Fingerprints of British Book History: A Feminist Labor History of EEBO

In this essay, I give a labor history of the commonly used database Early English Books Online. EEBO began its life as a mirofilm archive produced beginning in 1940: a massive book-copying project was undertaken during World War II to protect rare books from German bombs. These reproductions were made largely by unnamed woman archivists and led by a team of woman photographers, academics, and secretaries. In this essay, I draw on existing theories and histories of EEBO while highlighting these women's work, which manifests in the photographs through the shadows of the fingertips they used to pin down the fragile books. This archive of reproductive labor exemplifies the artificial divide between auteur and stenographer, artist and secretary, that animated many of the early twentieth century’s avant-garde movements, including ones in which EEBO photographers were intimately involved. The fingers represent the custodial labor of women working across artistic and administrative modes during World War II and the decades that followed.