A HISTORY OF WOMEN’S WORK IN THE STATIONERS’ COMPANY
The Worshipful Company of Stationers has historically been a largely male-led organisation, but the archives can give us an intriguing glimpse into the women who have always worked in the London book trades.
Historically, women contributed in diverse ways to the work of the Company and to the London book trades over the centuries. In terms of their participation in guild-recognised trade, they could be admitted to the Company as a widow or daughter taking over a deceased husband’s or father’s role. Members by widowhood or patrimony had the right to trade and bind apprentices at Stationers’ Hall and were eligible for Freedom but not Livery. These women feature in the archives, where we see them buying and selling copy, owning businesses, managing apprentices, and masterminding the production of nation’s books.
The British-Academy funded Innovation Fellowship project, ‘Communicating Women’s Work in the Historical Archive’, co-led by Drs Ruth Frendo and Helen Williams, recovered some of the narratives of women’s contributions to the Company whilst building a network of archivists and academics considering modern archival practice for gender inclusion today. The project had five main outputs: a finding aid, an online exhibition, an animation, trans-inclusion and feminist leadership training for archives professionals, and a forthcoming report on gender-inclusion in UK archives and libraries. You can download the finding aid, Eighteenth-Century Women's Histories in the Stationers' Company Apprentice Registers, here.
