A Pressing Call: 500 Years of Women Printing
University of Chicago Library, Special Collections Research Center
January 2 through April 18, 2025
Quick, name a printer! Johannes Gutenberg, Aldus Manutius, or John Baskerville might come to mind—men whose printer's devices hang across the hall outside the Special Collections Exhibition Gallery. If asked to name a woman who worked as a printer, however, many of us will draw a blank – though it is not for a lack of women participating in the printing industry. From the earliest era of hand-press printing in late 15th-century Europe, women have worked in the print trade in a variety of roles including as publishers, print shop proprietors, typesetters and compositors, and booksellers. Using case studies and the works of women printers from Yolande Bonhomme to Virginia Woolf, this exhibition explores the following questions: Who qualifies as a printer, and how has that definition changed during 500 years of technological innovations to printing in the West?
Digital exhibit: https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/collex/exhibits/a-pressing-call-500-years-of-women-printing/
Information for Your Visit:
Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center
University of Chicago Library
1100 E. 57th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
M, Tu, Th, F 9 am-4:45 pm, W 10 am-4:45 pm
Free and open to all
https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/scrc/
For more information, contact: Patti Gibbons, pgibbons@uchicago.edu
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