What can we learn from women transforming kitchen paper scraps into bandages in the early modern kitchen, or their taxonomy of reproductive documents in the twentieth century? This collection recovers unique histories of paper technologies using gender as a methodology to investigate knowledge making. This substantial collection of essays examines paper within the multifaceted matrices of gender, cultural history and knowledge making. Through distinctive integrations of critical work from the fields of gender and science and technology studies, the social lives and usages of paper are explored. In three sections the volume engages in a discussion about the materiality of paper and gender, exploring how paper works to construct knowledge: (1) ‘The sociomaterial history of paper', (2) ‘Tools and technology’ and (3) ‘Knowledge, power, and the everyday'. All of these three sociological fields contour and overlap with one another to explore the affective uses of paper. Spanning eras from the early modern period to the twentieth century, the works focus on the distinctive social and material uses of paper by women.

All contributors explore concepts of ‘sociomateriality’ within their work, articulating the concomitant making of knowledge through the physicality of paper objects and gendered communities. The authors of this collection utilize the critical work of Wanda Orlikowski and the seminal essay ‘Sociomaterial practices: exploring technology at work’ (Organization Studies 28(9) (2007)). Sociomateriality is defined as being a critical tool that links the social practices of actors and objects to construct knowledge. Through the exploration of paper and its substrates, gendered social usages are examined from kitchen to archive. The sociomateriality of paper technologies is the critical foundation of all works within the collection, with each contributor incorporating lenses of gender and knowledge making.

As an interdisciplinary work that blurs boundaries of science, gender and book history, this collection of essays examines usages of paper across a myriad of social classes. Within Simon Werrett's essay ‘The sociomateriality of waste and scrap paper in eighteenth-century England’, non-textual usages of paper technology within domestic spheres are examined. Werrett argues that performances and usages of paper within the domestic sphere, such as scrap paper for hair, require scholarly attention. Substrates of paper are analysed through their numerous life cycles, being linen worn next to the body, which is then manipulated into pulp, to be submerged into vats and siphoned through screens, to be dampened and tamped down to produce paper. Werrett expands on this by including the reuse and reclaiming of scrap paper for various uses by women within domestic spaces. Through this examination of cyclical reuse of paper, Werrett articulates paper's deep connection to bodies as once objects worn for clothing, to scraps reused for fashion styles.

Authors work to destabilize distinctions between the spaces of laboratories, kitchens, archives and institutions in their documentation of women and knowledge making. Elizabeth Yale examines the role of knowledge building within special designations of letter writing within her essay ‘A letter is a paper house’. Yale provides a rich account of how the often undocumented scientific labour within the household contributed to building social connections within science communities. Investigations of power and scientific hospitality are examined within the account of Margaret Ray's preservation of naturalist John Ray's papers. These forms of scientific labour and sociality were often concealed as antecedents to knowledge produced by learned men but expressed within letter writing. Letters written from the Ray household to Hans Sloane demonstrate a sociality that nurtured science-based social networks in the eighteenth century. Yale argues that within her consideration of the Ray household, there is a more expansive view of what counts as scientific labour within the early modern household. This destabilizing of space between letters, domestic parlours and acclaimed institutions with emphasis on gendered work provides rich criticism to the history of science.

The volume's editors acknowledge that the case studies presented within this work predominantly focus on Anglo-European histories and offer the reader an afterword on Chinese paper making. Jacob Eyferth provides the afterword, ‘Making and using paper in late imperial China’, to examine the gendered labour differences between men and women within Chinese paper traditions. Locating the work within domestic spheres, Eyferth examines authority and professional attribution situated within Jiajiang. The afterword provides a bibliographic record of Chinese paper traditions in historic and contemporary settings, gesturing to a research gap of decolonization scholarship within book and paper technologies. This work provides a rich account of the usage and production of paper by women within a European context, while providing a research gap for scholars to explore non-European paper practices within gendered contexts.

As an interdisciplinary collection of essays, the authors of the collection provide invaluable insight into the history of women and their making of knowledge through paper technologies. In both its depth and breadth, this work would be of use to book historians, book artists (especially paper makers), gender and women sexuality studies, and students. Through the broad historical framings of the works from the early modern period to contemporary making practices, the book provides intellectual resources. Through the multifaceted lenses that editors and writers use to explore paper, this work provides a substantial intellectual contribution to many fields. In addition to the unique scholarly contributions, the volume also provides a substantial bibliography to pursue other works as well.