Women's Printing Society
{{Short description|British publishing house}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}
The Women's Printing Society was a British publishing house founded in either 1874{{cite book|title=The British Printer|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9oEeAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA184|year=1899|publisher=Maclean-Hunter|pages=184–}}{{cite book|last=MacDonald|first=James Ramsay|title=Women in the Printing Trades: A Sociological Study|url=https://archive.org/details/womeninprinting00macdgoog|accessdate=8 November 2015|year=1904|publisher=P. S. King|pages=[https://archive.org/details/womeninprinting00macdgoog/page/n45 26]–}} or 1876{{cite book|last1=Uglow|first1=Jennifer S.|last2=Hendry|first2=Maggy|title=The Northeastern Dictionary of Women's Biography|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zlQKDvU1WV0C&pg=PA195|accessdate=8 November 2015|year=1999|publisher=UPNE|isbn=9781555534219|pages=195–}}{{cite book|last=A.)|first=Fred Hall (M.|title=The history of the Co-operative printing society, 1869-1919: being a record of fifty years' progress and achievement|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pDw5AAAAMAAJ|accessdate=8 November 2015|year=1920|publisher=s.n.}} by Emma Paterson and Emily Faithfull{{cite book|last=Hartley|first=Cathy|title=A Historical Dictionary of British Women|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uY2B224NwmYC&pg=PA331|accessdate=8 November 2015|date=2013-04-15|publisher=Routledge|isbn=9781135355340|pages=331–}} with the company being officially incorporated as a cooperative in 1878.
Involvement in the suffragist movement
The company played an important role in British suffrage movement, both through its publication of feminist tracts and in providing employment opportunities for women in a field that had previously been restricted to men.{{cite book|last1=Doughan|first1=David|last2=Gordon|first2=Peter|title=Dictionary of British Women's Organisations, 1825-1960|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=T423AwAAQBAJ&pg=PA178|accessdate=8 November 2015|date=2014-06-03|publisher=Routledge|isbn=9781136897702|pages=6, 178–79}} The house was set up to allow women to learn the trade of printing, and provided an apprenticeship program. Women worked as compositors, and as of 1904, it was one of the few houses where they also did the imposing: ordering the galley proofs so that when folded, the front and back pages aligned properly. As of 1899, the company employed 22 women as compositors. The manager, proof-reader and bookkeeper were also women. Men held the tasks of "pressmen and feeders". The women apprentices earned a wage "considering the hours (9 to 6.30), etc., this is better pay than even highly-educated women can sometimes secure." Some of the initial employees came from Faithful's Victoria Press.{{cite book|last=Tusan|first=Michelle Elizabeth|title=Women Making News: Gender and Journalism in Modern Britain|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=b0C1xe_Z5I0C&pg=PA263|accessdate=8 November 2015|year=2005|publisher=University of Illinois Press|isbn=9780252030154|pages=263–}}
Notable employees
The Board of Directors included Sarah Prideaux, Mabel Winkworth and Stewart Duckworth Headlam. Elizabeth Yeats studied for a brief time at the Women's Printing Society, before returning to Ireland and starting the Dun Emer Press.{{cite book|last=Holdeman|first=David|title=Much Labouring: The Texts and Authors of Yeats's First Modernist Books|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8_IT9uUXlIMC&pg=PA51|accessdate=9 November 2015|year=1997|publisher=University of Michigan Press|isbn=9780472108510|pages=51–}}
Up to 1893 and between 1889 and 1900, the company published the reports of the Central Committee for the National Society for Women's Suffrage.{{cite book|last=Crawford|first=Elizabeth|title=The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866-1928|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ygXwlK_mj50C&pg=PT1624|accessdate=8 November 2015|date=2003-09-02|publisher=Routledge|isbn=9781135434014|pages=1624–}} It published the Women's Penny Paper through 1890, but it is not recorded why the relationship ended.
Selected works
Works published by the Women's Printing Society include:
- "What is women's suffrage and why do women want it" by Veritas (1883)
- A Woman's Plea to Women by Elizabeth Clarke Wolstenholme Elmy (reprint from Macclesfield Courier) (1886)
- "Home Politics: An Address" Millicent Garrett Fawcett (1894)
- "Swimming and its relation to the Health of Women" Frances Hoggan (1879)
- "Education of Girls in Wales" Frances Hoggan (1879)
- "Women in India and the Duty of their English Sisters" Mrs. Martindale (1896){{cite book|last=Burton|first=Antoinette M.|authorlink=Antoinette Burton|title=Burdens of History: British Feminists, Indian Women, and Imperial Culture, 1865-1915|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sDZL9T8OHJkC&pg=PA273|accessdate=8 November 2015|year=1994|publisher=Univ of North Carolina Press|isbn=9780807844717|pages=273–}}
- Thomas Wilde Powell Christiana Herringham (1903)
- Papers of the Society of Painters in Tempera by Christina Herringham.
- Woman Suffrage and the Anti-militants by Ennis Richmond
- "Choose, Ye: Darkness or Light!" Lady Melville (1922){{cite book|last=Kessel|first=Anthony|title=Air, the Environment and Public Health|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ouTnroUkl7UC&pg=PA79|accessdate=8 November 2015|year=2006|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=9780521831468|pages=79–}}
- the exhibition catalog of the London International Surrealist Exhibition (1936){{Cite book |url=https://monoskop.org/images/5/52/The_International_Surrealist_Exhibition_1936_London_catalogue.pdf |title=International Surrealist Exhibition |publisher=Women's Printing Society, Ltd. |year=1936 |location=London |language=en |format=PDF |oclc=9735630 |access-date=September 27, 2022}}