An imprint naming Ann Rivington, from the title page of A Sermon Preached in the Cathedral Church of St. Paul, London (1796), an imprint naming Alice James, from the title page of Meditations and Contemplations (1758), and an imprint naming Martha Gurney, from the title page of An account of the arguments of counsel with the opinions at large of the Honourable Mr. Justice Gould, Mr. Justice Ashhurst, and Mr. Baron Hotham (1775). ECCO.
You can listen to Episode 2 of The WPHP Monthly Mercury, "Women in the Imprints", on Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, and other podcast apps, available via Buzzsprout.
In this month’s episode of The WPHP Monthly Mercury, "Women in the Imprints", hosts Kate Moffatt and Kandice Sharren delve into the world of what we call female-run firms: the women who were publishers, printers, and booksellers. Using Kate's Spotlight on Black bookseller Ann Sancho as our jumping off point, this episode explores the processes for, and the difficulties of, discovering the often invisible and hidden women of the book trades.
What does one do when resources for the book trades—even comprehensive, reliable, and detailed ones—do not include gender data? Or when the data they do include conflicts with the data in two or three other resources? How does one establish who, exactly, a “widow” may be when a resource does not provide her name?
Alongside Ann Sancho, Episode 2, "Women in the Imprints" introduces you to Dublin-based printer Alice James, Shropshire- and London-based publisher Frances Houlston, London-based printer Ann Rivington, and abolitionist printer Martha Gurney as it seeks to illustrate how we respond to these questions, and more, in our efforts to create coherent data about women publishers, printers, and booksellers during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. We share both the frustrations and joys of widows who successfully continued a bookselling business for years after their husband’s death but who remain unnamed in resources, surnames with no distinguishing first initials, and the potential confusion of a husband and wife with the same initials, providing a behind-the-scenes look at the process of creating data for women in the book trades on the WPHP, and the importance of our doing so.
Credits
Produced by: Kandice Sharren, Kate Moffatt, and Michelle Levy
Mixed and mastered by: Alexander Kennard
Music by: Ignatius Sancho, “Sweetest Bard”, A Collection of New Songs (1769) from https://brycchancarey.com/sancho/bard.jpg, and played by Kandice Sharren
WPHP Records Referenced
Sancho, Ann (person, bookseller)
Ann Sancho (firm, bookseller)
Ann and William Sancho (firm, bookseller)
Sancho, Ignatius (person, author)
Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African (title, first edition)
Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African (title, second edition)
Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African (title, third edition
Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African (title, fourth edition)
Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African (title, fifth edition)
Crew, Frances Anne (person, editor)
William Sancho (firm, bookseller/publisher)
“The Search for Firm Evidence: Uncovering Ann Sancho, Bookseller” (Spotlight, firm)
Mrs. Vertue (firm, publisher)
Mrs. Vertue (person, publisher)
Johnson, Samuel (person, author)
Garrick, David (person, author)
Alice James (firm, printer/publisher)
Alice James (person, printer/publisher)
John Exshaw (firm, publisher)
James Hoey, Jun. (firm, publisher)
James Joey, Sen. (firm, publisher)
William Sleater (firm, publisher)
Peter Wilson (firm, publisher)
George Faulkner (firm, publisher)
Houlston, Frances (person, publisher)
Frances Houlston [Shropshire] (firm, publisher)
Frances Houlston and Co. (firm, publisher)
Frances Houlston and Son (firm, publisher)
Frances Houlston and Son [Shropshire] (firm, publisher)
Frances Houlston and Stoneman (firm, publisher)
Ann Rivington (firm, printer)
Rivington, Ann (person, printer)
John Rivington (firm, publisher)
Martha Gurney (firm, bookseller)
Gurney, Martha (person, bookseller)
"Martha Gurney: Abolitionist Bookseller of Holborn Hill” (Spotlight, firm)
“Black Women’s and Abolitionist Print History Spotlight Series” (Spotlight, series)
“The First Slave Narrative by a Woman: The History of Mary Prince, A West Indian Slave” (Spotlight, title)
“The Transatlantic Publication of Phillis Wheatley’s Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral” (Spotlight, title)
Prince, Mary (person, author)
Wheatley, Phillis (person, author)
Heyrick, Elizabeth (person, author)
Child, Lydia Maria (person, author)
The Woman of Colour (title)
WPHP Sources Referenced
London Publishers and Printers, c. 1800-1870
Exeter Working Papers in Book History
Dictionary for Members of the Dublin Book Trade, 1550-1800
Further Reading
Barker, Hannah. "Women, work and the industrial revolution: female involvement in the English printing trades, c. 1700–1840." Gender in Eighteenth-Century England: Roles, Representations and Responsibilities, edited by Hannah Barker and Elaine Chalus, Longman, 1997, pp. 81-100.
Carey, Brycchan. “‘The extraordinary Negro’: Ignatius Sancho, Joseph Jekyll, and the Problem of Biography.” British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol. 1, no. 26, 2003, pp. 1-14. www.brycchancarey.com/Carey_BJECS_2003.pdf. Accessed 17 June 2020.
Carretta, Vincent. "Sancho, (Charles) Ignatius (1729?–1780), author." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford UP, 2017, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/24609. Accessed 14 July 2020.
Caretta, Vincent. “Three West Indian Writers of the 1780s Revisited and Revised,” Research in African Literatures, vol. 29, no. 4, 1998, pp. 73-87.
Fitzpatrick, Barbara Laning. "Rivington family (per. c. 1710–c. 1960), printers, publishers, and lawyers." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford UP, 2008, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/70881. Accessed 14 July 2020.
Fryer, Peter. Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain. Pluto, 2018.
Gerzina, Gretchen Holbrook. “Ignatius Sancho: A Renaissance Black Man in Eighteenth-Century England.” The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, vol. 21, no. 1, 1998, pp. 106-107.
Hanley, Ryan. Beyond Slavery and Abolition: Black British Writing, c. 1770-1830. Cambridge UP, 2019.
House, Khara. “Ignatius Sancho’s Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, An African,” The Explicator, vol. 71, no. 3, 2013, pp. 195-198.
“Ignatius Sancho.” British Library, www.bl.uk/people/ignatius-sancho. Accessed 17 June 2020.
Sancho, Ignatius, and Joseph Jekyll. Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho: an African, to Which Is Prefixed, Memoirs of His Life. Printed for William Sancho, 5th ed. London, 1803. HathiTrust Digital Library, https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/011620688
“Sancho, Ignatius.” Wikipedia, www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignatius_Sancho. Accessed 17 June 2020.
“The only surviving manuscript letters of Ignatius Sancho.” British Library, www.bl.uk/collection-items/the-only-surviving-manuscript-letters-of-ignatius-sancho. Accessed 25 June 2020.
Whelan, Timothy. “Martha Gurney and the Anti-Slave Trade Movement, 1788–94.” Women, Dissent and Anti-Slavery in Britain and America, 1790-1865, edited by Elizabeth J. Clapp and Julie Roy Jeffrey, Oxford UP, 2011, pp. 44-65, 49.
This podcast draws on research supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
