Presses and Printshops

Women were enmeshed in the material workings of the early modern book trades. In the printing houses and shops of early modern Europe, women worked as compositors, proofreaders, printers, publishers, bookbinders, and wholesale and retail booksellers, and they conveyed and sold printed wares in the public spaces beyond the press and the printshop. The widows of stationers who took over the businesses of their husbands represent the most visible cases of a more pervasive reality—one in which women regularly worked to make and distribute the products of print.