During ten years of working on the Women’s Print History Project, we have thought seriously and often about “women’s book history.” What is it, and how do we define it in relation to the WPHP? As women working on the history of women’s book history, what does it feel like, and what do we have to offer? What ground has women’s book history trodden — and where is it going? And how can we contribute to a sustainable future for the field? As relatively new contributors to it, Kate and Kandice wer...

On the WPHP, our encounters with books and the women who worked on them are bibliographically-focused, as they must be for a project of this scale—focused attention on the contents of every work and the stories of their producers simply isn’t possible. But that doesn’t mean we don’t want to engage with the works that closely—the opposite is true, in fact!—and for Episode 4 of Season 5 of The WPHP Monthly Mercury, “A Newcastle Novelist”, we were delighted to interview Dr. Tricia Monsour from t...

For Episode 3 of the fifth season of The WPHP Monthly Mercury, “Bibliographic Intimacies,” Kate and Kandice interviewed Megan Peiser and Emily Spunaugle about their work on the Marguerite Hicks Collection in the Kresge Library at Oakland University, a collection of women’s books collected by a queer, disabled woman. Their deep, immersive work on this collection highlights the physical, intellectual, and emotional intimacies that arise from bibliographic research. From the practicalities...

Every year, come hell or high water, The WPHP Monthly Mercury has released a gothic-inflected Halloween episode—and this year, we’re literally taking a trip to hell with Charlotte Dacre’s 1806 novel Zofloya; or, The Moor. To talk about this demonic, orientalist bloodbath, Kandice sat down with WPHP collaborator Kate Ozment, and they found themselves hurled into the abyss of trying to untangle the plot of this most bonkers of bonkers novels. Happy Halloween!

Authority records, authority figures, authoritative scholarship... What does it really mean to have authority? Nothing good, according to Kandice. However, in working on a new project that relies on bibliographic data from the WPHP, she has had to confront her authority issues. (Meanwhile, Kate is still reeling from the discovery that 'WorldCat' is short for 'World Catalogue' and has nothing to do with felines. On this podcast, we have spent a lot—a lot—of time talking about our s...

One of the fields we include in our records for publishing, printing, and bookselling businesses in the WPHP—our firm records—is for the addresses where they operated. Sometimes this is straightforward: one individual working at one location for the duration of their career. Other times, however, it is decidedly less so. There are booksellers running multiple shops at the same time, printers moving locations every year or two for fifteen years, publishers working with various combinations of ...

Do you believe in ghosts? In this spirited (ha ha) Halloween episode, Kandice and Kate encounter a ghost of their very own in circulating library owner and author Mary Tuck’s Durston Castle; or, The Ghost of Eleonora (1804). Every year, in anticipation of October, we scour the WPHP for suitably spooky titles—previous Halloween episodes have featured badly behaved monks, rogue banditti, haunted castles, lost (and found!) parents, and pages upon pages of moralizing in the mountains (we’re looki...

In August 2022, Kate and Kandice traveled to Liverpool for “New Romanticisms”: the joint conference for the British Association for Romantic Studies and the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism—BARS and NASSR, respectively. Our conference episode involved interviews with conference plenaries, organizers, award winners, and award facilitators, becoming what we've affectionately termed a truly Frankensteinian attempt to answer the question: What do New Romanticisms sound like? On...

In August 2022, Kate and Kandice traveled to Liverpool for “New Romanticisms”: the joint conference for the British Association for Romantic Studies and the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism—BARS and NASSR, respectively. Our conference episode involved interviews with conference plenaries, organizers, award winners, and award facilitators, becoming what we've affectionately termed a truly Frankensteinian attempt to answer the question: What do New Romanticisms sound like? On...

In August 2022, Kate and Kandice traveled to Liverpool for “New Romanticisms”: the joint conference for the British Association for Romantic Studies and the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism—BARS and NASSR, respectively. Our conference episode involved interviews with conference plenaries, organizers, award winners, and award facilitators, becoming what we've affectionately termed a truly Frankensteinian attempt to answer the question: What do New Romanticisms sound like? On...