Books and Readers in Early Modern England: Material Studies ed. by Jennifer Andersen, Elizabeth Sauer (review)

REVIEWS 210 character and virtue shift in response to her precarious relationship with religious orthodoxy.3 The point is that mainstream historians, even male historians, are looking at women too, and what they have found is often fascinating and refreshing. Bitel’s book relies heavily on the secondary literature of gender studies and women’s history, but there is a great deal of useful information to be found in the general historical literature as well. Goffart’s study is one example, but I found that, throughout the book, the scope of secondary literature being used was too narrow for a book that aims to be “not just a history of women” but a general history told from a new perspective (12). None of this is to suggest that this book is without merit. It is certainly understandable , considering the massive scope of this project and the variety of evidence in play, that Bitel is more skillful in some areas than in others. The high points of this book are its case-studies. Passages that deal in detail with specific examples and “hard” evidence such as law codes or archaeological artifacts are particularly fine. In general, Bitel’s work is solid when she steers clear of sweeping generalizations, incautious speculation and the occasional lapse into ivory-tower feminism (e.g., 210). It is true that, from time immemorial , men have been making ribald jokes about “plowing furrows.” This does not imply that the design of the plow, or the mechanics of crop production are necessarily gendered. People had to eat, long before they had the leisure to deconstruct the symbolism of their tools. A vagina-shaped plow may have led to different sorts of jokes, but it wouldn’t have been very efficient for tilling fields. Women in Early Medieval Europe takes a fresh approach to the history of the early Middle Ages, and presents an impressive body of evidence that can be explored in greater detail by historians who wish to carry on Bitel’s program. As a textbook, it would be useful if supplemented by a more traditional chronological treatment of this time period. I would not hesitate to use this book as one of several texts in an undergraduate course, and I don’t doubt that it would provoke lively discussion, not only about the lives of women and men in the Middle Ages, but also about the study of history and the variety of ways that it can be approached. PHOEBE ROBINSON SHAW, History, UCLA Books and Readers in Early Modern England: Material Studies, ed. Jennifer Andersen and Elizabeth Sauer (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 2002) 296 pp. For many historians and literary scholars, the book is an essential tool, containing the ideas they utilize and the foundations of their research. Most often, it is the content of the book, not the book itself which is the focus of study, but looking at the book itself as an object can yield many insights, regardless of one’s interest in study of the book itself. Here, Jennifer Andersen and Elizabeth Sauer have collected a versatile and useful volume of essays of interest to the historian and literary scholar alike. Ranging through sixteenth- and seven3 Ibid. 399ff. REVIEWS 211 teenth-century England, the essays are divided into three sections of four chapters each, covering the social context of writing, exploring information in, on, and of books, and discussing public responses to publishing and printing. Each section is intended to provide an overview of the three major approaches to the history of the book: the social elements affecting the texts themselves; the responses of readers to the texts; and the intersections between print, publishing and public opinion. For those interested in the history of the book and its various approaches, this book should provide enough to satisfy at least one inclination of most readers in this nebulous but stimulating field. As well as encompassing the three main approaches, the editors selected essays showing “… the two main ways we think of books—as material objects and as systems,” referencing Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin as examples of the first, and Adrian Johns as an example of the second (1). With...