Natural Enemies of Books: A Messy History of Women in Printing and Typography is a response to the groundbreaking publication Bookmaking on the Distaff Side (1937). In the original book, contributions by women printers, illustrators, authors, and typographers aimed to highlight the print industry’s inequalities and proposed a takeover of the history of the book.

Edited by feminist graphic design collective MMS (Maryam Fanni, Matilda Flodmark, and Sara Kaaman), Natural Enemies of Books includes new essays by Kathleen Walkup, Ida Börjel, Jess Baines and Ulla Wikander. It also offers conversations with former typesetters Inger Humlesjö, Ingegärd Waaranperä, Gail Cartmail, and Megan Dobney as well as reprints of the 1937 original.

Copy-edited by Antony Hudek and Sarah Horn

Designed by Eller med a (Lotte Grønneberg, Marte Meling Enoksen, Karen Grønneberg)

Published by Occasional Papers, 2020

Softcover, 192 pages, black & white, 3.5 × 6.5 inches

ISBN: 978-0-99-547303-4