Female authorship and female readership burgeoned during the long eighteenth century, and some women were also active in the book trade itself. Despite the rehearsal of woes and problems, the century ended with women active in some new book-trade trends: in new ways of illustrating and binding, and in content-related developments. Circulating libraries, which enjoyed their heyday between 1790 and 1820, did cater effectively if not exclusively for female clients, and were a major outlet for women's works. Women practised in most of the new or newly dominant genres: the novel first and foremost, but also children's literature, the national tale, the album and gift book, colonialist travel writing, the major literary series or collection, reviewing, popular science and many more. The question of what difference they made to the book trade might be answered cynically, but the question as to what difference they made to literature is only just being addressed by literary historians.