The Edinburgh Companion to Women in Publishing, 1900–2020

This essential collection reframes our understanding of publishing history by centering women's indispensable creative labor across the 20th and 21st centuries. Drawing from groundbreaking feminist scholarship in book history and publishing studies, the work systematically documents women's deeply embedded yet often invisible contributions to global print culture. Through meticulous archival research and international perspectives, it reveals how women shaped literary production, editorial decisions, and distribution networks that defined modern publishing. The companion demonstrates that women were not peripheral figures but central architects of the publishing ecosystem.

What distinguishes this volume is its powerful emphasis on professional networks, collaborative practices, and intergenerational knowledge transfer among women in publishing. By examining everything from editorial work and literary agency to design and distribution, it provides a comprehensive framework for understanding publishing as a collective enterprise rather than individual genius. Emerging writers, publishing professionals, and literary scholars will find this an indispensable resource that fundamentally alters how we value creative labor in the book industry. This isn't just recovery work—it's a paradigm shift in how we document and understand literary production.