bookwomann.

1647 J. Lilburne Rash Oaths Unwarrantable 55 My wife must be made a prisoner..for dispersing of my bookes, and the book women in Westminster Hall that sell them, must have their shops and houses searched and rob'd of all my bookes.

1661 R. Younge Infallible Way to Farewell xx. 33 Let them but ask the Clark of Lawrence Church, whether..he did not most perfidiously and sacrilegiously barter them [sc. Bookes] away to the Booke Women for other Bookes, instead of giving them to the parties.

1666 J. Hickes Let. 8 Aug. in State Papers Domest. Charles II (P.R.O.: SP 29/166/142) f. 192 Yesterday my book woman tould me Mr. Macock & Mr. Muddiman gaue the booke woomen 20s. a peece and hath invited them all upon ffryday next to his howse at Hornesey to dinner.

1851 J. Cumming Notes on Dr. Newman's Lect. i. 22 I went to every book shop from Amiens to Antwerp, seeking for a psalter of the blessed Bonaventura. In some cases the bookwoman—for it was generally a woman—looked at me with an eye of great suspicion.

1899 Kansas City (Missouri) Star 5 Mar. 17/4 (advt.) Bookmen and Bookwomen—your attention is invited to our incomparable line of history, biography, sport and fiction..; highest commissions paid promptly, no waiting.

1972 Times 29 Mar. 5/1 Bookmen and bookwomen with dusty fingers were working against the clock to fit many thousands of titles into new shelves.

1986 T. O'Malley in M. Harris & A. Lee Press in Eng. Society i. 31 The producers of the [London] Gazette inherited a system of ‘book women’ from the previous newsbook producer... These women sold the paper and were paid a salary.

2006 Weekly Standard (Nexis) 11 Sept. She confirmed that she hadn't invited the bookwoman inside. Dana had bought from her right there on the front steps!

1834 R. Nicoll Let. in Poems (1842) p. xiii My mother, in her early years, was an ardent book-woman. When she became poor, her time was too precious to admit of its being spent in reading, and I generally read to her while she was working.

1843 Knickerbocker Jan. 34 Book-women used to be blues, with dingy, dowdy dresses, and brick-dust complexions; solemn and sober.

1880 D. Masson Life Milton VI. ii. iii. 447 The youngest [daughter], who was to be the best pen-woman of the three, and the best book-woman, can have had but a child's scrawl and a child's power of reading in the Jewin Street days.

1909 Living Age 16 Oct. 131/1 Strange is the fate of some books and of some bookmen and bookwomen. Slowly, through long laborious hours of daylight.., Genius translates its hidden energy into form and matter.

1971 Oakland (Calif.) Sunday Tribune 18 Apr. (Mag. section) 29 cm/1 Fifty years of bookplate collecting hasn't deterred Mrs. Talbot one iota. Ever the antiquarian bookwoman, she culls a phrase from Izaak Walton [etc.].

2010 Libr. Jrnl. 15 Jan. 36 Another mentor from whom Buthod learned a great deal is renowned bookwoman and librarian Nancy Pearl.