My Gracious Silence: Women in the Mirror of 16th Century Printing in Western Europe

Citation

Malcolm Watson, W. (2001), "My Gracious Silence: Women in the Mirror of 16th Century Printing in Western Europe", Library Review, Vol. 50 No. 4, pp. 204-205. https://doi.org/10.1108/lr.2001.50.4.204.5

The book is concerned with sixteenth century Western European printed material and aims to provide what the Preface describes as “a representative overview of womanhood in the sixteenth century”. In a work covering such a large output of printed material, certain limits were inevitable in relation to its compilation, and consequently some topics had to be briefly considered or completely neglected, for example, epithalamia and necrologies, numerous books dedicated to women and “the ubiquitous presence of women in poetry, drama and fiction”. Such omissions signal the need for future research.

The arrangement of the text is logical and clear. Part 1: the Catalogue contains two sections, the first, entitled The Mirror, records 99 books on and for women. The entries are arranged alphabetically under broad subject headings, brief biographical descriptions are provided, accompanied by a liberal selection of reproductions of title pages. Entries include relevant descriptive notes and provide references to secondary sources used. The second section: Triumph Over Silence, lists original texts to which women have contributed as authors, artists or crafts people. Here there are six sections covering women writers (24), alphabetically arranged and providing relevant bibliographical details and descriptive notes; anthologies (six) arranged chronologically (this section is not listed in the Contents List); illustrated by women (one); women in the book business (eight) – here the section covers Belgium, France, Germany and Italy, with examples of works produced by the women listed. There is a list of abbreviations used in Part 1 and finally an index of authors, printers and subjects giving reference to entry numbers.

Part 2 of the book is entitled The Bibliographies. Here the section begins with a list of Books on and For Women arranged alphabetically by author. Next follows a section on Women Authors arranged by the country of first publication. There are then sections on Books with Music by Women, Books Illustrated by Women, Women in the Book Business and finally an alphabetical list of secondary sources covering the whole field of womanhood in the sixteenth century – 382 general works, 489 monographs and 340 articles. The book finishes with a subject index to secondary literature.

This is a valuable piece of recent research into a subject which although neglected earlier has now become more popular and on which valuable bibliographical and cultural information is being produced – the present work being a good example of such a development. Not only will it be of interest to those concerned with women’s studies in particular but it will also be useful to anyone involved in cultural history generally, social history and book trade history.

The introduction by Merry E. Wiesner‐Hanks of the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, provides an up‐to‐date review of the position of women as shown by the evidence available on the subject of women in sixteenth century Europe. As Professor Wiesner‐Hanks states, the call for women’s silence in the sixteenth century was never accompanied by a call for silence about women and this statement is clearly substantiated by the record of publications examined by the author and recorded in this work. The book is cloth cased, it was printed and published in Switzerland, and it is typographically excellently presented.