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Printing, Publishing, and Pocket Book Compiling: Ann Fisher’s Hidden Labour in the Newcastle Book Trade

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Print Culture, Agency, and Regionality in the Hand Press Period

Part of the book series: New Directions in Book History ((NDBH))

Abstract

Ann Fisher (1719–1778), author of bestselling grammatical textbooks, co-founded and co-edited with her husband, Thomas Slack, the Newcastle Chronicle. Though she worked alongside him, and sometimes independently, in their Newcastle print shops, Fisher’s work as a printer-publisher remains underexplored. This chapter demonstrates her role in printing and publishing John Cunningham’s Poems, Chiefly Pastoral (1766 and 1772) and her own Ladies’ Own Memorandum-Book (1764–1778), unique in being the only women’s pocket book produced by a woman in this period. Drawing upon manuscript archives of correspondence in the British Library, Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums, and the National Library of Scotland, this chapter provides a rare insight into the professional practice of a female printer and publisher within a family business.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Newcastle Courant, 26 November 1763. In its first advertisement in the Newcastle Courant, the Slacks’ rival newspaper, it appears as the Ladies New Memorandum-Book, but the name is altered in the following issue, where the editor states that the new publication is ‘to be intitled, “The Ladies’ Own Memorandum-Book”’: Newcastle Courant, 3 December 1763.

  2. 2.

    See, for instance, the copy for 1779 from the Thomas Fisher Library at the University of Toronto, Canada, digitised at https://archive.org/details/ladiesgentlemens00burr/mode/2up, last accessed January 21 2022.

  3. 3.

    Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, 18 November 1765. The ‘engraved’ titlepage is also advertised in St. James’s Chronicle or the British Evening Post, 23 December 1766.

  4. 4.

    ‘Continued from last year’s Book’ (1773), British Library, Hodgson Papers vol. 5 Add. MS. 50244.45v.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

    Helen Williams

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  1. Helen Williams
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Correspondence to Helen Williams .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Sussex, Brighton, UK

    Rachel Stenner

  2. Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK

    Kaley Kramer

  3. York St John University, York, UK

    Adam James Smith

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Williams, H. (2022). Printing, Publishing, and Pocket Book Compiling: Ann Fisher’s Hidden Labour in the Newcastle Book Trade. In: Stenner, R., Kramer, K., Smith, A.J. (eds) Print Culture, Agency, and Regionality in the Hand Press Period . New Directions in Book History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88055-2_5

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