ABSTRACT
Different women’s writings were printed in French first editions between 1488 and 1599 on over one hundred and fifty occasions. Although some researchers have drawn attention to the physical placement of individual women’s writings, most detailed bibliographical studies of women’s writings focus on whole texts by women authors, which makes the study of physical location redundant. 1 This chapter explores the physical location of women’s writings in published texts and determines whether gender was a factor in how women’s writings were located in and related to texts. The physical placement of writings within sixteenth-century texts signified the value that publishers, compilers or authors expected readers to place on them. Textual location explained the relationship a piece of writing held to the text. In this survey, I have chosen to analyse all women’s writings as equal, without privileging or separating famous or whole texts by women.
