Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T02:53:25.988Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Women in the Book Trade in Italy, 1475-1620*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Deborah Parker*
Affiliation:
University of Virginia

Extract

in his 1569 Epistola qua ad multas multorum amicorum respondet de suae typographiae statu nominatimque de suo thesauro linguae graecae, the Parisian printer Henri II Estienne decries the participation of women in the book trade: “But beyond all those evils which have now been brought on by the ignorance of printers, male and female (for this only remains to add to the disgrace of the art, that even the little ladies have been practicing it), who will doubt that new evils are daily to be expected?” As Estienne's comments testify, one of the most unusualfeatures of the Renaissance and Counter Reformation book trade was the existence of several women printers and publishers. While their contemporaries were well aware of the presence of women in the printing profession, bibliographers and historians have largely neglected the history of their labors.

Type
Studies
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Research for this article was made possible by grants from the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, Villa I Tatti, Florence, the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, and the University of Virginia and University of Rome Scholar Exchange Program. I am grateful to the staffs of the Archivio di Stato, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Biblioteca Riccardiana, and Biblioteca Moreniana in Florence; the Biblioteca Angelica, Biblioteca Casanatense, and Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Vittorio Emanuele in Rome; and the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice for their courtesy and assistance. I would like to thank Conor Fahy, Paul Grendler, and Martin Lowry for their comments on an earlier draft of this study. I am also indebted to Gino Corti for his advice on the transcription of these documents. All translations are mine.

References

“Abraham Conat.” Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 27:693-96.Google Scholar
Adams, H.M. Catalogue of Books Printed on the Continent of Europe, 1501-1600 in Cambridge Libraries. 2 vols. Cambridge, 1967.Google Scholar
Amram, David. The Makers of Hebrew Books in Italy. London, 1963.Google Scholar
Anderson, Bonnie S. and Zinsser, Judith P.. A History of Their Own: Women in Europe from Prehistory to the Present. 2 vols. New York, 1988.Google Scholar
Ascarelli, Fernanda and Menato, Marco. La tipografia del ‘500 in Italia. Florence, 1989.Google Scholar
Barberi, Francesco. “I Dorico, tipografi a Roma nel Cinquecento (1526-1572).” In Tipografi romani del Cinquecento, 101-45. Florence, 1983.Google Scholar
Barberi, Francesco. Paolo Manuzio e la stamperia del Popolo Romano (1561-1570). Rome, 1985.Google Scholar
Beech, Beatrice. “Charlotte Guillard: A Sixteenth-Century Business Woman.Renaissance Quarterly 36 (1983): 345-67.Google Scholar
Begey, Marina Bersamo and Dondi, Giuseppe, ed. Le cinquecentine piemontesu Nizza, Monferrato, Novara, Novi Ligure, Saluzzo, Savigliano, Tortona, Trino, Varallo, Vercelli. Turin, 1966.Google Scholar
Bertoli, Gustavo, ed. Leggi e bandi del periodo mediceo posseduti dalla Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze. Florence, 1992.Google Scholar
Biagiarelli, Berta Maracchi. “Il privilegio di stampatore ducale nella Firenze Medicea.Archivio storico italiano 123 (1965): 304-70.Google Scholar
Bologna, Pietro. “La stamperia fiorentina del monastero di S. Jacopo di Ripoli e le sue edizioni.” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 20 (1892): 365.Google Scholar
Borsa, Gedeon. Clavis typographorum librariorumque Italiae 1465-1600. Baden Baden, 1980.Google Scholar
Brown, Horatio F. The Venetian Printing Press 1469-1800. London, 1891. Rpt., Amsterdam, 1969.Google Scholar
Brown, Judith C. and Goodman, Jordan. “Women and Industry in Florence.Journal of Economic History 40 (1980): 7380.Google Scholar
Carter, Tim. “Music Printing in Late Sixteenth- and Early Seventeenth- Century Florence.Early Music History 9 (1989): 2772.Google Scholar
Catalogue of Books Printed in the XVth Century Now in the British Museum. 10 parts. London, 1908-71.Google Scholar
Catalogue of Seventeenth Century Italian Books in the British Library. 3 vols. London, 1986.Google Scholar
Cecchetti, B.La pittura delle stampe di B. Benalio.Archivio Veneto 33 (1887): 538-39.Google Scholar
Chrisman, Miriam Usher. Lay Culture, Learned Culture: Books and Social Change in Strasbourg 1480-1599. New Haven, 1967.Google Scholar
Clark, Alice. Working Lives of Women in the Seventeenth Century. London, 1919.Google Scholar
Cohen, Sherrill. “Asylums for Women in Counter-Reformation Italy.” In Women in Reformation and Counter-Reformation Europe, ed. Marshall, Sherrin, 166-88. Bloomington, IN, 1989.Google Scholar
Colorni, Vittore. “Abraham Conat primo stampatore di opere ebraiche in Mantova e la cronologia delle sue edizioni.” La Bibliofilia I (1981): 113-28.Google Scholar
Curi-Nicolardi, Silvia. Una società tipografico-editoriale a Venezia nel secolo XVI: Melchiorre Sessa e Pietro di Ravani (1516-1525). Florence, 1984.Google Scholar
Cusick, Susanne G. Valerio Dorico: Music Printer in Sixteenth-Century Rome. Ann Arbor, 1981.Google Scholar
Davis, Natalie Zemon. “Women in the Crafts in Sixteenth-Century Lyon.Feminist Studies 8 (1982): 4680.Google Scholar
Delfiol, Renato. “I Marescotti, librai, stampatori ed editori a Firenze fra Cinque e Seicento.Studi Secenteschi 18 (1977): 147204.Google Scholar
De Marinis, Tammaro. “Donne tipografe nel Cinquecento. Ancora di Gerolama de Cartolari.” Il libro e la stampa 3 (1909): 101-03.Google Scholar
Dizionario biografico degli italiani. Rome, 1960.Google Scholar
Edizioni italiane del XVI secolo, Le. Censimento nazionale. 2 vols. Rome, 1985.Google Scholar
Estienne, Henri. Epistola qua ad multas multorum amicorum respondet de suae typographiae statu nominatimque de suo thesavro linguae graecae… Paris, 1569.Google Scholar
Fumagalli, Giuseppe. Antonio Blado tipografo romano del secolo XVI. Milan, 1893.Google Scholar
Fumagalli, Giuseppe. Lexicon typographicum Italiae. Florence, 1905.Google Scholar
Fumagalli, G., Belli, G., and Vaccaro, E., ed. Catalogo delle edizioni romane di Antonio Blado Asolano ed eredi (1516-1593) possedute dalla Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Vittorio Emanuele di Roma. Rome, 1891.1961.Google Scholar
Galli, Giuseppe. “Gli ultimi mesi della stamperia di Ripoli e la stampa del Platone.” In Studi e ricerche sulla storia della stampa del Quattrocento, 159-84. Milan, 1942.Google Scholar
Gerulaitis, Leonardas Vytautas. Printing and Publishing in Fifteenth-Century Venice. Chicago, 1976.Google Scholar
Gies, Dorothy. “Some Early Ladies of the Book Trade.Publisher's Weekly 138 (1940): 1421–25.Google Scholar
Grendler, Paul. The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press, 1540-1605. Princeton, 1977.Google Scholar
Grendler, Paul. “Printing and Censorship.” In The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, ed. Schmitt, Charles B. et al, 2553. Cambridge, 1988.Google Scholar
Grendler, Paul. Schooling in Renaissance Italy: Literacy and Learning, 1300-1600. Baltimore, 1989.Google Scholar
Hamill, Frances. “Some Unconventional Women before 1800: Printers, Booksellers, and Collectors.Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 49 (1955): 300-14.Google Scholar
Hanawalt, Barbara, ed. Women and Work in Preindustrial Europe. Bloomington, IN, 1986.Google Scholar
Hudak, Leona M. Early American Women Printers and Publishers 1639-1820. Metuchen, NJ, 1978.Google Scholar
Index Aureliensis. Catalogus librorum sedecimo saeculo impressorum. Baden Baden, 1962.Google Scholar
Indice generate degli incunaboli delle biblioteche d'ltalia. 6 vols. Rome, 1943-81.Google Scholar
Johnson, A.F., Scholderer, V., and Clarke, D.A., ed. Short-title Catalogue of Books Printed in Italy and of Italian Books Printed in Other Countries from 1465-1600 now in the British Museum. London, 1958.Google Scholar
King, Margaret L. Women of the Renaissance. Chicago, 1991.Google Scholar
Leicht, Pier Silverio. “L'editore veneziano Michele Tramezzino ed i suoi privilegi.” In Miscellanea di scritti di bibliografta ed erudizione in memoria di Luigi Ferrari, 357-68. Florence, 1959.Google Scholar
Lenkey, Susan V. “Printers’ Wives in the Age of Humanism.” Gutenberg-Jahrbuch (1975): 331-37.Google Scholar
Lone, E. Miriam. “Some Bookwomen of the Fifteenth Century.Colophon 10 (1932): 411.Google Scholar
Lowry, Martin. The World of Aldus Manutius: Business and Scholarship in Renaissance Venice. Oxford, 1979.Google Scholar
Mantese, Giovanni. I mille libri che si leggevano e vendevano a Vicenza alla fine del secolo XVI. Vicenza, 1968.Google Scholar
Manzi, Pietro. La tipografia napoletana nel ‘500: Annali di Sigismondo Mayr, Giovanni A. De Caneto, Antonio de Frizis, Giovanni Pasquet de Sallo (1503-1535). Florence, 1971.Google Scholar
Marciani, Corrado. “Editori, tipografi, librai veneti nel regno di Napoli nel Cinquecento.Studi Veneziani 10 (1968): 457554.Google Scholar
Martorelli, A.S.La tipografia Cartolari in Roma.” Roma (1944): 3642.Google Scholar
Mazzucchelli, G.B. Gli scrittori d'ltalia. 2 vols, in 6. Brescia, 1753-63.Google Scholar
Nesi, Emilia, ed. Il diario della stamperia di Ripoli. Florence, 1903.Google Scholar
Noakes, Susan. “The Development of the Book Market in Late Quattrocento Italy: Printers’ Failures and the Role of the Middleman.Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 11 (1981): 2355.Google Scholar
Norton, Frederick John. Italian Printers 1501-1520. London, 1958.Google Scholar
Novati, Francesco. “Donne tipografe nel Cinquecento.” Il libro e la stampa 7 (1907): 4149.Google Scholar
Postel-Lecocq, Sylvie. “Femmes et presses à Paris au XVIe siècle: quelques exemples.” In Le Livre dans l'Europe de la Renaissance, 252-63. Tours, 1988.Google Scholar
Ridolfi, Roberto. La stampa in Firenze nel secolo XV. Florence, 1958.Google Scholar
Rouse, M.A. and Rouse, R.H.. Cartolai, Illuminators, and Printers in Fifteenth-Century Italy. Los Angeles, 1988.Google Scholar
Simonsohn, Schlomo. History of the Jews in the Duchy of Mantua. Jerusalem, 1977.Google Scholar
Tinto, Alberto. Annali tipografici dei Tramezzino. Venice, 1966.Google Scholar
Vaccaro-Sofia, E.Documenti e precisazioni su Antonio Blado ed eredi tipografi camerali del sec. XVI.Bollettino dell'Istituto di Patologia del Libro 9 (1950): 4885.Google Scholar
Vaccaro-Sofia, E. Catalogo delle edizioni romane di Antonio Blado Asolano ed eredi possedute dalle biblioteche Alessandrina, Angelica, Casanatense, Corsiniana, e Vallicelliana di Roma, Dalla Biblioteca Vaticana e dall'Archivio Segreto Vaticano. Rome, 1961.Google Scholar
Valerani, Flavio. “Introduzione della stampa in Casale.Rivista di Storia, Arte, Archeologia della provincia di Alessandria 23 (1914): 3560.Google Scholar
Vann, R.T.Women in Preindustrial Capitalism.” In Becoming Visible: Women in European History, ed. Bridenthal, Renate and Koonz, Claudia, 192216. Boston, 1977.Google Scholar
Veneziani, P.Baldassare Cartolari.” Dizionario biografico degli italiani 20:804-06.Google Scholar
Vermiglioli, G.B. La tipografia perugina del sec. XV. Padua, 1807.Google Scholar
Vianello, N.Annali dei Sessa tipografi ed editori in Venezia nei secoli XV-XVII.Accademie e Biblioteche d'Italia 38 (1970): 262-85.Google Scholar
Zannini, Gian Ludovico Masetti. Stampatori e librai a Roma nella seconda metà del Cinquecento. Rome, 1980.Google Scholar