Women in printing before 1800

Charting the role of women in early modern printmaking is made difficult by the widespread erasure of women’s voices within the records of this time. In Europe, the contribution of women to visual culture was generally hidden behind a male figure or anonymised by the nature of the craft/work undertaken. Restrictions were placed on women in commercial environments, with “guardians” often positioned by authorities to manage family businesses if no suitable male relative was available. However, archives hold tantalising glimpses of contexts where women were able to exert agency: women such as Argula von Grumbach, who authored significant early Reformation texts, Yolande Bonhomme, official bookseller to Paris University, and Isabella Parasole who produced illustrations for the family press in Rome. 

This panel invites papers on women’s participation in printmaking, as printers/publishers, typographers, authors, and artists, from the early period of print history. We are particularly seeking papers from female identifying and non-binary people, print-practitioners, and researchers working outside of academia. Although the initial drive for this was research into European presses prior to 1700, the proposers are interested to receive papers on subjects up until 1800 especially from scholars studying non-European contexts, such as the early period of Ukiyo-e. These papers will be presented alongside one by Trayner on Katerina Speich’s involvement in the printing of The Twelve Articles, in Strasbourg (1525).

Submit your Paper via this form. Please download, complete and send it directly to the Session Convenor(s) below by Sunday 2 November 2025:

Jonathan Trayner, Southampton Solent University, jon.trayner@solent.ac.uk

Lisa Cradduck, Independent Scholar, lisacradduck@hotmail.com