Women's Labor in the Mid-Eighteenth-Century English Literary Economy

abstract:This essay explores the careers of two mid-eighteenth-century Englishwomen—Elizabeth Boyd and Eliza Haywood—who wrote commercial literature and sold pamphlets and ephemera in retail shops. It argues that their careers put into question the emphasis that literary scholars have placed on writing as their primary occupation and instead suggest that, as commercial writers, they worked as members of the book trades who could leverage writing alongside other forms of labor to create various profit streams. Studying Boyd and Haywood uncovers gendered structures that influenced the trade positions that women were able to move in and out of easily. Their stories are less about marginality than about the use of gendered identities as tools; gender was one important factor among many that influenced how women moved within and without the midcentury literary economy.