31) Of the women whose names appear in the subsidy, "well over half" were widows; (32) as a femme covert (married woman), however, Elizabeth would not have had an independent financial identity, and her invisibility in the subsidy rolls corresponds to the disappearance of her name from the colophons of books as a result of her transfer of the press to William Middleton, who began printing in 1541.

Chapter 1, "Documenting Practices," introduces a variety of primary textual documents including diaries, monographs, theoretical texts, lists, inscriptions and colophons, and letters, which form the basis of Phillips' socio-methodological approach.

In each of these works, Pettibone carefully painted (in oil) the front covers and sometimes the title pages, dedications, or colophons of Pound's books against a flat, monochromatic background.