This article examines the paratexts of religious works translated by women and considers how these can create frameworks which assert institutional authority. By analysing how authority is embedded in the multi-layered structure of paratexts of religious translations, the study considers the restraining role of paratexts and their ability to replicate hierarchical structures around translated works. A different typology of the function of paratext is thus illustrated, where spaces are employed to control the translated work rather than to allow greater female visibility or agency. To demonstrate this typology of the paratext, the article uses a sample of translations published by two of the most successful women translators of Catholic religious texts in the Anglophone world in the nineteenth century: Mary Anne Sadlier and Mary Austin Teresa Carroll. This study demonstrates that as women translators were gaining a foothold in the world of religious publishing in the nineteenth century, their work was embedded in an institutional structure of sameness, collective endeavour and regulation. The layers of authority to be found in the paratexts of the translations of women translators in this period emphasise the importance of examining translations in their totality, and not just the linguistic features of the source and target texts.