Women and the Book Trade in Sixteenth-Century France 9781351872232, 1351872230

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WOMEN AND TRADE IN IN WOMEN AND THE THE BOOK BOOK TRADE SIXTEENTH-CENTURY FRANCE FRANCE SIXTEENTH-CENTURY

Women and Gender Women and Gender in in the the Early World Early Modem M odem World Series Allyson Poska Abby Zanger Zanger Series Editors: Editors: Allyson Poska and and Abby In the past decade, the study of women and gender has offered some of the most vital vital and and innovative innovative challenges challenges to to scholarship scholarship on on the early early modem period. period. Ashgate's Ashgate’s new series of interdisciplinary and comparative studies, 'Women ‘Women and Gender in the Early Modem World', World’, takes up this challenge, reaching beyond geographical limitations to explore the experiences of early modem women and and the nature nature of of gender in in Europe, Europe, the Americas, Asia, Asia, and Africa. Titles in in the the series series include: include:

Publishing Publishing Womens Women’s Life Life Stories Stories in in France, France, 1647-1720 1647-1720 From voice print From voice to to print Elizabeth C. Goldsmith Maternal Maternal Measures Measures Figuring modern period period Figuring caregiving caregiving in in the the early early modem Edited by Naomi J. J. Miller and Naomi Yavneh Marie Madeleine Jodin Jodin 1741-1790 Marie Madeleine 1741-1790 Actress, philosophe and and feminist feminist Actress, Felicia Gordon and P.N. Furbank The Political Theory The Political Theory of o f Christine Christine de de Pizan Pizan Kate Langdon F orhan Forhan

Women and the Book Trade in Sixteenth-Century France

SUSAN BROOMHALL The University of Western Australia

ROUTLEDGE

Routledge Taylor & Francis Group

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 2002 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 52 VanderbiltAvenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © Susan Broomhall 2002 © Susan Broomhall 2002 The author has asserted her moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Broomhall, Susan Women and the book trade in sixteenth-century France. (Women and gender in the early modern world) 1. Women in the book industries and trade - France - History - 16th century 2. Women authors, French - History - 16th century 3. France - Social life and customs - 1328-1600 I. Title 070.5'082'0944'09031 Library of Congress Control Number: 2001099636 ISBN 13: 978-0-7546-0671-0 (hbk)

Contents Acknowledgments Notes on Text

vi viii

Introduction

1

Contexts of Female Publication 1 Women’s Experiences as Readers, Owners and Collectors of Books

13

2 Women Working in the Book Trades

45

3 Women Publishing: Theoretical and Practical Contexts

71

4 The Struggle for Textual Control: Female Authors in Print

93

Strategies of Female Publication 5 Dynamic Boundaries: Social Status, Geography and Gender in Publication

125

6 Domestic Speech: Rhetorical Strategies of Family and Household

155

7 In the Margins: Gender, Textual Relation and Location

185

Conclusions

211

Appendix: A Checklist o f First and Significant Editions Bibliography Index

215 241 274

v

Acknowledgments

I have been assisted and encouraged by a great many people during the process of composing this work and it is a pleasure to thank them here. Unlike many women writing in the sixteenth century, I have been truly privileged to have had such warm support for my own writing enterprise. Firstly, I acknowledge the financial support of the Rene Levy Memorial Award, The ViceChancellor’s Award, the UWA Travel Award and the I and B Jackson Scholarship, which made travel and research in Europe possible. I should like to thank the staff of the Bibliotheque Nationale, the Bibliotheque Mazarine, Bibliotheque Marguerite Durand, the library of the Centre d’Etudes Superieures de la Renaissance in Tours, the British Library and the Institute of Historical Research at Senate House for their kind assistance. I greatly appreciate the initial assistance and encouragement for this project offered by Ian Maclean, Wallace Kirsop, Roger Chartier and Robert Damton. I thank Cathleen M. Bauschatz, William Kemp and Jenny Smith for their generous assistance and exchange of research with me. I would also like to acknowledge the kind support and help provided by Pierre Aquilon, Pam Sharpe, Philippa Maddem, Anne Larsen, Colette Winn, Judith M. Bennett, Cynthia Herrup and Lyndal Roper. I am immensely grateful for the thorough readings, comments and encouragement offered to me by Natalie Zemon Davis, Sarah Ferber, Gillian Jondorf and Abby Zanger. At Ashgate, I would like to thank Cilia Kennedy and Sarah Charters for their editing advice and especially Erika Gaffney for her ever cheerful encouragement for this project. At The University of Western Australia, I sincerely thank the staff of the Reid Library and Scholars’ Centre and, in particular, acknowledge the linguistic assistance provided by Toby Burrows. I would like to thank the scholastic community in the Faculty of Arts, especially the staff and students of the School of Humanities. Of course, overwhelming thanks must go to my two inspiring supervisors, Patricia Crawford and Beverley Ormerod, who always provided prompt response to my work and constant assurance of its worth. I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to work with them both, and for the many encouraging and lively conversations I have shared with them over the years. vi

Finally, I thank my family and friends without whose constant support and love this project would never have been possible. I thank Rachel Thomas, with whom over many a coffee this work took shape. Many thanks go to Jill Eagling who shared all the trials and tribulations of this work in both France and at home whilst providing support and many a good conversation. I would like to thank the endless encouragement and love of my family and especially my parents, Margaret and Andrew Broomhall, who nurtured my passion for history and languages through travel and a fine education. Final thanks must go to Tim Pitman who has watched me and this project evolve from the beginning. His perpetual belief in me makes me think all things are possible.

vu

N otes on Text Although this study concerns women and the book trade in early modem France, its arguments may be of interest to researchers examining other European environments. For greater accessibility to these readers, all foreign-language quotations have been translated into English. All translations are my own, except where otherwise indicated. Scholars are welcome to contact me for the original text of sixteenthcentury writings used in the work. All book titles are referred to in their original languages, so that those which refer to texts by women can be more easily found in the appendix. Since titles of sixteenth-century texts tend to be very lengthy, I have used full titles only for those works not listed in the bibliography. All sixteenth-century printed texts to which women contributed are given a short title in the text and footnotes of the work. Full titles of these texts can be found in the appendix. Square brackets indicate publication details which are uncertain, most commonly used for the date of publication of some sixteenth-century texts. I have chosen to call female authors by their surname, as scholars would male authors. To call women by their first names and their male contemporaries by their surname, as many works do, seems to encourage a perception that male writers are to be taken more seriously, and women are mere ‘dabblers’ in literary discourse. Just as no scholar would call Montaigne or Rabelais, Michel or Franyois, there seems no reason why female authors such as Marie de Goumay or Pemette du Guillet should be set apart as Marie or Pemette. The only instance in which I do not follow this rule is for the names of women and men of the royal family, where it is usual to designate them by first name. Indeed, it may be confusing to do otherwise. ‘Navarre’ could refer to Marguerite de Navarre or her grand-daughter Catherine de Navarre, as well as several men. Generally, I have tried to refer to all female authors using the name by which they are most commonly known. Louise Charly is most usually referred to as Louise Labe, Marguerite de Briet as Helisenne de Crenne, and Madeleine Neveu and her daughter, Catherine Fradonnet, as the Mesdames des Roches.

vui

Introduction It has long been assumed that the sixteenth century experienced an extraordinary transformation in the meanings and modes o f publication. With the introduction of the print medium, a massive technical, intellectual and cultural revolution began to occur all across Europe.' The printing trades reached Paris in 1470 and the next one hundred years or so would see an unprecedented shift in the forms, meaning and technology of publication from manuscript to print. The sixteenth century in France was a unique moment in publication culture, of evolving and eventually diverging scribal and print forms. How did women participate in this period of profound transition of the modes and understanding of publication? Did their experiences as authors change between manuscript circulation and the printed book? There is plentiful evidence to suggest that women living in sixteenthcentury France published under vastly different conditions from those of men. Women’s ability to publish texts was determined by the material conditions of their lives, such as their access to education and to texts as readers. Their experiences both as women and as authors were further shaped by sixteenth-century theoretical understandings o f ‘woman’. As a consequence of such conditions, women’s writing made up far less than one per cent of the total printed editions in sixteenthcentury France, and female writers less than one per cent of sixteenthcentury authors.12 This suggests an extraordinary divergence from male authors’ experiences of print publication. Was this firstly a new phenomenon, and if so, one which occurred with the introduction o f print? The texts of published female authors also differ in intriguing ways from those of male writers in the sixteenth century. Women certainly did not produce equal quantities of published work to their male counterparts. The genres women chose for their works, the topics they chose to discuss, the locations in which their writings appeared in texts, and how they presented themselves as authors involved different and sometimes extraordinary strategies from those of contemporary 1 Elizabeth L. Eisenstein’s work has covered this exhaustively. See particularly her (1979), The Printing Press as an Agent o f Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 2 This conclusion is drawn from research explored in chapter 4.

1

2 Women and the Book Trade in Sixteenth-Century France male writers. Women could and did also participate alongside men, writing in dialogue with them. However, early modem women and their texts warrant a separate historical, cultural and literary examination that takes into account the differences produced by what were frequently gendered restrictions to their participation in publication. As far back as the sixteenth century itself, women who published have been discussed. Attempts were made to catalogue French women as writers alongside men in the Bibliotheques of Franfois La Croix du Maine in 1584, and of Antoine du Verdier in 1585.3 Even today, these works remain some of the most valuable sources of information about women’s scribal and print publishing activities in the sixteenth century. However, many studies of women writers have been extremely limited in scope and some of them patronising in tone. Many of those who chose to recall sixteenth-century female authors in the centuries which followed praised women grudgingly, if at all. Nicolas-Toussaint Le Moyne des Essarts described the poetry o f Madeleine and Catherine des Roches as ‘insipid’ in his 1800 Les Siecles litteraires de la France.4 His appraisal of Marie de Goumay’s literary abilities was barely more: ‘She was familiar with all the learned languages; she wrote badly in her own; but it was a great deal then for a woman even to know how to write’.5 The eighteenth-century memorialist Jean-Pierre Niceron declared of Goumay: ‘This young lady had no talent for poetry’.6 Nineteenth-century literary critics who concentrated on women’s writings felt the need to justify the choice and worth of their study. Leon Feugere’s 1860 examination of Les Femmes poetes au XVIe siecle ended with the explanation that it was the duty of his generation to resurrect literature of the past:

3 Francois La Croix du Maine (1584), Premier Volume de La Bibliotheque du Sieur de la Croix du Maine, Abel L’Angelier, Paris and Antoine du Verdier (1585), La Bibliotheque d'Antoine Du Verdier, seigneur de Vauprivas, contenant le catalogue de tous ceux qui ont escrit ou traduict en franqois et autres dialectes de ce royaume, Barthdlemy Honorat, Lyons. 4 N.T. Le Moyne des Essarts (1800), Les Siecles littiraires de la France in BN microfiche-m-25273-1058-36. 5 BN microfiche-m-25273-470-277. 6 J-P. Niceron (1729-45), Memoires pour servir a Vhistoire des hommes illustres dans la republique des lettres in BN microfiche-m-25273-470-274.

Introduction 3 At least I will be excused for this reason for having lent, for too long perhaps, an indulgent ear to the first faltering expressions of the French mind.7 Discussions of sixteenth-century women writers have also tended to be limited in scope. Entries in the two Bibliotheques reflected to some extent La Croix du Maine’s and Du Verdier’s own contemporary circle of friends and practical network of patrons. Moreover, those entries that concern educated contemporary women are remarkably stereotypical, rather than specific to the individual woman author. When in 1647 Hilarion de Coste produced Les Eloges et les vies des reynes, des princesses et des dames illustres, he concentrated primarily on a small number of exceptional writers of noble or royal birth.8 A few studies devoted exclusively to women writers began to appear in the eighteenth century with Joseph de la Porte’s 1769 Histoire litteraire des femmes frangoises, and continued into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It seems significant to note in a study discussing the relationship of women and the book trade that almost no modem research has concentrated on analysing the approach of some early female critics, commentators and compilers of women’s writings. In 1787, Louise de Keralio produced the 14-volume study, the Collection des meilleurs ouvrages franqois composes par des femmes frangoises, didiie aux femmes. A small entry on Keralio in the Dictionnaire des lettres frangoises: Le XVIIIe siecle, revised in 1995, makes no mention of her extensive compilation of women’s writings and does not include the 14 volumes among her oeuvres.9 Similarly, little research has been conducted on the work of Marguerite-Ursuline-Fortunee Bernier Briquet who composed in 1804 her Dictionnaire historique, litteraire et bibliographique des Frangoises, et des etrangeres naturalisees en France, connues par lews ecrits. There is clearly much more study, beyond the scope of this work, to be undertaken to uncover whether,

7 L. Feugfere (1860), Les Femmes poetes au XVIe siecle: Etude suivie de Madame de Gournay, Honore d ’Urfe, le marechal de Montluc, Guillaume Bude, Pierre Ramus, Didier, Paris, p. 126. 8 Hilarion de Coste (1647), Les Eloges et les vies des reynes, des princesses et des dames illustres, 2 vols, Cramoisy, Paris in BN microfiche-m-25273. 9 F. Moureau (ed.) (1995), Dictionnaire des lettres frangoises: Le XVIIIe siecle (1960) Fayard, Paris, p. 642.

4 Women an d the Book Trade in Sixteenth-Century France

and in what ways, these women’s approaches to female writings differed from those of male critics.101 Interest in sixteenth-century French women’s writings has generally concentrated on the works of a few exceptional women. Typically, attention has focused on women who were notable because of their high social status such as Marguerite de Navarre, a member o f the French royal family. Her Heptameron is frequently privileged as a ‘high’ literary text and part of the ‘canon’. Likewise, the writings o f Louise Labe, the woman whom Calvin labelled ‘that common courtesan’, have been widely studied since the sixteenth century, as a result both of her discussion of physical love and of an enduring fascination with the myth of her sexual exploits." It should be noted, however, that neither she nor Marguerite have enjoyed anything approaching the literary attention bestowed on male writers such as Francois Rabelais or Michel de Montaigne, for example. Studies devoted to a select famous few women continue to obscure the study and reproduction of a wider body of female writings. In recent years, individual studies of women’s works have still tended to be restricted to printed and easily accessible texts in modem editions. These include studies of the works of Louise Labe, Mesdames des Roches, Helisenne de Crenne, Marie de Goumay, although more recently a wider body o f lesser known writings by authors such as Gabrielle de Coignard, Marie Le Gendre and Gabrielle de Bourbon are becoming available through modem editions.12 In order to approach a study of the complex relationship between women and publication culture, I have adopted several strategies. The first involves broadening the concept of publication to include scribal publication which occurred through circulation and presentation o f manuscripts. While we have excellent studies of women’s print interaction with the new public sphere and literary field of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in France in Goldsmith and Goodman’s collection,13 we are yet to examine in detail the specific publication culture of the sixteenth century of both print and

10 Some work has been undertaken in this area by The Folger Collective on Early Women Critics (eds) (1995), Women Critics, 1660-1820, Indiana University Press, Bloomington. 11 Jean Calvin (1560), Gratulatio ad venerabilem presbyterum dominum Gabrielum de Saconay, praecentorem ecclesiae lugdunesis, in Louise Lab6 (1986), CEuvres completes (ed.) F. Rigolot, Flammarion, Paris, pp. 242-243. 12 See the select bibliography which reflects the current emphasis on these writers. 13 E.C. Goldsmith and D. Goodman (eds) (1995), Women and Publishing in E arly Modern France, Cornell University Press, Ithaca.

Introduction 5

manuscript. Fifteenth- and sixteenth-century women’s manuscript writings have been largely unexplored in all studies of female authorship. However, in sixteenth-century France, not all publication was print publication. Much contemporary writing by women was in manuscripts, some of which were distributed in multiple copies. Harold Love’s study of manuscript transmission in seventeenth-century England observes that manuscript circulation was also imbued with a sense of ‘scribal’ publication.14 Love argues that manuscript transmission, like printed publications, could also reach a large number of readers in its transcription and circulation, and connoted a similar notion of textual surrender in a public setting.15 David R. Carlson describes a similar process in early sixteenth-century England where several modes of publication existed simultaneously. He suggests that multiple manuscript copies were circulated among peers and deluxe copies presented to potential patrons as alternative forms o f publication to print.16 Carlson argues that each of these methods was ‘endowed with distinctive value within the current system of publication’.17 In sixteenth-century France, using the term ‘publication’ to denote only printed works is equally problematic. There too, manuscripts were frequently understood by readers and writers to be public. Mellin de Saint-Gelais’s career as a poet was established through manuscript circulation of his work at court.18 Indeed if, as Alain Viala argues, Du Verdier and La Croix du Maine were among the first to begin to historicize French literature, we might pause to examine their criteria for (literary) authorship and inclusion in their volumes.19 Clearly neither Du Verdier nor La Croix du Maine perceived of literary authorship as purely a printed phenomena and made mention of many composers of manuscript works, some of whom are only known to us through the selection that these compilers chose to highlight. In this work, I use ‘published’ and ‘publications’ as terms with both scribal and print possibilities. Given these forms of contemporary publication, any study of French women’s printed writings must include some

14 H. Love (1993), Scribal Publication in Seventeenth-Century England, Clarendon Press, Oxford, p. 35. 15 Ibid., p. 40. 16 D.R. Carlson (1993), English Humanist Books: Writers and Patrons, M anuscript and Print, 1475-1525, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, p. 13. 17 Ibid., p. 165. 18 See H-J. Molinier (1968), Mellin de Saint-Gelays (14907-1558): Etude sur sa vie et sur ses oeuvres (1910), Slatkine, Geneva. 19 A. Viala. (1985), Naissance de i ’ecrivain, Les Editions de Minuit, Paris, p. 138.

6 Women and the Book Trade in Sixteenth-Century France comparison with scribally published works. My survey selects a number of manuscript texts for comparison, but does not claim to be exhaustive. The second strategy concerns the range of women’s texts to be examined. I expand the study of women and publication by assembling a wide sample group of female authors and publishing experiences. Here a large array of authors are examined and the concept of publication broadened. Critical evaluations of the texts and authorial strategies o f such women discussed above are a valuable addition to the understanding of sixteenth-century women’s literature. However, analysis of a wider sample body of literature is advantageous to examine the conclusions about female experiences drawn from these famous and unconventional few. We can better understand the elements of Marguerite de Navarre’s or Louise Labe’s publications which were unique or universal by juxtaposing their experiences with those of many other women writing. Recent feminist writing has made us aware of the dangers of using ‘woman’ or ‘women’ as a category which ignores difference.20 The women whose writings, lives and situations I examine were all affected by generalizations about female capacity and nature, and also by the historically specific circumstances of their own lives and class situation. Marie de Romieu, a baker’s daughter from a provincial town in the south of France, had no doubt a self-perception vastly different from that of a woman writing at the court of Catherine de Medici, though both might share some common elements in their comprehension o f what it meant to be female. Women’s writings expressed views that were specific to their sex, financial status, occupation, religion and individual understanding of both themselves and the world around them. I examine all types of published writing by women, from prefaces and laudatory verse to entire editions of poetry and prose. All women’s writings, irrespective of their literary merit, are of interest. Generally, I term all women who published, whether in print or scribally, ‘published female authors’. My approach is similar to that of exponents of the theories of the new historicist school and cultural materialists who, Carol Thomas Neely suggests, ‘refuse to privilege “high” literary texts [in order to] ... emphasise the cultural work which all texts perform’.21 For example, the women’s writings examined here range from prefaces and marginal sonnets in the works of men, to entire works of poetry. The published female authors whose works are explored here constitute 20 J. Wallach Scott, ‘Introduction’, in Scott (ed.) (1996), Feminism and H istory, Oxford University Press, Oxford, p. 4. 21 C. Thomas Neely (1988), ‘Constructing the Subject: Feminist Practice and the New Renaissance Discourses’, English Literary Renaissance, 18, 1, p. 6.

Introduction 7

a sizeable group. They reflect many diverse publishing experiences of French women in the period of transition from manuscript to print. By broadening the group of women writing, it may become clear that those women who have been used as examples of how and what French women wrote in the sixteenth century are not always like the majority of women writers in their practices. Yet examining a wider body o f works also brings to the fore the ways in which all women, as authors, appear to share similarities, particularly in their presentation of their right to participate in publication. In this study, we must recognize many different types both o f writers and of authorship. Some women intended their works to be a contribution to publication culture and sought circulation in manuscript or print accordingly. Others however had authorship and status as writers thrust upon them - either because their works were published posthumously or without their consent. Indeed, attribution of intent is one of the greatest difficulties in this research. Can we be sure that these women wished to participate in publication? For some, like Pemette du Guillet, we can establish that they circulated poetry in literary circles before their death, suggesting at some degree o f willingness to contribute to publication. For others, though, we cannot be certain. My intention then is to call women ‘writers’ rather than ‘published authors’, where intent to compose for publication cannot be established. If we term all women who wrote with some expectation o f an audience in non-functional genres, thereby excluding, for example, women writing account books and names on the flyleaves of texts with no additional commentary, then many more women become writers than have been previously included in discussion. Women who transcribed texts and left detailed comments on themselves, their work and the world around them in colophons, become writers. So too do women who, in writing their ownership into a book, also added details about their family history and from whom they received the work. Clearly, at some points, such categories become problematized, for letters imply both an audience but could also be purely functional. T o what extent should we perceive their composers as writers? To be sure, some women, such as the Mesdames Des Roches, did perceive their correspondence as a literary contribution, and later published their ‘real’ sent letters as a volume. Moreover, we also need to be aware of how contemporaries perceived these women’s works. If many women were writers, not all women writers were published in either print or circulation manuscript. Other published authors were women who could not write, yet whose

8 Women and the Book Trade in Sixteenth-Century France words were transcribed and then circulated in publication, such as Marguerite Haldebois, the convicted murderer whose scaffold speech was copied down and later printed in 1584. One of the aims of this study is to determine the factors which influenced women’s shift from writers to published authors and contributors to publication culture. While we have both theoretical and historically specific studies such as Bourdieu’s concept of the ‘literary field’, Foucault’s ‘author-function’ and Viala’s study of the ‘naissance de l’ecrivain’ which have largely focused on literary culture with its incumbent systems of control and axiology determining who could be an author of literature, we have few studies examining authors of other types of printed or manuscript material who also participated in a public context.22 My developing notion of a publication culture is not dissimilar to these literary concepts but encompasses a broader network of relationships and a wider scope. By looking here at women as writers and as published authors, we can better understand the nature and function of publication culture as an institution of power, knowledge and control. Finally, this work is also a history of the gendered mentalite o f publication culture. Historians have examined the development of the print medium and conditions of scribal publication in early modern France from what has been largely an unacknowledged male perspective.23 Moreover, as discussed above, focus (for both the participation of men and women in publication) has primarily rested on their contributions as writers or authors. This study also examines other relatively unexplored aspects of women’s participation in publication, women as readers of published material, women printers, publishers and booksellers, women book collectors, women editors, women commentators and critics, and women as patrons commissioning published materials. As Roger Chartier, perhaps the most famous historian of the mentalite of publication culture, has argued, a history o f publication leads to inscribe in the same historical context all those - authors, editors, printers, booksellers, commentators, readers, spectators who participate, each in their place and in their role, to the production, dissemination and interpretation of discourses. It is in 22 P. Bourdieu (1993), The Field o f Cultural Production: Essays on Art an d Literature (ed.) R. Johnson, Columbia University Press, New York; M. Foucault (1969), ‘Qu’est-ce qu’un auteur?’ Bulletin de la Societe frangaise de philosophie, 3, pp. 73-104; Viala, Naissance de I ’ecrivain. 3 See for example R. Hirsch (1967), Printing, Selling and Reading 1450-1550, Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden and H.J. Martin and R. Chartier (eds) (1982), Histoire de I'edition frangaise: Le Livre conquerant, vol 1, Promodis, Paris.

Introduction 9

this project that we find linked together the history of texts, of the book or, more generally, of forms of communication and of cultural practices.24 By examining the participation of women in many varied aspects o f publication culture, this study can highlight the gendered ‘production, dissemination and interpretation of discourses’ and further, the gendered ‘forms of communication and cultural practices’ at work in sixteenth-century France. We can understand how publication culture assumed, reinforced and created ideas about knowledge and power. Terms and Concepts Research into women’s texts as products of their cultural context suggests that, in many respects, women’s access to publication was bound by constraints that did not affect men. Women’s experiences as writers were shaped by an understanding of their nature which transcended barriers of time, and yet were also specifically a product o f sixteenth-century society. In this respect, the work of Joan Kelly has been influential in developing an historical outlook that identifies the interplay of sex and class, particularly in social relations.25 For the purpose of this study, it is useful to recognize gender and class as categories of historical analysis, as social factors that greatly influenced the lives of early modem populations.26 Early modem France was a society structured by concepts o f hierarchy, rank and gender. Women writers in sixteenth-century France, whilst of differing social status, largely belonged to wealthy, privileged families. Many were from noble families around the court. Other women did not share the high social standing of these elite landed families but were from wealthy families involved in regional parlements in the provinces or belonged to families who had gained wealth through mercantile or legal occupations. As such, the vast majority of the women with whom this study is concerned belonged to a small literate minority of French society, privileged by birth or by wealth. Their wealth gave them access to areas of French society and culture to which 24 R. Chartier (1996), Culture ecrite et societe: L ’Ordre des livres (XlVe-XVIIIe siecles), Albin Michel, Paris, p. 9. 25 See Joan Kelly’s collected essays in (1984) Women, Theory & History: The Essays o f Joan Kelly, University of Chicago Press, Chicago. 26 See also Scott (1986), ‘Gender: a useful category of historical analysis’, American Historical Review, 91, pp. 1053-1075.

10 Women and the Book Trade in Sixteenth-Century France most others, both men and women, were denied. Education, books and discussion of literaiy discourse, in particular, were restricted to a minority of French society on the grounds of gender and class. Therefore, to some extent, it is not helpful to speak of a monolithic category of ‘woman’ when, clearly, sixteenth-century French society also operated on distinctions such as class and faith. The conclusions drawn from this study of the works and experiences of women writers in sixteenth-century France reflect the situation of a minority of socially privileged and literate women. Similarly, it is problematic to speak of categories of ‘men’ and ‘males’ when a small subset of the entire male population of early modem France disproportionately influenced that society. These categories occasionally refer to men as a biologically defined grouping who in the sixteenth century were given some power and privilege over the biologically defined group ‘women’. However, more often it was a small, socially privileged, wealthy and educated minority of men who most influenced the cultural, theological and intellectual practices o f early modem France. Furthermore, in literary discourse, this learned subset most affected the criteria of what was to be written and accepted. Literary discourse was produced by, and in turn reproduced, the power and authority of those men who defined it. This study explores women’s participation in published writings within the context of the restricted nature of literary discourse. Moreover, later sixteenth-century France was tom by violent religious fighting between Catholics and Huguenots. Authors composed texts which either called for reform or supported the Catholic faith. Publishers printed religious and political texts according to their own religious beliefs. Many Huguenot printers fled to Reformed territories, especially Geneva. Increasingly, politically motivated publications formed a growing component of women’s printed writings. Few Huguenot women had works published in France. Furthermore, we find no non-Christian women amongst those whose works were published by French printers. Thus, it is necessary to make a further distinction concerning the religious affiliation of women in particular aspects o f their participation in the book trade. The period studied here covers the introduction of print medium in Paris in 1470 until the end of the sixteenth century. However, the first printed text which included writing by a woman, Christine de Pizan, did not appear until 1488. Furthermore, the majority of women whom I discuss in this study lived and wrote after 1500. Thus, for convenience I refer to the time span generally as the sixteenth century.

Introduction

11

This work is divided into two sections. The first explores the contexts of female publication. In the first chapter, I examine how women participated in publication culture, as readers, owners and collectors o f both manuscript and printed books. I also explore how women could shape the meaning of publication culture by what they read, and also by their patronage of the textual arts. The second chapter focuses on women’s experiences as workers in the book trades. I analyse female participation as stationers, scribes, illuminators, booksellers and later, within the print medium, as printers and publishers. The third chapter turns to the issue of women who intended to write for publication and sought published authorship. Here I examine sixteenth-century notions of ‘woman’ which determined the possibilities of ‘elite female rhetorical space’ in publication. Furthermore, I highlight equally important material conditions of the lives of socially elite women which also fashioned the extent and nature of their rhetorical space in publication. The fourth chapter analyses the particular context of female participation in the print medium, discussing why some women chose to print their writings rather than circulate them in manuscripts, and how the structure of print culture shaped their texts. In the second section, I focus on three extraordinary strategies used by women as published authors. Chapter Five draws attention to women’s inventive use of specific social and geographical locations as sites of entry to publication. The sixth chapter examines women’s rhetorical strategies of situating their writings within familial and household contexts. In the seventh chapter, I analyse the physical placement of women’s writings in texts and examine how women were able to exploit marginal sites for increased, and often subversive, discursive agency. I have chosen to focus on thematic issues of female publication, rather than on histories of individual women or examining in detail the form, genre or style of women’s writings. Up until now, what women have said in their writings has been given priority over the contexts and conditions under which they entered the particular cultural phenomenon of publication at a moment of profound transition. By focusing on the latter issues here, I hope to demonstrate how these factors impinge upon what women could actually say within published texts. Furthermore, I hope to emphasise the possibilities for interplay between differing literary and historical concepts and ways of viewing texts. This study develops our understanding of women’s published writings in sixteenth-century France by examining the texts as a production of an historical and cultural context. Women’s writings can

12 Women and the Book Trade in Sixteenth-Century France be better understood when located in an historical context and can also tell us about their cultural context, including the interplay of gender, social status and religion in publication culture.

1 W omen’s Experiences as Readers, Owners and Collectors o f Books All methods by which women were able to participate in publication culture were shaped by their level of education. Yet notions of the ‘good woman’, her abilities and rightful place in the household, shaped assumptions about access to, as well as the nature of, female education. Furthermore, if we are to understand the contexts in which women wrote, then we must also explore women’s access to texts and assess the evidence for female readership of both scribal and printed works. One of the means by which women frequently participated in the creation of scribal and print culture was not as authors, but as readers, owners, collectors and patrons of texts. Women’s Education It is not possible to include detailed study of women’s education here, but simply to highlight the ways in which it impacted upon women’s possibilities to participate in publication culture. For many in early modem France, a girl’s education would consist simply of learning domestic skills that would train her to run her own household later as a wife and mother. In 1527, Jacques Marchand, a labourer at SaintMichel, saw his duty to educate his motherless children as fulfilled by sending ‘the little boy to school, to learn his holy letters, and to teach the girls housekeeping’.1 Evidently, he felt his daughters Louise and Denise would not need the benefit of letters, as befitted their brother Claude.2 Others, however, saw benefits in giving their daughters some basic scholastic education. When a chambermaid Marguerite Fournier, the widow of a ropemaker, arranged for her three-year-old daughter 1 (1905), Histoire Genirale de Paris. Recueil d ’Acles notaries relatifs a I ’histoire de Paris et de ses environs au XVle siecle, 1498-1545, No 1-3608 (ed.) E. Coyecque, Imprimerie Nationale, Paris, p. 6. 2 Ibid., p. 6. 13

14 Women and the Book Trade in Sixteenth-Century France

Clemence Petit to be put in service in 1541 with a candleseller Collette Lormier, she specified in the contract that Clemence be sent to school, indoctrinated in good morals and taught the creed.3 Amongst the 1582 accounts for the foundling hospital, La Madaleine, in Tours, the administrator Charles Deduc recorded the payment of 24 sols ‘for six pairs of hours for the children’.4 In Lyons, where the population was sufficient to sustain separate girls and boys’ establishments, orphan girls were lodged at Sainte-Catherine under the direction of a mistress, who would teach them to sew and, for those whom she judged scholastically inclined, to read.5 For the middling and lower classes, where schools did exist, girls were likely to attend for a shorter time than boys, even though in many areas, officially children were expected to attend schooling until eleven or twelve.6 Merry Wiesner also suggests that parents might have been unwilling to pay the expenses for their daughters of paper and pens involved in learning to write.7 Although the economic realities of many small towns meant that girls and boys learned together in co­ educational village schools, it was considered preferable to separate children. Those towns in which the funds could be raised employed a magistra puellarum who would teach a syllabus appropriate for girls.8 The Catholic Church advocated female education at home by which a girl’s learning would be limited to domestic skills and any education her mother could pass on.9 However, for more wealthy families, girls might also be taught by a private tutor. Notarial acts record contracts between female teachers and their pupils. In 1518, Jehanne, the mistress of the girls’ school in Tours, was contracted by the mother of young Olive to teach the child ‘her letters’.10 What was the nature of literacy in sixteenth-century society? Literacy could be composed of several elements, including the two distinct abilities, to read and to write. These two abilities were not always taught together so it is important not to occlude the specific 3 Ibid., p. 341. 4 Archives municipales de Tours, GG 4, First box, document 14. 5 H. Hauser (1899), Ouvriers du temps passe (XVe - XVle siecles), F0lix Alcan, Paris, p. 243. 6 G. Huppert (1984), Public Schools in Renaissance France, University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Champagne, p. 133. 7 M.E. Wiesner (1993), Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, p. 123. 8 Huppert, p. 45. 9 C.N. Moore (1987), The Maiden’s Mirror: Reading Material fo r German Girls in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden, p. 55. 10 Archives ddpartementales d’Indre-et-Loire, 3E 8/221, records of notary Pierre Portays.

Women’s Experiences as Readers, Owners and Collectors of Books 15 nature of the literacies of particular groups. Further to this, modern scholars have observed other types of literacies. These include the distinction between the ability to read silently and the need to mouth words." There were also aural readers, who may or may not have been able to read independently, whose experience of texts was through public readings by a literate community member.12 Each of these distinctions allows us to conceptualize and explore women’s different forms of literacies with greater flexibility and precision. Fewer women than men comprised the small minority who could even sign their name in sixteenth-century France. Research has been produced for the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in France from which the low levels of literacy for the sixteenth century can be surmised. From signatures of marriage registers between 1686 and 1690, it seems that 29% of men and 14% of women were able to sign their names.13 A century later, between 1786 and 1790, 48% of men and 27% of women signed their parish register at marriage.14 These figures suggest that, in general, fewer women were able to write than men. Certainly, a survey of the female recipients of municipal poor relief between 1560 and 1600 in Tours indicates that almost none were able to sign their own name to payment receipts.15 Moreover, reading and writing were not always taught together. Women were encouraged to read, especially to imbibe notions of proper female behaviour but writing, which might allow them to express their own point of view, could be threatening to the social order.16 Providing they were given the right literature, reading was a passive means o f absorbing social expectations for women, yet writing was an active way of disrupting the system with alternative ideas. Literacy could be used as ‘an effective and efficient means of indoctrination’.17 Joyce Coleman has defined such a reading aim as exoliteracy: a reading adopting an 11 See P. Saenger (1982), ‘Silent Reading: Its Impact on Late Medieval Script and Society’, Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 13, pp. 367-414. 12 See J. Coleman (1996), Public Reading and the Reading Public in Late M edieval England and France, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 13 M. Fleury and P. Valmary (1957), ‘Les progrfcs de l’instruction 616mentaire de Louis XTV&Napol6on III d’aprds 1’enquSte de Louis Maggiolo (1877-1879)’, Population, 12, pp. 71-93 in (1989), A History o f Private Life, vol. 3, Passions o f the Renaissance (ed.) R. Chartier, (trans.) A. Goldhammer, The Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass., p. 113. 14 Ibid., p. 113. 15 Archives municipales de Tours, GG 2-5, GG 20. 16 Wiesner, p. 123. 17 S. Schibanoff (1986), ‘Taking the Gold Out of Egypt: The Art of Reading as a Woman’ in Gender and Reading: Essays on Readers, Texts and Contexts (eds) E.A. Flynn and P.P. Schweickhart, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, p. 100.

16 Women and the Book Trade in Sixteenth-Century France

exophoric mentality which encouraged the reader towards an assimilative, collective, traditional and unselfconscious reading of the text.18 Exoliteracy, assimilating women into the patriarchal environment without challenge, was the ideal aim behind teaching girls to read. Although exophoric qualities were evident in the education o f males - rote learning methods are one example - women were expected to imbibe the exophoric mentality in general. Thus, the 1587 charter of one girls’ school in Germany rewarded its best female student, not for her learning, but rather for her ‘great diligence and application in learning her catechism, modesty, obedience, and excellent penmanship’.19 Reading correspondence by even elite women suggests that they were unfamiliar with holding a pen - many dictated to secretaries. Charlotte-Brabantine de Nassau, daughter of William the Silent, Prince of Orange, is one example. Extant correspondence includes both dictated and personal hand-written letters. Female correspondents regularly apologised for their handwriting: as did Louise de Coligny to Charlotte in 1599: T am sure that you will have as much trouble reading my terrible handwriting as me yours; indeed I must tell you that you unlearn to write every day’.20 Female literacy was designed to promote absorption of ideas through reading, but not to encourage composition. Education for women taught them obedience to authority, to be good, rather than to be learned. Education amongst Women o f the Social Elite For men of the social and intellectual elite, formation could consist o f learning the art of rhetoric, the humanist languages Latin and Greek, and sometimes Hebrew, as well as studying law and the sciences such as medicine. How did women’s education differ from this? The ideal curriculum for education of women was a vastly debated issue amongst male writers of the sixteenth century. Juan Luis Vives in his De institutione Fceminae Christianae in 1523 advocated a limited education for women including reading and writing amongst a range of other, more domestic duties.21 To the east of France, Luther also took up the 18 See Coleman, chapter 2, especially Chart 2.3, p. 44. 19 Wiesner (1986), Working Women in Renaissance Germany, New Brunswick, p .81 cited in her Women and Gender, p. 122. 20 (1872), Lettres de Louise de Coligny, Princesse d Orange a sa belle-fille, Charlotte-Brabantine de Nassau, Duchesse de la Tremoille (ed.) P. Marchegay, Les Roches-Baritaud, Vendie, pp. 9-10. 21 M. Sonnet (1993), ‘A Daughter to Educate’, A History o f Women in the West: Renaissance and Enlightenment Paradoxes (eds) N.Z. Davis and A. Farge, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., p. 102.

Women’s Experiences as Readers, Owners and Collectors of Books 17 debate, demanding schools for boys and girls alike. In his eyes, each girl was a potential mother and teacher of the faith to her children, so his focus rested on women’s ability to read and study the catechism.22 In most cases, male writers recommended reading and writing only in the vernacular, and any study of Latin was regarded as highly dangerous, and at the very least unnecessary.23 As Vives noted, ‘I perceive that learned women be suspected of many: as who saith, the subtlety of learning should be a nourishment for the maliciousness of their nature’.24 The circumscribed nature of the education advocated for noblewomen had implications on their access to publication as authors, as well as on their participation in publication culture as patrons and readers. Katherine d’Amboise apologized, in her manuscript work, Le Livre des Prudens et imprudens des siecles passes, that as a woman, her education was limited: ‘a man ... has the freedom to go here and there to the Universities and studies where he can understand all branches o f learning ... which is not the business of the female sex’.2S Women did not receive the same instruction as their male counterparts in areas such as scientific, religious and legal matters. As the author Jean Bouchet opined: queens, princesses and other ladies who don’t have to ... apply themselves to housekeeping ... must better apply their minds and use the time to attend to good and chaste literature, concerning moral things ... but they must keep from applying their minds to curious questions of theology, knowledge of which belongs to prelates, rectors and doctors.26 Jacques de Rochemore praised the learning and accomplishment of his future wife, Marguerite de Cambis, in a dedication to her. There he showed what was expected by contemporaries of a noblewoman’s education: ‘gracious in speech, humane in response, modest in progress, and neatly dressed, writing w ell... and ... singing well, playing the lute,

22 Ibid., p. 104. 23 Ibid., p. 103. 24 Vivfes (1523), De institutione Fceminae Christianae, ch. 4, Antwerp, in (1912), Vives and the Renascence Education o f Women (ed.) F. Watson, Edward Arnold, London, p. 148. 25 Katherine d’Amboise, Le Livre des Prudens et imprudens des siecles pas sis, fol. 6v°, in E. Berriot-Salvadore (1990), Les Femmes dans la societe frangaise de la Renaissance, Droz, Geneva, p. 420. 26 Jean Bouchet, Le Panegyric du chevalier sans reproche, Collection Petitot, vol. xiv, pp. 448-9 in P. Rousselot (1971), Histoire de Veducation des femmes en France (1883) Burt Franklin, New York, p. 108.

18 Women and the Book Trade in Sixteenth-Century France spinet, violin and other instruments’.27 Every lauded accomplishment suggested gentility and restraint, rather than the intellectual pursuit necessary to elite male learning. Wealth was clearly a prime factor in the education of women. The wealthier a family, the more likely its daughters would be educated as a sign of their leisured freedom from practical household chores. An advanced education for women was largely limited to the upper classes and nobility, with the exception of a few mercantile families. Most literate women were educated from home with tutors, or in cloisters, rather than schools.28 The cloisters provided a centre of almost total female literacy for noblewomen who were educated there. The lifestyle of devotion promoted the study of liturgical texts requiring Latin, and women benefited from the extensive manuscript collections that could be borrowed from other religious institutions.29 Many women in wealthy families, particularly of the landed nobility, were able to read and write not only in French but also other modem languages. There is much evidence of these women’s advanced literacy skills in hand-written letters, often addressed to other women, in inventories of the books held in their libraries and in the publications which they wrote. Reading and writing instruction, therefore, also reflected social class boundaries as well as those of gender. In the upper echelons of society, girls might receive instruction beyond the recommendation of supporters like Vives to encompass even classical languages. Translations by women indicated many educated French women were familiar with Italian, Spanish and English, some knew Latin well while a few had knowledge of Greek. Elite women were also involved in the foundation and maintenance of educational establishments, considered a praiseworthy employment of their time and money. In 1589, la presidente Lalliement donated a sizeable sum to the town council of Tours for the specific purpose of paying a regent for Tours’ college ‘to instruct the youth in their A, B, Cs’.30 Praise of humanist women tended to distinguish them from other women: their learning made them more like men. Charles de SainteMarthe could not reconcile Marguerite de Navarre’s sex with her learning, saying of her: ‘in the body of a woman, she had a heroic and virile heart, thus she wanted to pass her time in the arts worthy of the 27 Jacques de Rochemore (1556), ‘A Mademoiselle Marguerite de Cambis Baronne d’Aigremont’ in Propos amoureux contenans le discours des amours et manage du seigneur Cliophant & damoiselle Leusippe, Benoit Rigaud, Lyons, p. 8. 28 Moore, p. 89. 29 Ibid., p. 167. 30 Archives municipales de Tours, GG 4, Third box, documents 349-351.

Women’s Experiences as Readers, Owners and Collectors of Books 19 occupation of men’.31 This in turn perpetuated the notion that intelligence and capacity to learn were not usual female attributes. It further bound some women who achieved the extraordinary status, as Anne R. Larsen terms it, of ‘honorary males’ to continue the division between themselves and other women, particularly those women writers who wished to participate in male areas of writing.32 No longer like other members of the female sex, these humanist women acknowledged the superiority of male learning over conventional female domestic pursuits, possibly in order to assimilate. Thus in some works by women, domestic duties, symbolized by the distaff, are rejected in favour of the power of the pen. Louise Labe’s preface provides one such example: ‘I can but beg virtuous women to lift up their minds a little from their spinning wheels and distaffs’.33 In this way, women who achieved more than other women intellectually could feel confused by their separation from a conventional female identity while feeling empowered by their intellectual authority. By praising their learned knowledge as superior to women’s domestic knowledge, they were recognizing the authority of a higher male order of learning to which, as women, they could never truly belong. As Evelyne Berriot-Salvadore has observed, ‘the “learned” woman was the consenting agent in her own submission’.34 The Protestant poet and historian, Agrippa d’Aubigne, encouraged learning only for some women. In a letter to his daughters, he praised their desire for learning: ‘I don’t blame you for your desire to learn with your brothers,’ but qualified those women for whom learning was necessary as ‘princesses who by their condition are required to demonstrate the care, the learning, the adequate abilities, the management skills and the authority of men’.35 The princesses o f whom he spoke, the daughters of the French royal family, including Marguerite de Navarre and her daughter, Jeanne d’Albret, were known across Europe for their learning, progressive education and ideas. Indeed French women of the royal family were influential and highly visible in the politics of the French court throughout the century. Anne de 31 Charles de Sainte-Marthe (1550), Oraison funebre de I'incomparable Marguerite, Franfois Chauldiere, Paris, p. 68. 32 A.R. Larsen (1987-8), ‘Reading/Writing and Gender in the Renaissance’, Symposium, 41, 4, p. 294. 33 (Cameron’s translation) K. Cameron (1990), Louise Labi: Renaissance Poet an d Feminist, Berg, New York, p. 46. 34 E. Berriot-Salvadore (1983), ‘Les femmes et les pratiques de l’6criture de Christine de Pisan