ABSTRACT
All methods by which women were able to participate in publication culture were shaped by their level of education. Yet notions of the ‘good woman’, her abilities and rightful place in the household, shaped assumptions about access to, as well as the nature of, female education. Furthermore, if we are to understand the contexts in which women wrote, then we must also explore women’s access to texts and assess the evidence for female readership of both scribal and printed works. One of the means by which women frequently participated in the creation of scribal and print culture was not as authors, but as readers, owners, collectors and patrons of texts.
