson, Robert, 84 partnerships, 54, 58, 192, 198; Ballad Partners, 248, 261; business, 56, 57, 125; business and marital, 11, 16, 269, 272; creative, 166; only one member of named in imprint, 58; silent, 57, 58, 71 Partridge, John, 212 pastedown, 216, 248, 249, 250 Paston family, 215 pastoral, 19, 163, 178, 260 patents, see Stationers’ Company Paternoster Row, 87, 88, 92 patriarchy, 166, 258 patriotism, 37 patrons and patronage, 13, 163, 168, 175, 183, 213, 229, 233–5, 236

303

pattieres, 30, 31 Paul, Elisabet de, see Wiaerts, Elisabet Abrams Paul, Israel de, 137 Payne, Margery, see Berthelet Payne, Margery Payne, Richard, 68, 110, 111 Peacham, Henry, 212 Pearson, David, 246 Peend, Thomas, 151–2 pelicans, 96, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 108, 110, 111 Pembroke, Countess of, see Sidney Herbert, Mary Pembroke, Earl of, see Herbert, Henry pen(s), 22, 127, 155, 157, 159, 168, 170, 171, 175, 176 Pender, Patricia, 167 Penn, William, 210, 214 penny godlies and merries, 248, 257, 258, 259 Perdita online database, 237 performances, 43, 123, 124, 234, 251; amateur, 43, 259; illegal, 43; see also plays Perkins, William, 228, 237 Perrin, Widow (wife of John Perrin), 65 Perry, R., 215 persecution, 5, 125 Pestell, Thomas, 234–6, 238 Peters, K., 220 Petersen, S., 190 petitions, 36, 227, 236; petitioning widows, 268 Pettegree, Andrew, 6, 20, 119, 120, 122, 138 Philips, Lysbeth (Lijsbeth) (widow of Broer Jansz), 121, 134 Pickering Jackson Redman Cholmeley Cholmeley, Elizabeth (widow of ?George

304

INDEX

Jackson, widow of Robert Redman, wife of William Cholmeley, wife of Ranulph Cholmeley), 66, 71, 79, 90, 97, 109, 112; instrumental in the incorporation of the Stationers’ Company, 79 Pieters, Andries, 137 Pieters, Elisabet, see Wiaerts, Elisabet Abrams Pietersdochter, Anne (widow of Cornelis Lodewijckszoon van de Plasse), 135 Pindley, John, 56 Pipkin, Amanda, 139 Plaet, Barent Willems van der, 135 Plaet, Catrina van der, see Claas, Catrina plague, 38 Plasse, Anne van de, see Pietersdochter, Anne Plasse, Cornelis Lodewijckszoon van de, 135 Plat, Hugh, 149, 152, 153, 156 playbills, patent to print, 82, 91, 111, 123 playbooks, 22, 247, 249, 252, 253, 255, 259, 260 plays, 16, 36, 40, 41, 42, 43, 75, 76, 89, 218, 254, 255, 256, 257, 259, 261, 262; anonymous, 39; by Cavendish, 273; Dutch, 122, 123, 124, 127, 129; French, 124; by Jonson, 37, 254; owned by women, 211; published by women, 22; see also Shakespeare playwrights, 10, 12, 220, 231, 261; Dutch, 124, 127 Plomer, Henry R., 6, 21, 51, 52, 68, 76, 77, 78

plot summaries, as annotations, 14, 252, 255 Pluimer, Catrina, see Vogel, Catrina de Pluimer, Joost, 135 Plutarch, 211 poems, 13, 16, 38, 42, 218, 232, 257; amatory, 148; collections, 127, 145, 146, 148, 149, 150, 152, 168, 169, 178, 183, 218, 257; by Daniel, 166; by Donne, 13, 234, 235, 236; Dutch, 123, 127; by Fletcher, 13, 234, 235; by Howell, 168, 169, 170, 183; narrative, 2, 10, 243, 261; odes, 232, 235; by Pembroke, Countess of, 166, 177, 178, 179, 180; by Shakespeare, 2, 10, 19, 211, 218, 243, 260, 261; in Skipwith manuscript, 233, 234, 235; by Spenser, 176; unsigned, 148, 178; by or associated with Whitney, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159; owned or copied by Wolfreston, 243, 257, 258, 259, 260 Ponder, Melinda M., 200 Ponsonby, William, 88, 163 Poor Robin almanacs, 252, 253; Character of France, 37, 38 Pope, Alexander, 213 Porter, Charlotte Endymion, 198, 200 Porter, John, 88, 112 portraits, 1, 116, 138, 227, 237, 269 posthumous editions, 127, 164; see also silent editions postscripts, 7, 228, 231 Powell, Elizabeth, see Middleton Powell, Elizabeth

INDEX

Powell, Humphey, 154, 158, 159 Powell, William, 68 Pratt, Aaron, 72, 247, 251, 255 prayer books, 56, 71, 100, 210, 213, 226 prayers, 213, 226, 227, 229, 230, 235, 251 prefaces, 13, 127, 147, 148, 149, 150, 176, 177, 178, 193, 198; of Arcadia, 172, 174–82; see also paratexts press(es), 16, 18, 21, 37, 92, 95, 97, 101, 106, 110, 111, 112, 117, 119, 122, 145, 147, 149, 158, 167, 180, 183, 270, 273; capacity of, 83; exiled, 213; limitations on those in London, 6; OED, ‘impress’, 180; output of, 2, 11, 82, 83, 87, 88; press licensers, 60; pressmen, 80, 83, 85; presswork, 6, 11, 82; rumoured Dutch inventor of, 116; women overseers of, 7, 18, 20, 84; see also Eliot’s Court Press Preston, John, 228, 231 Price, William, 120 Prins, Francina, see Offenberg, Francina van Prins, Hendrick, 134 print: agents, 98; runs, 54; technology of, 95, 96, 99, 108, 180; terminology of, 180, 181, 183, 267–8 printer-booksellers, 78, 85; printer-patentees, 6; printerpublishers, 127, 145; printsellers, 65 printers: appendix of women stationers in Amsterdam, 131–7; assessing output of, 11, 33, 76, 81–3, 86, 87, 88, 90, 92, 97, 148, 156; attribution of

305

imprints to, 70, 88, 100, 106, 110; decree limiting number in London, 6, 270; Dutch, 1, 12, 19, 115–30; entrepreneurial, 2, 58; employing booksellers, 56; employing labourers, 85; errors, 219, 267; Moxon’s manual, 267–8; overview of terms for, 68; women, 1, 2, 5, 6–11, 12, 47–53, 54, 57–8; 59–61, 80–93; see also edition-sheets; master printers; printers, widow; printers’ devices; presses printers, widow, 11–12, 22, 47–73, 75–93, 95–114, 117, 118, 121, 122, 124, 125, 126–7, 128, 130, 139, 272; appendix of widow publishers, 62–7; appendix of women stationers in Amsterdam, 131–7; collaboration between, 59–61; fame of 127, 130; as influencing their second-plus husbands, 10, 78–93; marriage to, 8, 21, 50–3, 76–8; see also printers printers’ devices, 12, 95–114, 126, 127, 128, 129, 176; of Alice Bailey Charlewood Roberts, 104–6; cutting, 30, 108; as indices of printers’ agency, 98–108; of Joan Jugge, 99–104; modified versions, 108; personalized, 12, 96, 98, 99, 111; punning, 101, 126; of Joan Sturgis Kingston Robinson Orwin, 106–8; used for self-representation, 95, 98, 110, 127; women’s use uncatalogued, 103, 104, 105, 108; see also McKerrow, R. B. printing houses, 1, 11, 18, 20, 22, 50, 51, 52, 55, 56, 58, 60, 68,

306

INDEX

80, 82, 85–8, 90, 92, 99, 104, 111, 112, 147, 158, 273, 275; acquisition of, 50, 51, 68, 147; acquisition through marriage, 8, 9, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 61; associated with women, 1, 5, 7–8, 9, 10–11, 19, 47, 52, 54, 56, 67, 69, 78, 83–6, 87, 88, 89, 92, 95, 96, 97, 99, 106, 117, 123, 126, 139, 269; business patterns of, 11, 49, 50, 54–68; 80–9; Dutch, 117, 122, 123, 126, 131–7; 139; as gendered, collaborative spaces, 109; output, 11, 82–3; printmakers and printmaking, 109 printing, 1, 2, 9, 12; authorized 7, 123, 235; casting off, 84, 159; equipment, 21, 51; greater labour of first editions, 84; ‘half press’ output, 83; as investment 47, 49, 55, 80, 81, 83, 85, 86, 96, 118, 147, 156; material and commercial labours, 18; midwifery as metaphor for, 99; prohibitions against 6, 7, 8; output assessed by editionsheets 2, 11, 47, 82–3, 86–9; reproductive, 95, 108; reuse of woodcuts and metal devices, 96–108; shared, 58, 85, 88, 90; Stationers’ Company monopoly on, 91–2, 122; see also paper; printers’ devices; printing houses prisons, 40, 43, 154 privileges, 18, 100, 122, 123, 126, 158; see also Stationers’ Company; stationers, women Privy Council, 35, 36, 45 productivity, of women printers, 11, 82, 83, 90

professional: careers, 100, 106, 126, 127, 155, 197; as indistinguishable from personal, 19, 191; influence, 86; writers, 155, 157, 159 profit: in book selling, 147; in printing, 49, 83, 85, 122 proofs, 149, 193; proof readers, 117 property: transfer at death, see inheritance; transfer on marriage, 51, 53, 79 prose, 16, 42, 83, 196, 197, 229, 231, 252; romances, 163, 173, 257 Protestants, 6, 7, 18, 120, 122, 154, 164, 210, 213, 214, 229, 232, 236; persecuted, 5 pseudonyms, 7, 270, 272 public theatres, women in, 124, 126, 130, 170, 177, 218, 230, 257 publication: in America, 188–9; collaboration in, 59–61; of playbooks, 22; of religious books, 210; of silent editions, 71 publications, 6, 7, 23, 25, 41, 209; influence of women on, 81–9; joint, 87, 91; news, 70, 80, 81; by sectarian women stationers, 120, 121, 125; women’s strategies in pursuing, 50, 54–61; see also publishers, women publishers, 22, 36, 37, 83, 84, 98, 106, 118, 187, 191, 261; decisions to publish, 49, 54, 78; devices of, see printers’ devices; Dutch, 116, 117, 124–5; early modern definitions of 49, 68; of news books and papers, 80–1, 116, 117; shop signs of,

INDEX

17; see also co-publishing; publishers, women publishers, women, 1, 5, 11, 12, 18, 19, 22, 80–1, 107–8; Dutch, 115, 117, 119–21, 124–5, 127, 131–7; entrepreneurial vs. conservative, 2, 5, 54–7, 62–7, 122; networks of, 2, 5, 47–8, 56, 57–61, 270; strategies, 50, 56, 117, 119, 121, 148, 187; translations, 87, 100, 119; widows, 5, 12, 47–73 punctuation, 150, 158 puns, 126, 176, 234 Puritanism, 60, 112, 120, 228 Purslowe, Elizabeth (wife of George Purslowe), 56, 59, 66, 72, 138 Puttenham, George, 9 Quakers (Society of Friends), 119, 120, 125, 210, 211, 214, 215, 216, 220; networks, 220 Quarles, Francis, 257–9 querelle des femmes, 252, 256 Quevedo, Don Francisco de, 31 quire, 29, 234 race, 17, 18, 23, 274 Rackin, Phyllis, 76 rag trade, 275; international, 34, 41 rag-pickers, 16, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 269; depicted by Melville, 43; as itinerant, 16, 30, 35; licensed, 34; in The New Brawl and The Gossips’ Brawl, 39–41, 43; as ungendered, 42 rag-women, 2, 15, 16, 29–46, 271; associated with prostitution or thievery, 36, 38, 41, 43; authorized to collect, 35; as

307

base, 38; as beggars, 1, 34, 35, 36; defeminized, 33, 39, 42, 43; as dung-hill-rakers, 38–9; harassment by authorities, 37; illustrations of, 29, 30, 34; sorting, 29, 30, 31, 32, 34, 43 rags, 1, 15, 16, 18, 29–46; associated with women, 38, 39, 40; beating, 32; called clouts, 40, 43; gathering, 15, 18, 31–5, 36, 38, 41, 42; low-quality, 34, 35, 36 Ramsay Lennox, Barbara Charlotte (widow of Alexander Lennox), 257 Rank, Dirk, 139 Rank, Susanna, see Wreedt, Susanna de rape, 10, 14, 101, 104 Rappaport, Steve, 78, 79, 89, 91 Rasterhoff, Claartje, 138 Raven, James, 209 Ravestein, Elisabeth van, see Sweerts, Elisabeth Emanuelsdochter Ravestein, Pauwels Aertszoon van, 136 Raylton, Tace, see Sowle Raylton, Tace Raylton, Thomas, 126 Raynalde, Thomas, 12, 96, 100, 101, 102, 103, 109–11; see also Hobby, Elaine; Jugge, Joan ?Merrye Read, Frances, see Simson Read Eld, Frances readers, 13, 47, 49, 156, 166, 196; as authors, 219, 226–8; communities of, 4, 225, 226, 231, 236, 238, 246, 247, 249, 262; cross-copying, 257; dull-witted, 165; Dutch, 121; early modern, 22, 100, 216, 238,

308

INDEX

248, 252, 261, 262; eclectic, 214; 165; engaged, 152, 194; future, 227, 256, 261; imprints as informing, 59; of international news, 121; labours of love of, 261; lineage of, 216; literary, 254; marks of, 248, 249, 251; modern, 182; overlooked, 22; paratexts addressed to, 13, 21, 147, 149, 150, 152, 153, 154, 155, 170, 171, 172, 174, 175, 181, 273; of printers’ devices, 100, 104; Puritan, 120; racialized identity formation of, 18; relations between texts and, 219; reprints determined by, 49, 55; 178; women, children, and working-class, 199; see also readers, women readers, women, 2, 4, 5, 12, 14, 18, 150–4, 166–70, 216, 225, 228–32, 256, 271; of Shakespeare, 209, 260; as vital to the book market, 130; see also Middlemore Wolfreston, Frances; readers; Stanley Hastings, Elizabeth readership, 120, 230; privileged over ownership, 14, 254 reading(s): affective, 14, 254, 255, 261; authoritative, 194; communities, 4, 238, 247; devotional, 194, 225, 228, 229–30, 245, 271; feminist, 76; of gendered dynamics, 117; preferred 194, 199; as solitary, 225; techniques of, 238 recipe books, 22, 25 recusant community, 210 recycling, 16, 32, 95, 237 Redich Darcy, Grace (daughter of Alexander Redich, wife of Sir Robert Darcy), 230–1

Redman, Elizabeth, see Pickering Jackson Redman Cholmeley Cholmeley, Elizabeth Reed, Robert, 218 refugees, 5, 18, 120 remarriage, 5, 8, 21, 49, 52, 53, 69, 79, 80, 82, 96, 117, 270 resources for research in book history, 2, 4, 5, 10, 21, 42, 49, 76, 97, 98, 109, 117, 118, 123, 130, 138, 208, 209, 247, 262, 274; searching women’s names in Folger catalogue, 208; see also British Book Trade Index; Early English Books Online; ECARTICO; English Short Title Catalogue; Perdita; Short-Title Catalogue; ShortTitle Catalogue Netherlands reuse: of cloth, 31, 40; of paper, 237; of printers’ devices, 95, 96, 97 Rich, Penelope, Lady, see Devereux Rich, Penelope Richardson, C., 212 Rickert, Edith, 198, 200 Rider, Sir William, 35 Roberts, Alice, see Bailey Charlewood Roberts, Alice Roberts, James, 52–3, 68, 69, 82, 83, 84, 85–6, 89, 90, 91, 111 Roberts, Jeanne Addison, 198, 200 Roberts, Sasha, 190, 221, 236, 248, 256, 257, 260 Robijns, Lijntje (widow of Theunis Jacobszoon Lootsman), 135 Robinson Bradock, widow (widow of Robert Robinson, wife of Richard Bradock), 53, 68 Robinson, George, 52, 68, 69, 86, 87–8, 92, 97

INDEX

Robinson, Joan, see Sturgis Kingston Robinson Orwin, Joan Robinson, Robert, 21, 52, 53, 68 Rochester, Earl of, 38 Rodini, Elizabeth, 109 Rogers, John, 60 Rolfe, William J., 198 Rolleston, John, 176 Rollins, Hyder, 148, 158 Roper, Margaret, see More Roper, Margaret Ross, Helen, 17 Rowe, K. T., 164, 171 Rowlands, M. B., 220 rubbish, 1, 31; see also garbage Ruggles, Jone, 40 Ruijf, Geertruyt van (widow of Pieter Goos), 133 running headers, 149, 156, 157 Ruskin, John, 200 Rutland, Countess of, see Sidney Manners, Elizabeth Sae, Kitamura, 209, 257 saints’ lives, 210 Sales, Francis de, 210 samplers, 220, 221 Sanders, Eve Rachele, 183 Sandford, John, 183 Sanford, Hugh, 174–9, 181–2, 183 Sanford, James, 183 Saskers, Aefje Willems (widow of Dirck Pieterszoon Voscuyl, widow of Hessel Gerritsz), 137 Sauer, Elizabeth, 4 Sawbridge, Hannah, 138 Scampion Toy, Elizabeth (wife of Robert Toy), 57, 66, 71 Schagen, Gerbrandt, 136 Schagen, Jacomina, see Bullens, Jacomina

309

Schipper, Jan Jacobszoon (Johannes Jacobus), 127, 136, 138, 139 Schipper, Susanna, see Veselaer, Susanna Schmidt, Ariadne, 138, 142 Schmidt, Suzanne Karr, 43 Schoenmaker, Annetje Jacobs (widow of Joachim van Dyck), 133 Scholz, B. F., 109 schools: girls’ and womens’, 6, 189, 190; Shakespeare in, 188, 190, 197, 199, 200 Schouten, Dirck, 133 Schouten, Jacomina, see Duijveland, Jacomina van Schrijver, Pieter Arentszoon, 131 Scotland, 6, 17, 20, 97, 98 Scott-Warren, Jason, 248, 251, 253, 259 scribes, 16, 165, 175, 226, 237; see also amanuenses; secretaries Scudder, Vida Dutton, 190 secretaries, 164, 174, 175, 176, 178, 179, 219; see also amanuenses; scribes sectarian book traders, 12, 118, 119, 120, 121, 125 secular books, 9, 122, 166, 214, 243, 249 Segre, Julie, 42 Selden, John, 211, 219 self-representation, 77, 124, 125, 128, 129, 156, 157, 231; self-portrait, 99; visual, 95, 98, 106, 108, 109, 110, 127; women’s, 98, 108, 109, 117, 124–5, 126, 127, 233 Selman, Matthew, 91 Senchyne, Jonathan, 43 Seneca, 150, 151

310

INDEX

Seres, William, 110 sermons, 12, 56, 78, 82, 104, 105, 106, 183, 210, 218, 226, 227, 228, 232, 237, 258 servants, women, 3, 15, 30–1, 32, 146 service, in noble households, 175, 183, 235 sexuality, 33, 38, 39, 43, 61, 100, 152, 218, 255, 274; see also gender Shaaber, M. A., 58 Shackford, Martha Hale, 197 Shakespeare, William, 2, 8, 10, 15, 19, 22, 23, 38, 42, 76, 80, 111, 183, 187–201, 209, 211, 218, 243, 244, 246, 256, 257, 259, 260, 261, 262–3, 271; non-elite audiences for, 5, 14, 188, 199; publishing in America, 188–9, 190, 198; reputation as poet, 10; in schools, 188, 190–1, 193, 194, 200; student editions, 187 Shakespeare, William, works: Hamlet, 201, 207, 211, 263; Julius Caesar, 200, 211; King Lear, 80, 101, 111, 260; Macbeth, 174, 200; Measure for Measure, 174; Merchant of Venice, 15, 190, 191, 192, 193, 195, 197, 198, 199, 200, 255; Merry Wives of Windsor, 37, 38, 75–6, 78; Midsummer Night’s Dream, 15, 190, 192, 196, 197, 199; Othello, 25, 211, 255; ‘The Phoenix and the Turtle’, 260; Rape of Lucrece, 10, 14, 260; Romeo and Juliet, 263; Taming of the Shrew, 76, 255; Venus and Adonis, 10, 14, 243, 244, 247, 248, 253, 260–1, 263; A Winter’s Tale, 198

sheets, of paper: books created from, 11, 17, 29, 32, 36, 82, 83, 84, 88, 90, 117, 145, 151, 156, 159, 168, 181, 234, 256; perfecting, 181; see also edition-sheets Sheffard Overton, Elizabeth (widow of William Sheffard, wife of Henry Overton), 68, 69 Sherman, William H., 236, 248 Shirley, James, 14, 254, 255, 259 shop signs, 17, 104, 111 Short Lownes, Emma (widow of Peter Short, wife of Humphrey Lownes), 52–3, 66, 68, 112 Short-Title Catalogue (STC): biographical information in, 68; inconsistencies in, 21, 57–8, 67, 88, 147; use of data to research women, 2, 70, 79–81 Short-Title Catalogue Netherlands (STCN): as incomplete, 118, 121, 138; specialization information in, 122; women in, 118, 130 Shrewsbury, Earl of, see Talbot, George Sibbes, Richard, 210 Sicherman, Barbara, 189 Sidney Herbert, Mary, Countess of Pembroke (widow of Henry Herbert, 2nd earl of Pembroke), 4, 13, 163–85, 216, 221; as benefactor 163; editorial choices, 171; ‘The Dolefull Lay of Clorinda’, 178–9; Psalmes, 166, 177, 180; as translator, 166–7; ‘To the Angel Spirit’, 178, 180; Wilton House, 13, 168, 170, 171, 176, 183; see also Countesse of Pembroke’s Arcadia, The

INDEX

Sidney Manners, Elizabeth (widow of Roger Manners, 5th Earl of Rutland), 176 Sidney Wroth, Mary, Lady Wroth (niece to Mary Sidney Herbert, widow of Sir Robert Wroth), 14, 18, 163, 179, 183, 211, 256; Urania, 163, 179 Sidney, Mary Dudley, see Dudley Sidney, Mary Sidney, Sir Philip, 166, 173 signature(s), 14, 58, 214, 219; Pembroke’s, 170, 179; placement, 214, 216; unrecorded, 248; Wolfreston’s, 244, 245, 246, 247, 248, 249, 250, 256, 262, 263 Sijs, Cornelis van der, 120 Simmons, Mary, 138 Simonds, Thomas, 78 Simpson, Gabriel, 52, 53 Simson Read Eld, Frances (widow of Gabriel Simson, widow of Richard Read, wife of George Eld), 52, 53, 68, 69, 70 Simson, Gabriel, 52, 53 Simson, John, 78 Sitwell, George, 252 Skipwith manuscript, 233–5 Skretkowicz, Victor, 172, 173, 174, 183 Smient, Maria (daughter of Otto Barents Smient, widow of Nicolaas van Duijst), 133 Smient, Otto Barents, 133 Smith Waite, Mary (wife of Thomas Waite), 215, 220 Smith, Chloe Wigston, 29 Smith, Helen, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 16, 17, 19, 20, 22, 23, 35, 48, 49, 51, 53, 54, 59, 60, 61, 68, 69, 70, 79, 90, 96, 97, 109, 110, 117, 118, 123, 124, 127,

311

165, 166, 167, 180, 210, 267–77 Smith, Henry, 228 Smith, Ian, 17 Smith, Isabel(la), 212, 213 Smith, Richard, 213 Smith, Stephen, 211 Smyth, A., 249, 252 Solomon, B. M., 189 Someren, Hester van, see Weer, Hester de Someren, Jan Pieterszoon van, 136 songs, 15, 101, 120, 188, 260 sonnets, 166, 168; Shakespeare’s, 183, 218, 260 Southworth Mollineux, Mary (wife of Henry Mollineux), 210–11 Sowle Raylton, Tace (wife of Thomas Raylton), 119, 122, 123, 126, 138 Sowle, J., 126 Spain: Spanish-American War, 188; Spanish Armada, 7, 18, 21, 23; Spanish literature, 31, 100, 183, 268; war with England, 7, 21, 80, 81, 235 specialization: by the Collegiants, 120; by Dutch women, 121, 122, 123; in godly authors, 60; in printing, 22, 248, 249, 272, 275; in reprints, 56; as sectarian publishers and printers, 118; by women, 118, 121 spelling: misspellings, 273; of names, 68, 97, 106, 109, 111, 181, 247; old-spelling, 197, 237; of titles, 158; see also orthography Spenser, Edmund, 14, 178, 179, 211 Spiller, Elizabeth, 17

312

INDEX

Spilman, John, 16, 35, 36, 37, 41 Spinks, B. D., 229 St Giles Cripplegate, 22, 81 St Paul’s Churchyard, 15, 17, 47, 145, 147, 218 Stallybrass, Peter, 33, 208, 221, 237 Stam, Aagje, see Jacobs, Aagje Stam, Jan Fredricx, 137 Stanley Egerton, Frances (wife of John Egerton, 1st Earl of Bridgewater), 214, 231 Stanley Hastings, Elizabeth, Countess of Huntingdon (wife of Henry Hastings, 5th Earl of Huntingdon), 2, 4, 13, 16, 225–41, 271; as author, 226–8, 235, 236; Certaine Collections of, 226–7; Donington House, 13, 232, 233; funeral sermon, 226, 233; networks, 227, 229, 231–8 Star Chamber decrees, 6, 7, 9, 270 stationers: aliens in England, 18; daughters of, 109, 117, 123; French 5, 18; goods confiscated, 5 stationers, widow, 22, 48; conservative approach, 56–7, 62–7; continuation in the trade, 10, 54, 62–7; as economic agents, 19, 55, 61, 77, 98; entrepreneurial approach, 57, 62–7; influence on second-plus husbands of, 75–93; joint publications of, 59–61; length of careers, 54; networks, 5, 47–8, 56, 57–61, 270; number of editions published, 60, 70, 71; perceived as desirable for their wealth, 8, 21, 50–3, 76, 77; refusing proposals outside the book trade, 78–9;

remarriages of, 8, 50–3; 75–8; shared investments, 55–6; total editions sold, 54; widow publishers in London, 47–73 stationers, women, 20, 49, 115, 116; in Amsterdam, 131–7; contributions only when widowed, 5, 10, 116; as conservative and entrepreneurial publishers, 5, 54–7; 62–7; deciding what to publish, 47, 121; ‘dynasties’ of stationers’ families, 117; edition-sheets as evidence of output, 86, 87–9; English compared to Dutch, 12, 115–42; hidden labours of, 76–93; influence of, 5, 11, 80–92; length of careers of, 54–7; 69, 118–21; networks between, 2, 5, 48, 56–7, 59–61, 98, 116, 118, 121; privileges in Dutch Republic, 123, 126; research on, 2, 4, 5, 10, 49–50, 76–7, 97, 109, 118, 138, 274; see also booksellers; courantiers; printers, widow; publishers, women; stationers, widow Stationers’ Company, 5; admission by patrimony, 91, 123; admission of women, 8–9, 21, 22, 79, 117; brothers in, 6, 146, 158; Court of, 6, 7, 9, 20, 71, 82; freedom, 6, 8, 18, 22, 53, 55, 69, 79, 81, 85, 90, 91, 92, 100; grandfathered in, 91–2; patents, 6, 18, 20, 67, 79, 81, 82, 85, 91; privileges, 18, 100, 122, 158; patrimony, 91, 123; protections of, 92; rights to copy, 77, 83, 91; rights to playbill printing, 111;

INDEX

transferred or translated to, 69, 79, 87, 91 Stationers’ Register, 9, 49, 50, 58, 83, 87, 91, 147, 149, 158, 159 Stevens, J., 31 Stirling, Earl of, see Alexander; William Stonley, Richard, 253 Storck, Abel Sijmonszoon van der, 136 Storck, Marritje van der, see Goedesberghen, Marritje Gijsberts van Stoughton, Robert, 272 Stow, John, 232 Stray, C., 191 Straznicky, Marta, 111 Strode, William, 218 Stroobant, Anna, 136 Stroobant, Margrieta, see Bosschaert, Margrieta Stroobant, Paulus, 136 Sturgis Kingston Robinson Orwin, Joan (widow of John Kingston, widow of George Robinson, widow of Thomas Orwin), 2, 11, 12, 52, 68, 69, 81, 82, 86–9, 91, 92, 95, 97, 99, 106–8, 112, 138, 270 Subligny, Sieur de, Mock Clelia [or] Madam Quixote, 211 Surbut Gosson, widow (widow of John Surbut, wife of Edward Gosson), 69 Surbut, John, 69 Sutton Middleton, Jane (wife of Henry Middleton), 9, 21, 64 Swart, Abigaal, see Maij, Abigaal Swart, Steven, 135, 139 Sweers, Anna (widow of Evert Cloppenburgh), 132 Sweerts, Elisabeth Emanuelsdochter (widow of

313

Pauwels Aertszoon van Ravestein), 136 Swetnam, Joseph, 53, 256 Sydney, see Sidney, Mary, Countess of Pembroke table books, 226, 227, 237 Talbot Herbert, Katherine (wife of Henry Herbert, 2nd Earl of Pembroke), 183 Talbot, George, Earl of Shrewsbury, 183 Tanselle, G. T., 71 Tapp Hurlock, Elizabeth (widow of John Tapp, widow of Joseph Hurlock), 69 Taunton, Sarah (wife of Henry Taunton), 66 Taylor, Gary, 174 Taylor, John, 38 Tedder, H. R., 100, 109 textiles: associated with indigence, 31, 38; circulation of, 37; trade in, 31; and women, 36, 40 texts, 14, 17, 166, 245, 246; additions to, 158, 177, 218, 226, 257, 260, 269; bibliographic examination of, 21; bringing to press, 167; corrections to, 219; for critical editions, 187, 190, 193–4, 200; cutting, 16, 226, 227; ephemeral, 80, 85, 246, 261; faults in, 170, 273; materiality of, 180; ‘mother’, 99; needlework as, 22; proscribed, 14; readers and, 219; recycled, 16; restructuring, 226–9, 231, 237, 257; seditious or illicit, 17; see also copy-text textual, 18, 31, 179, 193, 271; authority, 173; controversy, 179; cruxes, 15, 251, 252;

314

INDEX

cultures, 16, 22, 95, 108; description, 31; editing, see editing; introductions, 183; labour, 2, 14, 89, 197, 199; notes, 15, 190, 192, 194, 195; production, 33, 34, 41, 42, 85, 117, 127, 130; records, 33, 108; scholarship or criticism, 15, 164, 173, 188; selfpresentation, 124, 127, 130; widows, 267–8; see also notes, textual theatres, 3, 39, 89, 123, 124, 154; closure of, 43, 259 Thompson, Ann, 190, 257 Thompson, Ayanna, 17 Thompson, Dorothy, 270 Thorpe, Thomas, 36 Thuit Vautrollier Field, Jacqueline du (widow of Thomas Vautrollier, wife of Richard Field), 5–11, 18, 20, 21, 22, 52, 66, 68, 69, 71, 112 Tidcombe, M., 16, 17 Tiewelen, Sara (widow of Adriaen van Gaasbeeck I), 133 title-page borders, 12, 98, 104, 105, 111; compartments, 12, 98, 99, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 108, 110, 111 titles: acquiring rights to, 56, 58, 80, 91, 122, 146, 154; alternate, 40, 101; as estimates of productivity, 82–3 84, 86, 99; half-titles, 149; multiple editions of, 95; significance of possessives in, 163–4, 183; in Stationers’ Register, 147, 149, 159 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 189 Todd, Barbara, 77 Tottel, Richard, 43, 159 Touchet Davies Douglas, Eleanor, Lady Douglas (widow of John

Davies, widow of Sir Archibald Douglas), 219 Toy, Elizabeth, see Scampion Toy, Elizabeth tracts, 258, 259; devotional, 257; Quaker, 214, 216, 220; Whig, 119 trades: advantages of, 78; marriage outside, 78–9; transference, between companies, 79 tragedies, 101, 124, 127, 129, 177, 254, 257 tragicomedy, 254 transcribing, 226, 229, 247, 257; as authorship, 166, 226 Travitsky, Betty, 158, 173 Trettien, Whitney, 16, 22, 194, 216, 220, 229 Troost, Dirck Corneliszoon, 136 Troost, Lijsbet, see Jans, Lijsbet Trundle, Margery (wife of John Trundle), 57, 66 Tudor, Elizabeth, 7, 12, 16, 35, 105, 106, 166 Turner, William, 212 Twitter, #thanksfortyping, 274, 276 Tyler, Margaret (wife of John Tyler), 16 type, 6, 18, 20, 80, 83, 84, 96, 106, 112, 131; sizes, 20; typesetters, 117 typography, 119, 268 Udall, John, 82 Uffenbach, Zacharias von, 124, 139 Ule, Louis, 183 Underdown, Thomas, 150–1, 158, 159 Underwood, Charlotte Whipple, 199

INDEX

United Kingdom, 190, 192, 200 Unwin, G., 90 vagrancy, 16, 33, 35, 36, 37, 41 Valckenier, Trijn Jansdochter (widow of Jan Commelin), 132 Valerius, Cornelius, Ethicae, 156 Valois, Marguerite de, 211 Variorum Shakespeare, 15, 198; see also Furness, Horace Howard Vautrollier, Jacqueline, see Thuit, Vautrollier Field, Jacqueline du Vautrollier, Thomas, 5–11, 18, 20, 21, 68 Vavasour, Alice, see Becket Vavasour, Alice Vavasour, Nicholas 69 Veeris, Johanna (widow of Dirk Boom), 131 Vere, T., 261 verse, 151, 234; adaptations of texts into, 149, 156; collections, 146, 238, 148; epistles, 231, 234, 235–6 verses, 256, 260; as annotations, 14, 212, 213, 218, 219, 220, 252, 257, 259; biblical, 226, 227, 230, 271 Verwou, Aaltje Jans (widow of Balthazar Crijnen van Dorsten, wife of Jacob Lescailje), 123, 132 Veselaer, Aagje, see Jacobs, Aagje Veselaer, Joris Jacobszoon, 137 Veselaer, Susanna (widow of Jan Jacobszoon Schipper), 122, 126–8, 136, 139; fame of, 127 Vijver, Maria de (widow of Michaël Fortgens), 133 Vincent, Anne (wife of George Vincent 2), 55, 59, 66

315

Vincent, Katherine (wife of George Vincent 1), 55, 67 Virgil, Aeneid, 150, 151 Vis, Marretie Claes (widow of Albert Magnus), 135 Vives, Juan Luis, 211, 212, 220, 296 Vlaminck, Sara, see Flamen, Sara Vogel, Catrina de (widow of Joost Pluimer), 135 voice: authorial, 149, 156, 166, 175, 177, 178, 196, 227, 230, 257; editorial, 197; lyric, 180; recuperation of, 101 volvelles, 100 Vondel, Joost van den, 122, 123 Voscuyl, Aefje, see Saskers, Aefje Willems Voscuyl, Dirck Pieterszoon, 137 Wachter, Jacob Pieterszoon, 137 Wachter, Marretgen, see Waelbeeck, Marretgen Jacobs van Waelbeeck, Marretgen Jacobs van (widow of Jacob Pieterszoon Wachter), 137 Wager, William, 156 Waite, Jane, 215 Waite, Mary, see Smith Waite, Mary Walker, Hannah, 211 Walker, T. D., 110 Wall-Randell, Sarah, 13, 163–85, 221, 271, 272 Wall, Wendy, 4, 19, 22, 159 Wallace, Charles William, 198 Wallace, Hulda, 198 Waller, Edmund, 14, 211, 220 Walley, John, 71, 110 Walton, Mary, 213 war: English Civil War, 119, 122, 245, 262; news books about

316

INDEX

battles, 80, 81; between Spain and England, 7, 18, 21, 23, 80, 81, 235; Spanish-American War, 188 Ward, Richard, 110 Ward, Samuel, 56 Warner, William, Albions England, 107 Warren, Alice, see Law Norton Warren, Alice washing: books, 207, 208; cloth, 32, 43 Wastelier, Joanna (widow of Johannes van den Bergh), 131 watermarks, 36 Waterson, Alice, see Burton Waterston Coldock Bing, Alice Waterson, Richard 53 Waterson, Simon, 84, 86 Watkins, Richard, 85, 91, 111 Watt, Tessa, 248 Wayne, Valerie, 1–26, 72, 109, 139, 238, 269, 272, 274 Weamys, Anna, A Continuation of Sir Philip Sydney’s Arcadia, 14, 211 Webster, John, 14, 254 Weduwen, Arthur der, 115, 119, 120, 121, 122, 130, 138 Weer, Hester de (widow of Jan Pieterszoon van Someren), 136 Wees, Abraham Janszoon de, 137 Wees, Annetje de, see Harmens, Annetje Weijerstraet, Elizée, 137 Weijerstraet, Sara, see Janssonius, Sara Wellesley College, 15, 189, 190, 192, 193, 197, 200 Werner, Sarah, 42, 247, 255 Westwood, Mary, 119, 121, 125, 138

Weyers, Aegje (widow of Jan Hendrickszoon Boom), 131 Whitaker, Anne, see Norton Whitaker, Anne Whitaker, K., 176 Whitaker, Richard, 47, 54, 55, 59, 68, 71 White, Edward, 91, 111 White, Micheline, 4, 209 White, Richard Grant, 189 White, Sara (wife of Edward White 1), 67 White, William, 111 Whitehouse, John, 215 Whitfeild, Elizabeth, 216 Whitgift, Archbishop, 270 Whitlock, Elizabeth, 138 Whitney, Geoffrey, A Choice of Emblems, 146 Whitney, Isabella (sister to Geoffrey Whitney), 2, 3, 4, 15, 16, 145–59, 272; ‘The Admonition’, 147, 148, 150–2, 155; ‘Auctor to the Reader’, 149, 152, 154, 155; authorial ambitions of, 155; epistolary poem, 157; familiarity with book trade, 15, 145, 155; A Handful of Pleasant Delights, 148; ‘I.W. To Her Inconstant Lover’, 147, 148, 150–1; ‘The Lady Exclaimeth of the Great Untruth’, 157; ‘The Lamentation of a Gentlewoman’, 157; ‘Last Will and Testament’, 15, 145, 149, 153–5, 157, 159; as maidservant, 146; ‘my Printer’, Richard Jones, 145, 156, 157; ‘philosophical flowers’, 155; A Sweet Nosegay, 146, 149–50, 152–3, 155–7, 158, 159 Wiaerts, Elizabet Abrams (widow of Israel de Paul, widow of Abraham Olofs, widow of

INDEX

Andries Pieters, wife of Johannes Groenewout), 137 Widow Orwin, see Sturgis Kingston Robinson Orwin, Joan widow printers, see printers, widow widows, 182, 267, 268–9, 270, 272, 273, 275; duties of, 165, 268; as executors, 77–8; mourning period, 12, 172, 208; as oppressed, 271; rights of, 271; Spanish terms relating to, 267, 268 widows, typographical, 267–8 Wiggins, Allison, 217, 221, 246, 247, 249 Wijnenberg, Catharina (widow of Pieter Arentszoon Schrijver), 120, 121, 125, 131 Wilboords, Aaltje (widow of Jacob Jacobsz) 134 Wilkie, V., 238 William III, King of England, 120 Williams, A., 238 Williams, F. B., Jr., 20 Williams, John, 60 wills: women’s, 2, 76, 78, 243, 254, 262; women as overseers of, 76, 77, 78; see also mock testaments Wilson, Anne (wife of Robert Wilson), 67 Windet, John, 111, 163 Winstanley, William, Poor Robin almanac for 1670, 253 wives, 39, 75–6, 214, 250; fishwives, 39, 40; housewives, 32, 36; maintaining guild and company memberships when widowed, 117; named as executors, 78; socially and fiscally competent, 77; see also stationers, women

317

Wolf, C. de, 130 Wolfe, Alice (wife of John Wolfe), 67, 71 Wolfe, Joan (widow of Reyner Wolfe), 67, 90 Wolfe, John, 80, 86, 91, 159, 207, 219 Wolfe, Reginald, 110 Wolferstan, Francis (son of Frances Wolfreston), 251 Wolfreston, Frances, see Middlemore Wolfreston, Frances Wolfreston, Mary, see Egerton Wolfreston, Mary Wolfreston, Stanford, 243, 245, 252, 253 Wolkenhauer, A., 109 women in book history: identifying and uncovering, 11, 79–89, 97, 116, 117–18, 165–6, 208–9, 212, 225, 236, 271, 275; overlooked and uncredited, 11, 41, 50, 76, 86, 116, 118, 248, 274; see also authors, women; booksellers, women; printers, widow; publishers, women; stationers, women women, in Stationers’ Company records, 79; as addressees, 13, 106; American, 14, 18, 188, 189; apprentices of, 53, 79; aristocratic, 168, 176, 180; assuming the presence of, 10–11, 19, 22, 89, 272; bonds between, 269; as competent, 77, 78, 86, 89, 227; double standards concerning, 151–2; as educators, 3, 189–90, 191, 194, 197, 198–9; as guides, 85, 87, 118, 170, 227, 231, 233, 261; low-status, 33, 39, 40;

318

INDEX

mobility of, 31, 33, 154–5; printers’ devices of, see printers’ devices; recusant, 210; public self-representation of, 117, 124; rights of, 188, 271; as rulers of the home, 78; spending habits of, 40; as translators, 16, 124 travelling, 6, 192, 215, 232; as untrustworthy, 75, 150; as visible, 5, 95, 116, 117, 126; as weak and vulnerable, 227, 230–1, 256; and wills, 78; working-class, 5, 39–41, 199 Woodbridge, Linda, 40–1 Woodcock, Thomas, 88 woodcuts, 95, 96, 98, 108, 258; circulation of, 96; woodcut block, 96 Woolf, D. R., 211 work, see labour Worlidge, John, 212 Woudhuysen, H. R., 261 Woutneel, widow (widow of Hans Woutneel), 67 Wreedt, Matthias de, 123, 139 Wreedt, Susanna de (wife of Dirk Rank), 139 Wright, Alice, 216 Wright, J., 261 Wrightson, Keith, 20 writers, 213, 232, 233; censure of, 159, 166, 175; compared to authors, 167; professional, 155, 157; readers as, 271, 226–32;

religious, 13, 228; schooltrained, 252 writers, women: in networks, 238; recovery of, 4; scope as, 146; as translators, 166; see also authors, women writing: at another’s direction, 174–5, 176–8, 179–80; in books, see annotating; editing and correcting, 170–1, 219; as futile, 191; as labour, 3–4; letters, see letters; physical environment of, 12–13; required, 235 Wroth, Lady Mary, see Sidney Wroth, Mary, Lady Wroth Wylde, Dorothy, 216 Wylie, Laura, 198 Yarn, Molly G., 14, 15, 187–203, 271, 274 Yates, Frances, 175, 176, 179 Yetsweirt Bottoler, Jane (widow of Charles Yetsweirt, wife of Philip Bottoler), 67, 106, 112 Yetsweirt, Charles, 106 Young, Frances Berkeley, 182 Young, William, 87 Zandvoort, R. W., 164 Zarnowiecki, Matthew, 166 Zech, Marieke, 138, 139, 142 Ziegler, Georgianna, 14, 16, 207–23, 237, 263, 269, 273 Zorach, Rebecca, 109

319

320