Digitising Women's Book Histories (Middle Ages - 1830)

The use of digital tools, large-scale document digitization and (text) databases, digital reconstructions of historical places, events and sounds, and digital stylometry have revolutionised women’s book history. Illustrating how major digital projects have helped scholars reconstruct medieval and early-modern women's interactions with the written word, this volume considers their roles as scribes, salonnières, printers, publishers and booksellers, cultural brokers, and highlights female collaborations with male authors. In doing so, it addresses both the practical challenges digital humanists face in studying women’s bookish engagements, and how the specificity of women's historical interventions raises new questions for historians and general readers alike.

Lieke van Deinsen is Assistant Research Professor of Dutch Literature at KU Leuven, Belgium. Her publications focus on early-modern representations of intellectual authority, canon formation and female authorship, and include Literaire erflaters: Canonvorming in tijden van culturele crisis (2017). Alicia C. Montoya is Professor of French Literature at Radboud University, The Netherlands. Her publications include Marie-Anne Barbier et la tragédie post-classique (2007), Medievalist Enlightenment: From Charles Perrault to Jean-Jacques Rousseau (2013), and several co-edited volumes.