The ten essays in this collection present a widespread yet coherent approach to women's roles in book publishing and the book trade. Across Europe between 1557 and 1700, women, with their husbands or as widows, actively participated as shopkeepers, supervisors, printers, booksellers, publishers, and newspaper distributors. The essays examine major new issues dealing with the economics of authorship, such as whether women's social position restricted their business activities, whether patronage coincided with their professionalization, and whether the emergence of the book market redirected the authors’ audience for their success.
The collection's geographic range—England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Scandinavia—makes it one that truly lives up to its announced coverage of early modern Europe. The first two chapters offer an overview of women's involvement in book publishing. Suzan van Dijk comprehensively documents the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century bio-bibliographies that evaluated and categorized early modern French women's writings according to their marital status, professional reputation, and earnings. She notes that, despite assessing the writings through a male lens, the compilations gave shape to France's female literary canon. Nieves Baranda investigates Spanish women's entry into the book market, highlighting those who became well known as Spain's first professional writers, whether through commissions or commercial success. She addresses other means of profiting from writing, from women appointed to court positions and those who garnered aristocratic patronage, to nuns whose poetry and plays brought in contributions to their convents.
The other seven essays are organized as case studies. Marie Nedregotten Sørbø introduces Dorothe Engelbretsdatter as Norway's first professional poet. Her religious poetry and hymns became best sellers, though she struggled for authorial rights and against accusations of plagiarism. Engelbretsdatter's writings, however, also comforted her on the death of her seven children and husband. The printed book market in Britain facilitated women's creative writing yet complicated their decision to publish, according to Carme Font Paz, who investigates the literary production of well-known poet Aemilia Lanyer and that of an unknown writer, Ann Yerbury, as they transition from court patronage to professionalization. Nina Geerdink writes that the Dutch poet Elisabeth Hoofman followed her husband to Germany, where she accepted the patronage of her husband's employer and, after his death, of his relatives. While her status as a Dutchwoman was of political value to them, as Geerdink shows, her own dependence compelled her to exchange her poetic talent for their patronage. In eighteenth-century Venice, Luisa Bergalli Gozzi moved from patronage to a professional career, shared with her husband, as translator, playwright, and theatrical director. According to Rotraud von Kulessa, her literary efforts were intended to sustain her husband and save the family from financial ruin.
Women translators contributed to the transcultural circulation of literary works, as was the case of the multilingual Eleonora de Fonseca Pimentel, according to Irene Zanini-Cordi. A poet, academician, and newspaper editor who took part in the short-lived Neapolitan Republic, she was named queen's librarian. Mistreated by her improvident husband, she was accused of Jacobinism and hanged. A century later, however, Pimentel would be vindicated as one of the new intellectuals by the Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce. Marianna D'Ezio writes that British novelist Charlotte Lennox carved out a career as translator of historical memoirs. Money was a constant preoccupation, and despite her success in translating, she died destitute. Of the cases recounted in the volume, the German writer Sophie Albrecht achieved the most fame for her multiple activities as publisher, poet, editor, and actor. Berit C. R. Royer remarks on her privileged upbringing, which allowed her to establish a publishing company with her physician husband, edit almanacs, and publish poetry that challenged the established order. Albrecht's publishing business was followed by a successful acting career; however, she ended her last years in poverty, having ruinously supported her estranged husband and a playhouse.
As the editors explain in their introduction, the essays give proof of women's increasing economic success in publishing and of their transnational contributions to the expanding book trade and demonstrate the changes from women's dependence on patronage to professional status. Yet they also reveal that women's social position improved slowly. In numerous cases, the financial success they were able to achieve served only to sustain an ultimately calamitous marriage.
