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11 Authors
Get accessStephen B. Dobranski is Distinguished University Professor of early modern literature and textual studies at Georgia State University. He is the editor of Milton Studies, and his books include Milton, Authorship, and the Book Trade (1999), Readers and Authorship in Early Modern England (2005), The Cambridge Introduction to Milton (2012), and Milton’s Visual Imagination: Imagery in ‘Paradise Lost’ (2015) all for Cambridge University Press. His most recent work is a new edition of Paradise Lost (Norton, 2022) and Reading John Milton: How to Persist in Troubled Times (Stanford University Press, 2022).
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Published:18 September 2023
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Abstract
Authors in the early modern period in England were essential for the creation of printed texts, but they were generally considered secondary to the other agents of bookmaking. This chapter examines the tension between writers’ limited authority within the early modern print trade—legally, practically, and financially—and their increased presence in printed texts. Privileging literary authorship but also taking into account other, more popular types of writing, the chapter addresses how manuscript practices, printing conventions, and reading habits contributed to the growing opportunity that writers experienced and claimed for themselves in creating their publications. By the late 1600s, authors continued to collaborate with Stationers, but they began to perceive—and, gradually, to exploit—the material text’s significance in shaping both the meaning of a literary work and the endurance of their own reputations.
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