Welcome to our blog on early modern female book ownership. It features blog posts on books owned by women between 1500 and 1800. These books are important as they give us information on what books women owned and read, on women’s handwriting and signatures, and on how women presented themselves textually. The blog serves as a record of such books, especially since some of them are sold to private owners and may not be accessible to scholars otherwise. The field of book ownership by women and women and book history more generally is a flourishing one, and this website aims to contribute to it in a small way.
This blog is maintained by Joseph Black, Mark Empey, Sarah Lindenbaum, Tara Lyons, Erin McCarthy, Micheline White, Georgianna Ziegler, and Martine van Elk. We can be reached via Twitter or email.
Our special thanks go to the many booksellers, libraries, and book collectors who have given us permission to post images of books, to our wonderful guest contributors (which include professors, graduate students, book sellers, librarians, and private book collectors), and to the kind people on Twitter and other social media who alert us to evidence of female book ownership whenever they see it, including especially Guillaume Coatalen, who has found numerous books with female inscriptions for us.
Our blog was awarded the Honorable Mention for the 2020 Digital Scholarship Award by the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender.
Early Modern Female Book Ownership 