Marketing Maria Sibylla Merian, 1720–1800: Book Auctions, Gender, and Reading Culture in the Dutch Republic

Abstract:This article uses Dutch auction catalogues to trace the eighteenth-century reception and circulation of the works of the prominent natural scientist Maria Sibylla Merian. It opens up discussion of book history methodologies by demonstrating how auction catalogues can be used to study the public personas of collectors, book ownership, authorial reputation, the literary market, and reading practices. Addressing issues more specifically of gender and reading culture, it nuances the inherited assumption that women collectors showed a clear preference for works by other women, and draws attention to the collective nature of book collecting practices and literary reputations.