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[Portrait of Emily Faithfull]
English publisher and printer Emily Faithfull dedicated her career to fighting for women’s right to work. She wrote extensively on the issue and established the Victoria Press for the Employment of Women in 1860. The Press and its goal of women’s employment in the printing trade was a controversial labor and class issue at the time. The Press’s early business was contract printing for organizations aligned with its mission like the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women. Faithfull traveled extensively in America, publishing her book, Three Visits to America, documenting her observations of working women throughout the United States. -
Te Deum Laudamus
The medieval-inspired illuminations by printer Emily Faithfull’s sister Esther Faithfull Fleet are dazzling. This is one of two books published by Faithfull’s Victoria Press that are printed using chromolithography. Both are illuminated by Fleet. The other, 38 Texts, is also in the collection. The Victoria Press maintained a reputation for excellent work, and Faithfull was appointed Printer and Publisher in Ordinary to the Queen. Te Deum Laudamus was dedicated to Queen Victoria, with her permission. -
Murder: Whereas Robert Smith, Late of Deptford, Shoe-maker, Stands Charged with the Murder of his Uncle, Mr. James Smith, of Lewisham [. . .]
Elizabeth Delahoy was a printer, binder, and stationer in Greenwich. Sadly, in 1808, a fire destroyed the shop she owned with her husband, taking his life. She carried on their business at least through 1824, while simultaneously running a boarding house and raising children. She printed typographically complex books alongside bread-and-butter job printing, such as this broadside. Delahoy advertises the speed with which she can print notices regarding crime or loss at her press. -
Manuscript receipt for “printing certificates of spirits, wines & teas imported in the first quarter of 1823”
Sister of two printers and married to another, Lydia Bailey was an experienced printer when she inherited a struggling shop upon the death of her husband in 1808. Industrious and enterprising, she printed for the Presbyterian church and numerous charitable organizations, including the Female Tract Society. From 1813 she was Printer to the City of Philadelphia, and master printer at one of the busiest printing shops in the city, employing over forty workers. The business printed almanacs, annual reports, bookseller catalogues, broadsides, and chapbooks. She was a printer for fifty-three years. -
Census directory for 1811: containing the names, occupations, & residence of the inhabitants of the city, Southwark & Northern Liberties, a separate division being allotted to persons of colour: to which is annexed an appendix containing much useful information, and a perpetual calendar
The most significant woman bookbinder of the early American Republic, Jane Aitken ran the bindery at her father’s printing office. Her first imprint appears in 1796. In 1808 she printed and bound Thomson’s Bible (also in the collection), the first English translation of the Septuagint, the earliest Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures. Aitken was the first American woman to print a Bible (Thomson's Bible, also in the collection.) Upon her father’s death in 1802, Aitken inherited the printing works and bookshop along with significant debt that had been incurred not by the shop but by her late brother-in-law. In 1813, all her equipment was sold, and Jane Aitken was imprisoned for debt. After her release, she continued to work as a bookbinder, but by 1815 her career as a printer was over. The Census Directory for 1811 is the first published census to include African Americans. It lists names, home addresses, and occupations for all Philadelphia inhabitants, as well as for local businesses, organizations, and professions, such as the Anti-Slavery Society, Mr. Peale’s Museum, churches, midwives, and “layers out of the dead.” -
The Deputy Commissary's Guide within the Province of Maryland
The Deputy Commissary’s Guide was one of the last items issued by Anne Catharine Green’s press. The engraved title page is considered the finest work by Thomas Sparrow, an Annapolis engraver. Green was editor of The Maryland Gazette for eight years without interruption. Its masthead read, “Anne Catharine Green & Son,” until her death. -
[Colonial currency]
Dutch immigrant Anne Catharine Hoof Green worked alongside her husband in his Maryland printing business. When he died in 1767, she inherited his bankruptcy debt along with the shop—a pattern repeated in the lives of many women printers. She went on to successfully petition the state assembly to continue her appointment as public printer to the Province of Maryland. Sympathetic to the Revolution, she ran a busy shop and post office, printing books, pamphlets, almanacs, and colonial currency. She paid off the debt. Green used the process of nature printing to protect against counterfeiting. -
A discourse occasioned by the death of the Reverend Mr. Nathaniel Clap: pastor of a church at Newport on Rhode-Island, on October 30 1745, in the 78th year of his age
Boston-native Ann Smith Franklin married James Franklin (brother of founding father Benjamin Franklin) in 1723. They established the first independent newspaper in New England, the New England Courant. The Franklins later moved to Newport, Rhode Island, and founded that colony’s first newspaper. Ann set type, ran the press, and sold the newspapers and books they published. When James died in 1735, leaving her with five small children, she took over the business and successfully petitioned to become the official printer for the colony. -
Hebdomadario trino, exercicios devotos, y obsequiosos desagravios a la Santissima, Amabilissima, y Missericordiosissima Trinidad: por la execrable ingratitud y grossero olvido de los mortales en el mas pronto obsequio, devocion, y agradecimiento debido à tan soberano mysterio
The widow of Joseph Bernardo de Hogal inherited a well-equipped and successful print shop upon her husband’s death in 1741. She continued managing the shop, located on the calle de las Capuchinas in Mexico City, until 1755. She printed a number of important works, including both volumes of a description of the provinces of New Spain ordered by Philip V, Teatro americano by Jose Antonio Villaseñor y Sanchez. Her successors took over the business under the name Herederos de la Viuda de Hogal.. -
The Christians Pattern, or, A Divine Treatise of the Imitation of Christ
Women could not legally own print shops, but a widow was permitted to continue the family printing business under her own name until she remarried (occasionally to one of the apprentices in the shop), or until a son came of age. Often successful, many widows flourished as independent businesswomen, responsible for operations, finances, and the supervision of pressmen and compositors. Elizabeth Redmayne actively printed in London from 1683 to 1706. -
The marrow of history, or, The pilgrimage of kings and princes: truly representing the variety of dangers inhaerent to their crowns, and the lamentable deaths which many of them, and some of the best of them, have undergone: collected, not onely out of the best modern histories, but from all those which have been most famous in the Latine, Greek, or in the Hebrew tongue: shewing, not onely the tragedies of princes at their deaths, but their exploits and sayings in their lives, and by what virtues some of them have flourished in the height of honour, and overcome by what affections, others of them have sunk into the depth of all calamities: a work most delightfull for knowledge, and as profitable for example
English printer Elizabeth Alsop was the widow of printer Bernard Alsop and published under her own name from 1653 to 1656. Her business was located on Grub Street, a locale known for its concentration of low-end publishers, tabloid journalism, and “hack writers.” The Welsh author of this title was a colorful figure in the courts of Queen Elizabeth and King James. -
Zodiacus Christianus, seu, Signa 12 diuinae praedestinationis vnà cum 12 symbolis quibus signa illa adumbrantur
This emblem book, a Catholic devotional work, was printed in Munich by Anna Bernhard Berg, the widow of Adam Berg, for publisher Raphael Sadeler. The Flemish Sadeler family played a dominant role in engraving, publishing and selling prints in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Note Anna Berg’s name in the colophon. -
Hore beatissime virginis Marie: secundu[m] vsum ordinis Fontebralde[n]sis
The daughter of one printer and married to another, Yolande Bonhomme was one of the most prominent woman printers and booksellers in sixteenth-century Paris. Publisher of both ecclesiastical and secular books, she printed for the University of Paris. With Charlotte Guillard, she was one of the printers who sued the papermakers’ guild over the poor quality of the paper Parisian printers were required to use. This intimate book of hours was commissioned by Louise de Bourbon, Abbess of the Royal Abbey of Fontevraud. It contains interlinear manuscript notes in a tiny, elegant hand. There are only two known copies of this work. -
Alexandri ab Alexandro iurisperiti Neapolitani genialium dierum libri sex, varia ac recondita eruditione referti
Charlotte Guillard was one of the most eminent of the approximately fifty women printers in sixteenth-century Paris. She edited and published in Latin, Greek and French. Married to two printers, and twice widowed, she printed under her own name. Guillard was responsible for the printing works, a bookshop, property, and leases. She began printing in 1502 and continued until her death in 1557. A consummate businesswoman and scholar, she printed substantial academic, legal and religious texts, over two hundred titles in all. -
Incominciano Le uite de pontefici et imperadori Romani
The earliest documented printing by women is from the press at the Convent of San Jacopo de Ripoli in Tuscany. The nuns set type, sewed folios, and provided financial backing for the press. The collection includes two copies of this book. The first is trimmed and rubricated, with the rubrication likely done by the nuns. The second is untrimmed with copious marginalia. The manicule in the second copy points insistently to the entry for the mythic Pope Joan and proclaims “papa femina” (female pope). On close examination, both copies can be seen to have numerous manuscript additions to individual letters.
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