Charlotte Guillard

Charlotte Guillard began her career in the print industry in Paris in 1507. As printing was organized under the guild system in France during this period, women like Guillard could learn the trade from their husbands and could take ownership of family presses if they were widowed. Guillard worked alongside her husband Berthold Rembolt at their press the Soleil d’Or which she took full control of after his death in 1518. She remarried in 1520 and began printing under the moniker “La Chevallonne” when her new husband, Claude Chevallon a noted printer of theological texts, gained ownership of her press. When Chevallon died in 1537, Guillard resumed printing under her maiden name. She was the sole manager of the publishing house which had several presses and tens of employees until her death in 1557.

Guillard was heavily invested in the intellectual atmosphere of Paris. Of the 158 titles that she published between 1537 and 1557, many were works of law, religion, and science including Institutionum, sive elementorum, D. Justiniani sacratissimi principis and pieces by Galen which are included in this exhibition. Godefroi Tilmann, a monk with whom Guillard collaborated, wrote that she “an illustrious woman worked, as was her custom, with zeal and diligence in the name of the Republic of Letters lest she should in any way deviate from her duty.” This sense of conviction is furthered in one of the few pieces of her own writing that Guillard published. In the preface to her edition of the Toussaint Dictionary Guillard writes “but look here, you woman, [someone will say] did that most learned Toussaint leave so many enormous tasks to be completed by you? Yes, that much I say…not on this account should you take the work itself for less, since with faithfulness and diligence we have pursued the transcribing and editing not only of the whole work but also of the individual parts.” With this, we see Guillard recognize not only her commitment to good quality and accurate print but also the gendered nature of her reception as a printer.