Women in Printing & Publishing in California
1850-1940
January 23, - April 18, 1998

INTRODUCTION
compiled by Patricia Keats

California was not the first place where women were involved in printing and publishing. Since the Renaissance, women had been part of the printing trades in Europe. Whether as bookbinders or as widows of printers who were left to continue their husbands' printing businesses women have been involved in the printing, publishing and selling of books and journals for many centuries. A woman's typographical union was formed in France with a journal entitled La Compositrice, and the first major woman's journal edited by a woman, Godey's Lady's Book, was publish ed in Philadelphia from 1830-1858, edited by Sarah Josepha Buell Hale. In 19th century England, Emily Faithful started a printing office exclusively for women workers - but gave it up after a few years and became a full-time publisher. This exhibition illuminates the many roles that women have played in printing and publishing in California's early history. it will not romanticize their struggle - these 19th century women faced union resistance, prejudice against women working in a male work force, and general problems encountered in owning their own businesses. With the dawn of the 20th century and the emergence of women's rights, women in printing and publishing entered more seamlessly into the work force. Finally, with the advent of fine press printing at this same time, the women printers portrayed in the 1920s and 1930s emerge as figures who achieved their goals to work at a skilled occupation that offered them not only an honest living but also a chance to use their creative instincts and skills.

WOMEN AS PRINTERS
The idea of women typesetters is uniquely suited to California and the West - a result of the need to work and survive in a new land which demanded self-sufficiency and skills of women as well as men. In the 1830s there were a limited number of occupations open to women - teaching, needlework, domestic service, etc. - and among these was also typesetting. Women who were widows or daughters of printers often learned typesetting out of necessity By 1864, due in large part to the depletion of the male work force during the Civil War, additional workers were needed in trades which were previously thought of as "male" trades - one of these being typesetting. The number of newspapers and the demand for printed materials was on the increase, and women began to step into jobs in both the printing and publishing fields.

In San Francisco, which was becoming a center for printing and publishing in the West, women-run printing offices appeared in the 1870s and 1880s. The Women's Union Job Printing Co., the Woman's Publishing Company, Amanda B. Slocum and Jennie Patrick were a few either woman-run and/or -staffed printing offices of this period. The most prominent and prolific was The Women's Co-Operative Printing Union, established in 1868 on Clay Street by Mrs. Agnes Peterson, followed in 1873 by Mrs. Lizzie G. Richmond. Early 1870 billheads produced by the WCPU proudly proclaimed, "Women set type! Women run presses!" So confident was Lizzie Richmond that her billheads and advertisements often stated, "We invite criticism." These printing offices produced a variety of printed materials for the public - books, commercial catalogs, corporate annual reports, legal briefs. Also produced were invitations, broadside advertisements, and handbills - often referred to as "jobbing printing" because they could be produced completely off a single sheet of paper or card.

PUBLISHING AND THE SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT
During the late 19th century, women writers often moved into positions as editors of newspapers or small journals. At this same time, the Woman's Suffrage Movement was gaining momentum and the women-edited journals were the obvious choices in which to further their cause. Spiritualism was also a popular movement at the turn of the century among women - largely because it did not discriminate by gender or ethnic background - and the women publishers felt a kinship because of this non-discriminatory nature. Journals such as The Carrier Dove, The Spiritualist, and The Golden Dawn were all journals edited by women and devoted to not only Spiritualism but in some cases, also to the Suffrage Movement.

Other women publishers and editors followed a more literary angle, publishing journals which featured articles on a wider variety of topics. In 1863, Lisle Lester took charge of the Pacific Monthly, a woman's literary magazine previously known as the Hesperian. It had a rocky career as was the career of Ms. Lester - who was widely known for her strong opinions on many topics and her tussles with the male typographical unions. Another woman, Emily Pitts Stevens, gained prominence when she transformed the Sunday Evening Mercury - which was known as "a Journal of Romance and Literature" - into the premier voice for woman's suffrage in the West. She hired women to set type for her newspaper and in 1869 changed its name to The Pioneer - as "a name that more nearly covers our thought and tells the nature of our object and ambition." She became a major force in the founding of the California Woman Suffrage Association on January 28, 1870.

ILLUSTRATION TECHNIQUES
The many journals, newspapers, books, and even billheads that were printed during the late 19th and early 20th centuries used mainly one method of illustration - that of the wood engraving. This technique - refined by Thomas Bewick in England around 1780 - utilized the following equipment: 1) a woodblock with an end-grain cutting surface, preferably boxwood which is hard and fine-grained; 2) cutting tools normally associated with metal engraving such as burins or gravers and a steel needle embedded in a wooden grip; 3) a small ink roller and; 4) a spoonlike wood burnisher for hand-printing, or a printing press. Leila S. Curtis and Eleanor P. Gibbons were two women who started up and ran successful engraving businesses in San Francisco. Both were trained in engraving and design. Their designs were found on billheads, business cards, and stationery, as well as in book illustrations, commercial catalogs, and innumerable other small printed items. Magazines published during this period often used the technique of the woodcut - rather than a wood engraving - to illustrate their pages. The technique used in producing a woodcut allowed for larger more fluid compositions. Lucia Mathews cut the designs for Philopolis (1906-1919) - a magazine published by Arthur, her husband, and herself during the early part of the 20th century. Florence Lundborg, an artist influenced by both Art Nouveau and the Arts and Crafts movement of the early part of this century, produced woodcut images for The Lark, the San Francisco literary magazine published by Bruce Porter and Gelett Burgess from 1895-1897.

BOOK AGENTS AND BOOKS
In 19th century America, using book agents was an important alternative method of selling books to the public. Into communities remote from bookstores and libraries they brought novels, histories, and a variety of handbooks on subjects such as farming, law, and cookery. Nearly all the publishing houses in the mid-19th century sold their books by subscription as well as through retail trade. Subscription books are those for which a definite market is created, before or after publication, by soliciting individual orders. The county histories, county biographies, and atlases that were printed around 1870 in the United States, as well as Audubon's The Birds of America and many of Mark Twain's books, were all sold by swarms of energetic book agents across America.
In a country as thinly populated as 19th century America, printers and booksellers could count on only a small number of sales over the counter. Book agents or salesmen were held in esteem for the most part and many famous Americans beat the pavements and dirt roads selling books in their early years - Daniel Webster, Bret Harte, and even George Washington. Enterprising publishers realized that a greater public was eager to buy books if the books could be taken to the buyer. Book agents were the means for this - and many women found this profession suited to their needs and abilities. It was their job to sell books as well as lithographs - for people wanted books not only to read, but also as a hallmark of social standing. Books were equated with knowledge and wealth in the emerging middle and upper classes of American society.

WOMEN FINE PRESS PRINTERS
The turn of the century saw an increased interest in the aesthetic aspects of printing - now that women were an accepted part of the work force - and many fine presses sprang up throughout the state. A fine or "private press" is generally understood to be a small printing house which issues for public sale limited editions of books which have been carefully made on the premises. In a letter to the Monotype Recorder in 1933, Eric Gill stated "a `private' press prints solely what it chooses to print, whereas a `public' press prints what its customers demand of it."

By the 1920s a tradition of fine printing was well under way in San Francisco, with Taylor and Taylor, John Henry Nash and the Grabhorns already fairly well established. These printing houses encouraged printing by women - some of these women being Mae Hartmann and Fritzie Buchignani, compositors for Nash; and Jane Grabhorn and Katherine Grover, typesetters for the Grabhorn Press. Other women with their own presses were Rosalind Keep of the Eucalyptus Press, Helen Gentry, and Jane Grabhorn at Colt Press, which was founded along with William Matson Roth and Jane Swinerton. In southern California, private presses were often a husband and wife team. The Saunders Studio Press of Claremont was founded in 1927 by Lynne and Ruth Thompson Saunders. The Plantin Press in Los Angeles was established in 1931 by Saul and Lillian Marks, Saul being in charge of design and layout and Lillian responsible for composition.

CONCLUSION
These women fine press printers were the natural evolution of the 19th century women apprentices, widows, and daughters who fought or found themselves heirs to work in a printing business. With the increasing interest in aesthetics and the influence of the arts and crafts movement in the early 20th century, women printers were able to utilize not only their technical skills as printers and typesetters, but also their creative instincts as artists and book designers.

GLOSSARY OF PRINTING TERMS
compiled by Alastair Johnston, Poltroon Press

• California Job case - wooden case for type containing all the main characters for text setting, introduced in San Francisco.
• Chappel - printers' fraternal organization within a printshop used for establishing decorum and settling disputes. Composing stick - a metal holder in which the compositor sets up type in words and lines.
  
• Dead Bank - where printed matter sits awaiting distribution.
  
• Devil - apprentice printer.
  
• Dingbat - ornament cast in lead.
  
• Em - the square of a type body - thus in Pica type it is 12 points wide by 12 points high.
  
• Fat Take - a typesetting job with a lot of blank space, as in poetry or display work.
  
• Forme - a metal chase or frame containing pages of type held in place by quoins and wooden furniture.
  
• Galley - a tray, usually brass, for holding composed matter.
  
• Hellbox - container for broken or worn type waiting to be melted down.
  
• Jeffing - another name for "quadrats," often played to see who buys the beer.
  
• Make-up - the art of breaking galleys of composition into pages.
  
• Point - the basic typographical unit - a twelfth of a pica, about 1/72nd of an inch.
  
• Quoin - wedge device for locking up formes.
  
• Rounce & Coffin - the crank and bed of an iron handpress.
  
• Slug - a six-point wide piece of lead used for spacing; a line of Linotype; a board for organizing subs in a large shop.
  
• Wayzgoose - winter holiday in the chappel.
  
• Widow - a solitary word at the end of a paragraph, to be avoided.
  

The idea for this exhibition grew from Women in Printing: Northern California, 1857-1890 by Roger Levenson. Mr. Levenson founded the Tamalpais Press in Berkeley in 1953, and worked with the Kemble Collections at the California Historical Society during the 1980s.