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Authors And Owners: The Invention of Copyright
The notion of the author as the creator and therefore the first owner of a work is deeply rooted both in our economic system and in our concept of the individual. But this concept of authorship is modern. Mark Rose traces its formation in eighteenth-century Britain--and in the process highlights still current issues of intellectual property.
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
176 pages, Library Binding
First published August 1, 1993
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 7, 2017
Definitywnie jedna z najlepszych pozycji jakie czytałam w temacie powstania autora jako kulturowego fetyszu. Opracowanie klarownie i przekonująco przedstawia związki pomiędzy ekonomią, powstaniem rynku księgarskiego, rozwojem koncepcji własności i zmianami na gruncie samej literatury, prowadzące zbiorowo do wyłonienia się w końcu XVIII wieku autora. W zasadzie ta jedna pozycja załatwia mi 3/4 doktoratu, muszę tylko przypisy sadzić. Good job.
March 5, 2024
In the preface of Authors and Owners, Rose notes that his time as an expert witness for a host of copy-right infringement cases cultivated his interest in and suspicion of literary ownership, Romantic concepts of authorship, and notions of the creative individual. Such experiences as a witness led Rose to writing Authors and Owners. Rose’ work is a genealogical inquiry which traces how conceptions of authorship, the literary work, and intellectual property were intertwined in Anglosphere legal and commercial disputes in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Authors and Owners is a book of literary and legal history—a book which argues that literary history and criticism are imbricated in and by the legal. However, for our purposes, it suffices to briefly reiterate three arguments that Rose develops: (1) concepts of literary property and authorial ownership are largely resultant of commercial struggles between booksellers and book printers, (2) as authors became petty commodity producers, the demand for originality played an increasingly crucial role in literary production, and (3) by the late 18th century the author was regarded as a Lockean hero, one who mixed their mental labor with uncultivated nature and in doing so yielded new immaterial property.
As someone who remains generally unaware of how 18th century copyright and intellectual property law discourses formed Romantic conceptions of authorship, I was surprised to learn that commercial competition between booksellers was initially more pivotal in these developments than authorial concerns regarding ownership of ideas. Rose notes how my surprise represents a distinctly modern sensibility which regards the author as a proprietor, as an originator of a work of their own. In following this modern sensibility to its genesis, Rose illuminates how from the early 17th century and onward “the ‘question of literary property’ was essentially a commercial struggle, a battle between two groups of booksellers.” And though Rose follows how these legal debates carried on into the late 18th century, he carefully demonstrates how through the 17th and early 18th century claims to the perpetual rights of an author to their work were only cited as ancillary evidence for or against given commercial interests.
For me, the crux of Rose’s work comes in the fifth and sixth chapters. In these chapters Rose studies how late 18th century debates begin to forthrightly address the question of an author’s natural right to their labor. The original perspective in which an author interpreted nature began to be understood as literary property. That is, the author’s labor was not the original manuscript, but the immaterial ‘doctrine’ produced by their mental labor; literary property was all spirit and no dross. Leading up to this notion of authors’ rights and intellectual property were metaphors which attempted to grasp the peculiarity of immaterial property. For instance, in metaphors of the author as a father who births their book as a child, pirates and piracy are capitulated as child-stealers. Such discourses on authorial propriety revel in patriarchal metaphors of blood and lineage. Additionally, later into the 18th century, the literary work began to be represented as a landed estate. Metaphors such as these demonstrate how late 18th century commercial and legal debates, often ineffectively, attempted to construct a notion of immaterial intellectual property while not acknowledging all property as socially constructed. As Rose notes, “the construction of the discourse of literary property depended on a chain of deferrals.”
Such Anglosphere legal discourses assisted in producing the notion of an original genius. Writing that was derivative of other writing could not be considered property. As argued by one 18th century legal and literary figure, Edward Young, literary works were distinguished and mystified above and against the mechanical, reproduced, and imitative. However, the moment in which discourses on the author as an original genius who reflects and honors the originality of nature begins is the same moment in which the artist is becoming debased as a commodity producer. Such appraisal of the original genius as one who distinguishes their work from earlier writers was beneficial to the booksellers who would quickly profit from the sales of ‘literary estates.’ Such a notion of the literary work as the child of an original genius qualified literary works for legal protections from piracy and copyright infringement.
To summarize, the author, when understood as “founded on the concept of the unique individual who creates something original and is entitled to reap a profit from those labors,” is a distinctly modern concept. And the romantic connotations of such authorship are quickly defiled and profaned by brazen booksellers and printers thirsty for the profits of originality.
Authors and Owners is a book of literary and legal history—a book which argues that literary history and criticism are imbricated in and by the legal. However, for our purposes, it suffices to briefly reiterate three arguments that Rose develops: (1) concepts of literary property and authorial ownership are largely resultant of commercial struggles between booksellers and book printers, (2) as authors became petty commodity producers, the demand for originality played an increasingly crucial role in literary production, and (3) by the late 18th century the author was regarded as a Lockean hero, one who mixed their mental labor with uncultivated nature and in doing so yielded new immaterial property.
As someone who remains generally unaware of how 18th century copyright and intellectual property law discourses formed Romantic conceptions of authorship, I was surprised to learn that commercial competition between booksellers was initially more pivotal in these developments than authorial concerns regarding ownership of ideas. Rose notes how my surprise represents a distinctly modern sensibility which regards the author as a proprietor, as an originator of a work of their own. In following this modern sensibility to its genesis, Rose illuminates how from the early 17th century and onward “the ‘question of literary property’ was essentially a commercial struggle, a battle between two groups of booksellers.” And though Rose follows how these legal debates carried on into the late 18th century, he carefully demonstrates how through the 17th and early 18th century claims to the perpetual rights of an author to their work were only cited as ancillary evidence for or against given commercial interests.
For me, the crux of Rose’s work comes in the fifth and sixth chapters. In these chapters Rose studies how late 18th century debates begin to forthrightly address the question of an author’s natural right to their labor. The original perspective in which an author interpreted nature began to be understood as literary property. That is, the author’s labor was not the original manuscript, but the immaterial ‘doctrine’ produced by their mental labor; literary property was all spirit and no dross. Leading up to this notion of authors’ rights and intellectual property were metaphors which attempted to grasp the peculiarity of immaterial property. For instance, in metaphors of the author as a father who births their book as a child, pirates and piracy are capitulated as child-stealers. Such discourses on authorial propriety revel in patriarchal metaphors of blood and lineage. Additionally, later into the 18th century, the literary work began to be represented as a landed estate. Metaphors such as these demonstrate how late 18th century commercial and legal debates, often ineffectively, attempted to construct a notion of immaterial intellectual property while not acknowledging all property as socially constructed. As Rose notes, “the construction of the discourse of literary property depended on a chain of deferrals.”
Such Anglosphere legal discourses assisted in producing the notion of an original genius. Writing that was derivative of other writing could not be considered property. As argued by one 18th century legal and literary figure, Edward Young, literary works were distinguished and mystified above and against the mechanical, reproduced, and imitative. However, the moment in which discourses on the author as an original genius who reflects and honors the originality of nature begins is the same moment in which the artist is becoming debased as a commodity producer. Such appraisal of the original genius as one who distinguishes their work from earlier writers was beneficial to the booksellers who would quickly profit from the sales of ‘literary estates.’ Such a notion of the literary work as the child of an original genius qualified literary works for legal protections from piracy and copyright infringement.
To summarize, the author, when understood as “founded on the concept of the unique individual who creates something original and is entitled to reap a profit from those labors,” is a distinctly modern concept. And the romantic connotations of such authorship are quickly defiled and profaned by brazen booksellers and printers thirsty for the profits of originality.
March 23, 2015
I'm using it for a history of copyright essay in law school, but it's not dull and boring like other academic textbooks. It's a must read for anyone interested in books, as material culture, expressions of ideas, and copyright.
August 23, 2007
nonfiction,bibliography,history
April 2, 2011
Interesting and authoritative. A must read for anyone interested in books, as material culture, expressions of ideas, or anything else.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews