Ben Jonson and Possessive Authorship [Paperback]

In this 2002 book, Ben Jonson is viewed within the context of the history of authorship and intellectual property.Writing before the institution of copyright, Renaissance authors were not recognized as owning their works, yet, in an environment in which the written word could be variously marketed by printers or by acting companies, in an environment in which authors could be held uncomfortably responsible for their writings, we can discover complex stirrings of possessiveness among such writers as Bacon, Heywood, Daniel, Shakespeare, Wither, and--most powerfully and interestingly--Ben Jonson. This book probes the literary and institutional history, the politics, and the psychology of possessive authorship.Writing before the institution of copyright, Renaissance authors were not recognized as owning their works, yet, in an environment in which the written word could be variously marketed by printers or by acting companies, in an environment in which authors could be held uncomfortably responsible for their writings, we can discover complex stirrings of possessiveness among such writers as Bacon, Heywood, Daniel, Shakespeare, Wither, and--most powerfully and interestingly--Ben Jonson. This book probes the literary and institutional history, the politics, and the psychology of possessive authorship.Writing before the institution of copyright, Renaissance authors were not recognized as owning their works. Yet, in an environment in which the written word could be variously marketed by printers or by acting companies, and in which authors could be held uncomfortably responsible for their writings, we can discover complex stirrings of possessiveness among such writers as Bacon, Heywood, Daniel, Shakespeare, Wither, and--most powerfully and interestingly--Ben Jonson. This book probes the literary and institutional history, the politics, and the psychology of possessive authorship.List of illustrations; Acknowledgements; 1. An introduction to bibliographical biography; 2. Cl�