The Author's Due: Printing and the Prehistory of CopyrightThe 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. |
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The Author's Due: Printing and the Prehistory of Copyright Joseph Loewenstein No preview available - 2002 |
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Aldus Arber Areopagitica argued argument assertion authorial property authorship Bible Bibliographical Society Blagden book culture book trade booksellers Cambridge censorship century chapter cited claims commercial common law Company competition copy Court Crown crucial decree early modern economic edition Eikon Basilike Eikonoklastes Elizabethan England entrance figure folio grant Greg guild Harington hath Henry House of Lords ideological important industrial infringement intellectual property invention John Jonson King king’s labor Lauder Licensing Act London manuscript Milton monopolistic monopolistic competition monopoly original Oxford Paradise Lost Parliament particular petition political Pollard Ponsonby practice prerogative press regulation printed books printers printing patent privilege Privy Council proclamation production protection protectionism publication published quartos registered regulatory reification rhetoric royal royal prerogative secure seems Shakespeare Star Chamber stationer’s copyright stationers Statute of Anne term textual tion traditional Transcript transformation Tudor University Press Venetian vols W. W. Greg Wither Wolfe writing