To celebrate International Women’s Day 2016 on the blog, we are showcasing the work of female printers of the 17th century in the Pepys Library.
In early modern England, the printing industry was not altogether a male preserve: between 1550 and 1650, it is estimated that 130 women in Britain were working actively in the printing trade. It was common for women printers to work alongside men in the printing houses of convents or with family members and spouses, and it was usual for them to marry within the trade. Amongst the books in Magdalene’s historic libraries, one can find the names of women printers on the imprints of title pages. Some are referred to by their marital status, such as ‘Widow Sayle’ ‘Widow of J. Blageart’ and the ‘widowe of Richarde Iugge’, others, by their full names such as Alice Norton, Elizabeth Purslowe, Mary Clark and Hannah Allen.
It is not coincidental that many female printers were described as widows on the printed title pages. As widows, women had the opportunity to control their own businesses and print books themselves, using their previous experience gained by working alongside their husbands. They usually took their husbands’ printer’s mark.
Here are a few examples of books printed by women in the Pepys Library:

PL 2476: Stow, John: The Survey of London.. London: printed by Elizabeth Purslovv, and are to be sold by Nicholas Bourne, at his shop at the south entrance of the Royall Exchange, 1633.
Elizabeth Purslowe was particularly prolific in the trade. She ran her printing house for fourteen years in the early 17th century and published over 160 books.

PL 916: Baronio, Cesare: The life or the ecclesiasticall historie of S. Thomas Archbishope of Canterbury. Colloniae [i.e. Paris: printed by the widow of J. Blageart], M.DC.XXXIX [1639].

PL 1077(2): Cortés, Martin: The arte of nauigation… [Imprinted at London: By the widowe of Richard Iugge, late printer to the Queenes Maiestie, 1584].
The book is an elaborate production, with a decorative title-page and numerous diagrams, tables, and illustrations, including a fold-out map and volvelles. The material page is pushed to its limits in order to encompass the technologies of global exploration.
By Catherine Sutherland
Deputy Librarian, Pepys Library and Special Collections
Bibliography
Driver, Martha W. ‘Women Printers and the Page, 1477-1541’ Gutenberg-Jahrbuch vol. 73, 1998
Smith, H.: ‘Print[ing] your royal father off’ Early Modern Female Stationers and the Gendering of the British Book Trades’ in Hill, W.S. and Schillingsburg, P.L. (eds) Text: an interdisciplinary annual of Textual studies vol. 15. University of Michigan Press, 2002.
Smith, H. : ‘Grossly material things’: women and book production in early modern England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
Reblogged this on In the Dark and commented:
Fascinating piece from my old college…
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Reblogged this on Press Genepy and commented:
There’s plenty of evidence of women in the printing business in the 17th Century. However, it’s unclear whether they were actually working in the printing house, or what we might today term ‘publishers’. Illicit printers such as Joan Darby had their pamphlets printed in the low Countries and then smuggled in. Moxon tells us that one of the ‘rules of the chapel’ was a no-women rule. However, in the Civil War years, is it impossible to imagine that radical women might have worked alongside their male fellows in the struggle? I’d love to know.
Us too – if any specialists in this area can shed more light on this we would be very interested to hear!
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