Women and Letterpress Printing 1920–2020
Gendered Impressions

This Element offers a new approach to the feminist historiography of printing as letterpress moves into a digital age.

Claire Battershill (Author)

9781009219327, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 23 June 2022

75 pages
17.6 x 12.6 x 0.7 cm, 0.12 kg

This Element analyses the relationship between gender and literary letterpress printing from the early 20th century to the beginning of the 21st. Drawing on examples from modernist writer/printers of the 1920s to literary book artists of the early 21st, it offers a way of thinking about the feminist historiography of printing as we confront the presence and particular character of letterpress in a digital age. This Element is divided into four sections: the first, 'Historicizing' traces the critical histories of women and print through to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The second section, 'Learning,' offers an analysis of some of the modes of discourse and training through which women and gender minorities have learned the craft of printing. The third section, 'Individualizing' offers brief biographical vignettes. The fourth section, 'Writing,' focuses on printers' own written reflections about letterpress. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Preface
1. Historicizing
2. Learning
3. Individualizing
4. Writing
Coda: Letterpress at a Distance
Glossary.

Subject Areas: Publishing industry & book trade [KNTP], Feminism & feminist theory [JFFK], Social & cultural history [HBTB], Literature: history & criticism [DS], Literature & literary studies [D]