A Living of Words

About this book

This unique collection draws together twelve biographical essays that focus on American women's entrepreneurship in print culture from the colonial period through the early twentieth century. While much recent criticism has stressed the role of women as writers, this book locates careers elsewhere in the marketplace of words - careers in printing, publishing, editing, promotion, patronage, and bookselling. Among the women discussed here are Ann Franklin, the first woman printer in colonial New England; Ida B. Wells-Burnett, an African-American publisher, journalist, and crusader who combined her business sense and reporting talents to agitate against racial injustice; and Sylvia Beach, an American expatriate in Paris whose work as a publisher, bookseller, and librarian played a central role in several eminent literary careers, including those of James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway. Arranged chronologically, the essays suggest a range of professional opportunities for women in print culture that was broader and more various than has previously been noted. The essays also show that women's careers cannot easily be placed within the confines of either high or popular culture but are fluid and dynamic, crossing all sorts of cultural boundaries. Taken together, these pieces challenge received notions about women's work and will, undoubtedly, encourage further research into women's entrepreneurship in the print marketplace.