THE FIRST WOMEN PRINTERS.
The British Printer says the general belief that women were employed for the first time in typographical work in 1631 by Rignony, a printer in Montbaret, is declared to be erroneous, a printing press worked exclusively by women having been in regular use in Italy a century and a half before that date. The printing office was the Convent of St. James, at Mt. Ripoli, and women printers were sisters of the Dominican order. The sisters of this convent had practised the art of copying and illuminating manuscripts since the thirteenth century. When Gutenburg’s invention made its appearance, the press spread rapidly in Italy, and every town soon possessed its printing office. Florence had one as early as 1472. The sisters appear to have devoted themselves to their typographical labors with ardor and success, for between 1476 and 1484 more than one hundred works—a large number for that period—issued from the convent press.