Yolande Bonhomme

French printer and bookseller
The basics

Quick Facts

IntroFrench printer and bookseller
A.K.A.Veuve de Thielman Kerver Veuve Kerver
A.K.A.Veuve de Thielman Kerver Veuve Kerver
PlacesFrance
wasBookseller Printer
Work fieldBusiness
Gender
Female
Birth1490
Death9 July 1557Paris, France (aged 67 years)
Family
Spouse:Thielman I Kerver
Children:Jacques Kerver
The details

Biography

Yolande Bonhomme (c. 1490–1557) was a French printer and seller of liturgical and devotional books in Paris. She was among a handful of important female book printers in Paris during this time, including Charlotte Guillard, Francoise Louvain and Marie L'Angelier.

She was the daughter of Pasquier Bonhomme, himself a printer and one of four appointed booksellers of the University of Paris, and the wife of another printer, Thielmann Kerver. She began printing on her own following her husband's death in 1522. Estimates of her output range from 136 (according to Axel Erdmann) to 200 (according to Beatrice Beech, based on Renouard) publications before her own death in 1557. Because she often used her husband's name on the colophon for early books, her identity as the printer can be difficult to pinpoint. The University of Paris and the Catholic Church are counted among her patrons. She published a book of hours in 1523 and another in 1546; both books survive. In 1526, she became the first woman to publish the Bible. She also published the Roman Breviary (Latin: Breviarium Romanum) in 1534 and a Breviarium Romanum nuper reformatum in 1537. She joined forces with Charlotte Guillard to demand better quality paper from the papermakers' guild.

The contents of this page are sourced from Wikipedia article on 18 Feb 2020. The contents are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.