Dr Elise Watson
Research Assistant
Teaching
Lecturer for HI2001: History as a Discipline: Development and Key Concepts
Research areas
My research interests lie at the intersection of gender history, book history, and religious history. I am broadly interested in early modern print culture and its impact on religious experience, and the labour of women writers, publishers, booksellers and readers in the early modern book trade.
My doctoral thesis, completed in 2022, investigated the impact of the interconfessional book trade on practical questions of toleration and co-existence in the post-Reformation landscape, using as a case study the trade of Catholic books in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic. The production, distribution and censorship of these confessional texts, as well as their import from abroad, shaped the lives of the large minority Catholic population and the work of the Dutch Mission. Books, acting as repositories of faith, holders of memory and objects of devotion, helped to create and shape Catholic experience. Through an examination of a large body of print and manuscript sources including previously undocumented printed ephemera, this work demonstrated both the importance of books to the Catholic minority in the Dutch Republic, and the value of Catholic books in the Dutch book trade.
My new project focuses on collaborations between women in the early modern book trade. While many women worked in the print industry at all levels in this period, from rag-sorters for paper to master printers, their legal and social precarity as labourers meant that they were either unable to work under their own names, or their contributions went unrecognised. Despite this, female friendships and business partnerships produced hundreds of printed books across Europe between 1450 and 1800. This project examines how this labour was gendered, and uncovers untold stories of women's essential labour in the business of making books.
Since completing my PhD, I have also begun a new role as a postdoctoral researcher for the Universal Short Title Catalogue project, where I work on data related to gender, France, and the Low Countries. I am also the Managing Editor of Brill’s Book History Online database (Brill Online Bibliographies).
Selected publications
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Gender and the book trades
Watson, E. (Editor) & Farrell-Jobst, J. (Editor), 23 Oct 2024, Leiden: Brill. (Library of the written word; vol. 128)Research output: Book/Report › Book
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Learning your papist ABCs: gender and print in clandestine Catholic schools in the Dutch Republic
Watson, E., 23 Oct 2024, Gender and the book trades. Watson, E. & Farrell-Jobst, J. (eds.). Leiden: Brill, (Library of the written word; vol. 128).Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter
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Open access
Queering the language of dynasty in imprints and bibliographic metadata
Watson, E., 1 Jun 2024, In: Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America. 118, 2, p. 223–243 21 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
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Open access
Renaud Adam, Rosa De Marco, and Malcolm Walsby (eds.), Books and Prints at the Heart of the Catholic Reformation in the Low Countries (16th-17th Centuries) (Leiden: Brill, 2022, 301 pp., isbn 9789004504370).
Watson, E., 2 Apr 2024, In: BMGN - Low Countries Historical Review. 139, 3 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Book/Film/Article review › peer-review
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Open access
Swapping gossip, swapping profit: the book barter economy in the early modern Low Countries
Watson, E., Aug 2024, In: Library & Information History. 40, 2, p. 118-131Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
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Valerie Wayne, ed. Women’s Labour and the History of the Book in Early Modern England. London: Arden Shakespeare, 2020. xvi + 320 pp. $29.95. Paperback (ISBN 978-1-350-24663-8)
Watson, E., 7 Mar 2024, In: Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America. 118, 1, p. 119-122 3 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Book/Film/Article review › peer-review
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Open access
Bibliotheken en katholieke kennisoverdracht in ballingschap
Watson, E. & de Lange, H. (Translator), Sept 2023, In: Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse Kerkgeschiedenis. 26, 2, p. 73-79Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
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Open access
Education in partibus infidelium: Catholic catechisms and controversy in the Dutch Republic
Watson, E., 1 Sept 2022, In: Jaarboek voor Nederlandse boekgeschiedenis . 29, 1, p. 4-31 28 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
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Lost saints: printed catholic ephemera in the Dutch republic
Watson, E., 14 Sept 2022, Reformation, religious culture and print in early modern Europe: essays in honour of Andrew Pettegree, volume 1. der Weduwen, A. & Walsby, M. (eds.). Leiden: Brill, p. 215-234 19 p. (Library of the written word; vol. 106).Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter
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Networks of devotion: auction catalogues and the Catholic book trade in Amsterdam, 1650-1700
Watson, E., 28 Jul 2021, Book trade catalogues in early modern Europe. der Weduwen, A., Pettegree, A. & Kemp, G. (eds.). Leiden: Brill, p. 193-211 19 p. (Library of the written word; vol. 93).Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter