Interest in women’s work in the Renaissance and Reformation book trades has been stimulated by the maturation of two important scholarly fields: the study of women’s literature and history, and the history of the book. Pettegree’s The Book in the Renaissance (Pettegree 2010, cited under General Overviews) exemplifies the ways in which recent scholarship has established the emergence of print as central to the production and articulation of national identity, religious reform, and international scholarly communities. The books and articles listed in the first half of this bibliography reveal much about women’s participation in the book trades across Europe and into the New World, but also make it clear that there is significant work still to be done, both in the form of individual, local, or national case studies, and in the form of ambitious comparative research. Seeking out the particularities of women’s engagement in the work of publication and with the products of the early modern book trade not only illuminates the operations of printing and bookselling in this period, but also pushes scholars to take a wide view of “publication” and of the role of consumers (purchasers, readers, and patrons) in shaping the print marketplace. The second half of this bibliography, largely but not wholly restricted to the English example, details important work on women and manuscript or scribal publication, how women entered into print and were presented (or presented themselves) as female authors, how print itself was imaginatively gendered, and women’s influence as buyers and readers.
