Rags, ragpickers, and early modern papermaking

Abstract

AbstractIn medieval and early modern Europe, paper for writing and printing was made from recycled linen rags. Before they could be made into paper, rags first had to be acquired by individuals. Ragmen, rag‐women, ragpickers, rag‐rakers, rag‐gatherers, and rag‐collectors collected rags from door‐to‐door and picked them out of refuse piles, and eventually conveyed them to papermakers. This article begins with a short description of early modern papermaking in Europe and then shifts to its main subject: ragpickers and their rags in early modern England as understudied historical subjects and as figures of metaphor in the period's discourse. As an underclass, then as now, ragpickers have not been the subject of sustained historical attention. Although ragpickers' work went unnoticed or unacknowledged by some early modern writers, other writers invoked ragpickers and their rags to express ideas about literary production, class, filth, disease, and the relationship between London and the provinces. Studies of ragpickers and rags therefore intersect with recent research on labor in rural and urban England in the early modern period; on waste objects; and on women in the early modern book trade. Because Western papermaking relied on rags for over five hundred years, and because rags and paper continually traversed geographical boundaries over that period, studies of the rag‐trade transcend traditional scholarly boundaries of nation and periodization. Therefore, while this article focuses on early modern England, it also offers possible directions for transnational, transhistorical, and comparative approaches to rags and ragpickers.