Manuscript, Women, and Scribal Culture

Abstract

Secular scribes played a vital role in the production of manuscripts, with early moderns making use of the services offered by professional scribes, scriveners, and secretaries. Scribes worked on a more informal level too, as family members, friends, servants, and neighbours penned texts at the request of their kith and kin. Women, too, contributed to this scribal culture, both as those requesting the use of a scribe and as those wielding the quill.The definitions of "scribe" given in contemporary scholarship often prioritize the professional, thus excluding those working in an informal capacity from the conversation altogether. Creating a more inclusive definition, one which also recognizes the authorial license concomitant to scribal work, will allow these "amateur" scribes (who we might call "scribblers," perhaps) an identity through which they can enter into the contemporary scholarly discourse surrounding the role of the scribe in early modern England. As these amateurs were sometimes female, this expanded perspective will make it possible for scholars to gain a more rounded and complete understanding of manuscript culture.