Research
My current project aims to explore a network of women printers in mid-seventeenth-century London, using the 1647 Beaumont and Fletcher folio as its starting point. Stationers Humphrey Moseley and Humphrey Robinson hired at least seven printers to produce the folio, one of the landmark publications of its era. Of the contracted printers who have been identified, two were women, Susan Islip and Ruth Raworth; and yet, their labour has never been considered in relation to their gender. Moreover, an extended network of women printers, all connected through business, family, and friendship, spirals out from Islip and Raworth, linking them to some of the most important publications of the mid-seventeenth century, including work by authors such as John Milton and Margaret Cavendish. What were these women’s lives like? How did women printers function within the ecosystem of the London book trade? How can thinking more explicitly about women’s roles in the early modern book trade open new avenues into the business dealings and partnerships between printers, stationers, and booksellers in the period?
Additionally, I’m very interested in the #HerBook topic, broadly defined, as encompassing women as both readers and makers of early modern books.
My first monograph, Shakespeare’s ‘Lady Editors’: A New History of the Shakespearean Text, focuses on the recovery of women editors of Shakespeare in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. I engage in extensive archival and documentary research in order to reconstruct the forgotten lives of women editors throughout the United States and United Kingdom. Merging the biographical with the bibliographical offers an unexpectedly human insight into the process of editing Shakespeare, which in turn illuminates underexplored facets of editorial labour.
I am always happy to discuss my work with anyone who is interested. I would be eager to collaborate on projects involving editorial history or theory, Shakespeare reception and afterlives, book history, particularly in the nineteenth century, women’s writing, or editing projects.
I’m also happy to chat about the Rasmussen Hines Collection, the private rare book collection of Prof. Eric Rasmussen and Victoria Hines, which will soon be a library welcoming visiting scholars. I curate the Collection’s online presence during this phase of its existence, both on the website and Twitter.
I also maintain an interest in theatre history and performance and am a working dramaturg. I am passionate about bridging the space between audiences, theatre practitioners, and scholars to create a more vibrant experience for all three groups. I am a co-editor of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Complete Works of Shakespeare, Second Edition (edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022), for which I wrote annotations on performance.