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The Author's Due: Printing and the Prehistory of Copyright
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Product Description
The Author's Due offers an institutional and cultural history of books, the book trade, and the bibliographic ego. Joseph Loewenstein traces the emergence of possessive authorship from the establishment of a printing industry in England to the passage of the 1710 Statute of Anne, which provided the legal underpinnings for modern copyright. Along the way he demonstrates that the culture of books, including the idea of the author, is intimately tied to the practical trade of publishing those books.
As Loewenstein shows, copyright is a form of monopoly that developed alongside a range of related protections such as commercial trusts, manufacturing patents, and censorship, and cannot be understood apart from them. The regulation of the press pitted competing interests and rival monopolistic structures against one another—guildmembers and nonprofessionals, printers and booksellers, authors and publishers. These struggles, in turn, crucially shaped the literary and intellectual practices of early modern authors, as well as early capitalist economic organization.
With its probing look at the origins of modern copyright, The Author's Due will prove to be a watershed for historians, literary critics, and legal scholars alike.
As Loewenstein shows, copyright is a form of monopoly that developed alongside a range of related protections such as commercial trusts, manufacturing patents, and censorship, and cannot be understood apart from them. The regulation of the press pitted competing interests and rival monopolistic structures against one another—guildmembers and nonprofessionals, printers and booksellers, authors and publishers. These struggles, in turn, crucially shaped the literary and intellectual practices of early modern authors, as well as early capitalist economic organization.
With its probing look at the origins of modern copyright, The Author's Due will prove to be a watershed for historians, literary critics, and legal scholars alike.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #1819263 in Books
- Published on: 2002-07-14
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Hardcover
- 360 pages
Editorial Reviews
Review
"The Author's Due offers a complex and highly nuanced history of proprietary authorship and the printing industry in early modern England. This book will come to be recognized as a monument in its field." - Leah S. Marcus, author of The Politics of Mirth and Puzzling Shakespeare
From the Inside Flap
The Author's Due offers a sustained investigation of the emergence of proprietary authorship from the establishment of a printing industry in England to the passage, in 1610, of the Statute of Anne, which provided the legal underpinnings for modern copyright. Joseph Loewenstein reveals that copyright is a form of monopoly that can only be understood as part of a much broader battle for and against other early modern protectionisms, such as commercial trusts, manufacturing patents, confessional exclusions, and acts of censorship.
Throughout this ambitious work, Loewenstein shows how the regulation of the English press set competing interests and monopolistic structures against each other, and how this institutional friction proved to be artistically and politically productive. Struggles between journeymen and masters, guildmembers and nonprofessionals, printers and booksellers, as well as authors and publishers, all figure decisively in The Author's Due. Loewenstein contends that these rivalries crucially shaped early capitalist economics while fundamentally affecting the literary and intellectual practices of early modern authors such as Swift, Pope, Milton, and Shakespeare.
With its probing look, then, at the origins of copyright and their profound influence on early modern English literature, The Author's Due recovers the central achievements of earlier bibliographic scholars for a whole new generation of critics. A work of both cultural and institutional history, it will prove to be a watershed for historians of printing, legal and literary scholars, and anyone interested in the politics of information, intellectual property, and new media.
Throughout this ambitious work, Loewenstein shows how the regulation of the English press set competing interests and monopolistic structures against each other, and how this institutional friction proved to be artistically and politically productive. Struggles between journeymen and masters, guildmembers and nonprofessionals, printers and booksellers, as well as authors and publishers, all figure decisively in The Author's Due. Loewenstein contends that these rivalries crucially shaped early capitalist economics while fundamentally affecting the literary and intellectual practices of early modern authors such as Swift, Pope, Milton, and Shakespeare.
With its probing look, then, at the origins of copyright and their profound influence on early modern English literature, The Author's Due recovers the central achievements of earlier bibliographic scholars for a whole new generation of critics. A work of both cultural and institutional history, it will prove to be a watershed for historians of printing, legal and literary scholars, and anyone interested in the politics of information, intellectual property, and new media.
About the Author
Joseph Loewenstein is a professor of English at Washington University. He is the author of Jonson and Possessive Authorship and Responsive Readings: Versions of Echo in Pastoral, Epic, and the Jonsonian Masque.
