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The Author's Due. Printing and the Prehistory of Copyright; Ben Jonson and Possessive Authorship

The Author's Due. Printing and the Prehistory of Copyright; Ben Jonson and Possessive Authorship BOOK REVIEWS/193 and Jonson” (Author’s Due, p. 82). Yet the relationship between these volumes is close, and there is no sharp bifurcation in the methods deployed in either: splendid literary readings of Milton’s Areopagitica serve in The Author’s Due to define Milton’s contribution to the industrial problem of literary property, while in Ben Jonson and Possessive Authorship the industrial practices of stationers like Thomas Thorpe and Walter Burre, who printed early works by Jonson, are seen as shaping Jonson’s sense of himself as a literary author. Uniting both books is the fundamental argument that “author’s rights”—and implicitly many of the other senses of authorship—only emerged “as back-formations within the development of industrial copyright” (Author’s Due, p. 44), and that it was both “an uneven development and a revolution” (p. 25). The larger revolution is marked by a series of landmark events to which Loewenstein returns intermittently: the industrial monopoly of stationers’ rights to copy created by the 1538 royal proclamation prohibiting unlicensed printing, the 1557 chartering of the London Company of Stationers, and a strengthening in the proprietary force of entry in the Stationers’ Register; the subsequent weakening of the Stationers’ monopoly with the Licensing Act of 1643, http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Comparative Literature Duke University Press

The Author's Due. Printing and the Prehistory of Copyright; Ben Jonson and Possessive Authorship

Manley, Lawrence
Comparative Literature , Volume 56 (2) – Jan 1, 2004
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Publisher
Duke University Press
Copyright
Copyright 2004 by University of Oregon
ISSN
0010-4124
eISSN
1945-8517
DOI
10.1215/-56-2-192
Publisher site
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Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS/193 and Jonson” (Author’s Due, p. 82). Yet the relationship between these volumes is close, and there is no sharp bifurcation in the methods deployed in either: splendid literary readings of Milton’s Areopagitica serve in The Author’s Due to define Milton’s contribution to the industrial problem of literary property, while in Ben Jonson and Possessive Authorship the industrial practices of stationers like Thomas Thorpe and Walter Burre, who printed early works by Jonson, are seen as shaping Jonson’s sense of himself as a literary author. Uniting both books is the fundamental argument that “author’s rights”—and implicitly many of the other senses of authorship—only emerged “as back-formations within the development of industrial copyright” (Author’s Due, p. 44), and that it was both “an uneven development and a revolution” (p. 25). The larger revolution is marked by a series of landmark events to which Loewenstein returns intermittently: the industrial monopoly of stationers’ rights to copy created by the 1538 royal proclamation prohibiting unlicensed printing, the 1557 chartering of the London Company of Stationers, and a strengthening in the proprietary force of entry in the Stationers’ Register; the subsequent weakening of the Stationers’ monopoly with the Licensing Act of 1643,

Journal

Comparative Literature – Duke University Press

Published: Jan 1, 2004

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