Dianne Roman Gives Enlightening Talk

On the evening of Tuesday, September 4th members of the Chesapeake Chapter and the Baltimore Bibliophiles met at the Johns Hopkins Club in Baltimore for a buffet dinner, and subsequently to hear chapter member Dianne L. Roman give a presentation entitled “Unseen, Unnoticed, and Overlooked: American Women in the Early Nineteenth Century Printing Industry.”

Ms. Roman is a printing expert and women’s history researcher, who received her PhD. from Virginia Commonwealth University, and has taught graphic design and visual communications. Her talk focused on women working in, and owning print shops, particularly local newspapers, in what is now West Virginia, during the late 18th and first half of the 19th centuries. It was not uncommon for widows, with years of experience working in the family print shop, to take over the operation of those shops when their husbands died. Women were not generally acknowledged as being present in the printing industry, but they were there.

Our most sincere thanks go to Dianne for her lively and informative lecture.