Making, Tracing, and Erasing Seditious Intentions

Chapter 2 turns to the material which forms the basis for the central argument of Part 1: that women printworkers were not merely the producers and distributors of other people's political ideas. As makers and distributors of printed texts in a period of heightened political unrest, women printers, publishers, and hawkers were commonly arrested, imprisoned, and fined for their involvement in making, tracing, and erasing ‘seditious intentions.' Offences against property were a concern for the trade and the government, but this chapter focuses on prosecutions for seditious libel and treason, where women abound as producers, distributors, and press informants. Observing the efforts of female ‘offenders’, not only to participate in affairs of state but also to take charge of their situations once they found themselves in conflict with the law, leads one to suspect that ‘freedom of the press’ was as much a product of administrative exhaustion as of enlightenment.

Argument (complex analysis) · Government (linguistics) · Political science · Politics · Product (mathematics) · State (computer science) · Suspect · Unrest · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Computer Science · Law