Estellina Conat

Estellina Conat, a native of Mantua, was a printer of books together with her husband, Avraham ben Shlomo Conat. Their press was among the first Jewish printing presses in Mantua in 1475. In her two active years as a printer she printed Jacob b. Asher’s “Tur Oraḥ Ḥayyim”; “Sefer Eldad ha-Dani”; Jedaiah Bedersi’s “Beḥinat Olam”; Mordecai Finzi’s “Luḥot”, astronomical tables; Judah Messer Leon’s “Nofet Ẓufim”; Levi b. Gershom’s Pentateuch commentary; and “Sefer Josippon”, the pseudo-Josephus. Estelina and her husband also began to print “Yoreh De’ah” but this was completed in Ferrara by Abraham b. Ḥayyim of Pesaro. She is also the first woman who is named as an editor in a printing house.