Women, Book History, and the Long Eighteenth Century: Taking Stock, Moving Forward

Abstract

Women, Book History, and the Long Eighteenth Century:Taking Stock, Moving Forward Betty A. Schellenberg and Michelle Levy this special issue of the Huntington Library Quarterly aims to present new knowledge about the cultural, historical, and economic significance of female labor in manuscript and print production and circulation throughout the long eighteenth century. The interdisciplinary field of book history has at times been narrowly understood to refer only to print production of the codex form in the era of movable type, along with its supporting technologies and social contexts. In keeping with more recent approaches, we take book history's area of inquiry to encompass textual artifacts in their broadest material and historical manifestations, and in every aspect of their production, circulation, and reception. More specifically, it is our objective to move the field of book history forward by taking an inclusive approach to modes of textual production and by exploring new theoretical models and methods, especially those enabled by digital tools. As a whole, this volume begins to represent the extremely diverse range of projects and approaches currently being pursued by individual researchers. It is our hope that the dialogue initiated here can provide a model for and inspire the creation of further research exchanges and networks. As scholars, the contributors to this volume are of course familiar with the important shifts in the canon from the time, forty years ago, when few women were included in the anthologies used in North American and European classrooms. Nevertheless, we also recognize that women writers still are not granted a proportionate share of research or teaching focus and that the advent of digital media [End Page 1] has not resulted in the canon-busting that many feminist literary scholars had hoped for, as the cost of creating and maintaining large digital projects tends to privilege the familiar and the mainstream. Furthermore, many digital resources continue to focus on women as authors of printed books, which elides their engagement with manuscript forms and in periodicals. And although Leslie Howsam noted twenty years ago that "women can be identified at every node of the cycle [of print production and reception] and at all periods in history,"1 their contribution to bookmaking and the book trades for much of the period we consider has been almost entirely overlooked, underestimated, or ignored. In other words, much of the scholarship on women in communications media has not penetrated into what we might call mainstream or traditional book history and as a result remains fragmentary and diffuse. For example, only one chapter of forty-nine in the magisterial Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, 1695–1830 (2009) addresses women's contributions for this period. In "Women and Print: Readers, Writers and the Market," Isobel Grundy asks, "What difference did women make to the book trade during the long eighteenth century?"2 She reaches the telling conclusion that we know very little in answer to that question. One of the purposes of our special issue is to take stock of the scholarship that exists in order to bridge what has been done previously with what can and must be done now. In this respect, we acknowledge our indebtedness to those who have begun this work, including Maureen Bell, Isobel Grundy, Leslie Howsam, Paula McDowell, and Kathryn Shevelow, to name only a few. The research projects we are variously involved in seek to develop answers to Grundy's question and to similar queries about writing and reading; by working together, we enhance our potential to advance the field. The introduction, essays, and responses included in this special issue arise out of a two-part symposium begun in Vancouver, British Columbia, in August 2018 and continued at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., in March 2019. This first-ever international meeting of experts working to unearth and communicate the stories of women's involvement in creating manuscript and print literature in the long eighteenth century (that is, from the final decades of the seventeenth century to the early nineteenth) brought together scholars, librarians, and archivists from Europe and North America. In those initial meetings and over the ensuing months, we have thought collectively about how we can...