Abstract/Summary

Given Isabella Whitney’s reputation as the first English professional woman writer, her books are fertile ground for the recent material turn in the study of early modern women’s writing. Women’s engagement in book production meant that their texts were mediated through the work of booksellers, printers, and other agents in the print trade. We need to remember that writers make texts, but books are made by publishers and printers. Whitney’s own working relationship with her printer-publisher, Richard Jones, is well-known. Yet, the precise nature of Jones’s role in the production of Whitney’s books and her fashioning as an “Auctor” remains shadowy, largely because questions of agency have not been explored through the technologies of book production. To understand the ways in which Whitney’s texts were mediated through print, and her participation in this process, this essay will focus on how her books of poetry were made, starting with the role of her printer-publisher, Richard Jones.