Women as Printers, Donors, and Owners of Law Texts

Via H-Law, we have word of a new exhibit at the Yale Law Library, Evidence of Women: Women as Printers, Donors, and Owners of Law Texts.

Women printed, donated, and owned law books – from manuals to treatises to codes – long before women entered legal practice. From queens to unknown women, from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries, this exhibit provides a glimpse of women’s involvement with law books both inside and outside of official structures.

The exhibit, “Evidence of Women: Women as Printers, Donors, and Owners of Law Texts,” is curated by Anna Franz (Rare Book Fellow, Yale Law Library). It is on display through August 25, 2015, in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, located on Level L2 of the Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School (127 Wall Street, New Haven, CT).

This exhibit provides further evidence of women’s long involvement with the law even at times when they could not practice it. Since the exhibit represents only a small sampling from the vast corpus of law texts, it prompts reflection on the potential depth and breadth of women’s interactions with the law as producers, transmitters, and consumers, instead of as objects or eventually practitioners of law. It especially highlights women’s importance in the dissemination of law texts through their substantial and sustained role as printers and sellers of law books.

For more information, contact Anna Franz at (203) 432-5678, email anna.franz@yale.edu, or Mike Widener at (203) 432-4494, email mike.widener@yale.edu.