Authorship in the Eighteenth Century: A bibliography for composition and rhetoric


Rebecca Moore Howard
The Writing Program
Syracuse University



I also use CiteULike and del.icio.us for bibliographic work. (On both sites you'll need to click on tags of interest.) Also check CompPile and the MLA International Bibliography.

A list of all the static bibliographies that I've put online is here.


Please email suggestions, corrections, or additions.


Last updated 17 January 2009

"The Artist as Hero in the Eighteenth Century." Yearbook of English Studies 12 (1982): 91-108.

Bate, Walter Jackson. Samuel Johnson. 1977.

Benichou, Paul. The Consecration of the Writer, 1750-1830. Trans. Mark K. Jensen. U Nebraska P.

Blackstone, William. Commentaries on the Laws of England. Oxford, 1765-1769. Facsimile rpt. Chicago: U Chicago P, 1979. 4 vols. Property defined in vol. 2.

Chartier, Roger. "Figures of the Author." Of Authors and Origins: Essays on Copyright Law. Ed. Brad Sherman and Alain Strowell. New York: Oxford UP, 1994. 7-22.

Charvat, William. Literary Publishing in America, 1790-1850. U. Massachusetts P.

Collins, A.S. Authorship in the Days of Johnson. New York: Dutton, 1929.

Crowley, Sharon. The Methodical Memory: Invention in Current-Traditional Rhetoric. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1990.

Curley, Thomas M. "Johnson's Last Word on Ossian: Ghostwriting for William Shaw." Aberdeen and the Enlightenment: Proceedings of a Conference Held at the University of Aberdeen. Ed. Jennifer J. Carter and Joan H. Pittock. 1987.

Dauber, Kenneth. The Idea of Authorship in America: Democratic Poetics from Franklin to Melville. Madison: U Wisconsin P, 1990.

Defoe, Daniel. An Essay on the Regulation of the Press. London, 1704. Oxford: Basil Blackwell for Luttrell Society, 1948.

Ezell, Margaret J.M., and Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe, eds. Cultural Artifacts and the Production of Meaning: The Page, the Image, and the Body. Ann Arbor: U Michigan P, 1994.

Ezell, Margaret J.M. Social Authorship and the Advent of Print. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1999.

Feather, John. "Publishers and Politicians: The Remaking of the Law of Copyright in Britain 1775-1842. Part I: Legal Deposit and the Battle of the Library Tax. Part II: The Rights of Authors." Publishing History 24 (1988): 49-76; 25 (1989): 45-72.

Feather, John. "The Book Trade in Politics: The Making of the Copyright Act of 1710." Publishing History 8 (1980): 19-44.

Feather, John. "The Publishers and the Pirates: British Copyright Law in Theory and Practice, 1710-1775." Publishing History 22 (1987): 5-32.

Folkenflik, Robert. "The Artist as Hero in the Eighteenth Century." The Yearbook of English Studies. Vol. 12. Modern Humanities Research Association, 1982. 91-108.

Fruman, Norman. Coleridge: The Damaged Archangel. New York: Braziller, 1971.

Fussell, Paul. Samuel Johnson and the Life of Writing. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971.

Gere, Anne Ruggles. Writing Groups: History, Theory, and Implications. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1987.

Ginsburg, Jane C. "A Tale of Two Copyrights: Literary Property in Revolutionary France and America." Of Authors and Origins: Essays on Copyright Law. Ed. Brad Sherman and Alain Strowell. New York: Oxford UP, 1996. 131-58.

Griffin, Dustin. Literary Patronage in English, 1650-1800. New York: Cambridge UP, 1996.

Hayes, Julie C. "Plagiarism and Legitimation in Eighteenth-Century France." The Eighteenth Century 34.2 (1993): 115-132.

Hesse, Carla. "Enlightenment Epistemology and the Laws of Authorship in Revolutionary France, 1777-1793." Representations 30 (1990): 109-137.

Hudson, Nicholas. Writing and European Thought 1600-1830. New York: Cambridge UP, 1994.

Jackson, Leon. The Business of Letters: Authorial Economies in Antebellum America. Stanford UP, 2008.

Jaszi, Peter, and Martha Woodmansee, intro. The Construction of Authorship: Textual Appropriation in Law and Literature. Ed. Martha Woodmansee and Peter Jaszi. Durham: Duke UP, 1994. 1-13.

Jaszi, Peter. "Toward a Theory of Copyright: The Metamorphoses of Authorship." Duke Law Journal (1991): 455-502.

Johnson, Samuel. The Letters of Samuel Johnson. Ed. Bruce Redford. 5 vols. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1992-.

Kelly, Ann Cline. Swift and the English Language. Philadelphia: U Pennsylvania P, 1988.

Kernan, Alvin B. Samuel Johnson and the Impact of Print. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1989.

Kroll, Richard W.F. The Material Word: Literate Culture in the Restoration and Early Eighteenth Century. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 1990.

Kugler, Anne. Errant Plagiary: The Life and Writing of Lady Sarah Cowper, 1644-1720. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford UP, 2002.

Looby, Christopher. Voicing America: Language, Literary Form, and the Origins of the United States. U Chicago P, 1996. Colgate PS193 .L66 1996

McIntosh, Carey. Common and Courtly Language: The Stylistics of Social Class in Eighteenth-Century British Literature. Philadelphia: U Pennsylvania P, 1986.

Miller, Thomas P. The Formation of College English: Rhetoric and Belles Lettres in the British Cultural Provinces. Pittsburgh: U Pittsburgh P, 1998.

Nesbit, Molly. "What Was an Author?" Yale French Studies 73 (1987): 229-257.

Phillips, Patricia. "'Thyself so reverence': Edward Young's Conjectures on Original Composition (1759)." The Adventurous Muse: Theories of Originality in English Poetics, 1650-1760. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 1984. 95-110.

Rice, Grantland S. The Transformation of Authorship in America. Chicago: U Chicago P, 1997.

Ricks, Christopher B. Allusion to the Poets. New York: Oxford UP, 2002.

Rose, Mark. "The Author as Proprietor: Donaldson v. Becket and the Genealogy of Modern Authorship." Representations 23 (1988).

Rose, Mark. "The Author in Court: Pope v. Curll (1741)." The Construction of Authorship: Textual Appropriation in Law and Literature. Ed. Martha Woodmansee and Peter Jaszi. Durham: Duke UP, 1994. 211-30.

Ross, Marlon B. "Authority and Authenticity: Scribbling Authors and the Genius of Print in Eighteenth-Century England." The Construction of Authorship: Textual Appropriation in Law and Literature. Ed. Martha Woodmansee and Peter Jaszi. Durham: Duke UP, 1994. 231-58.

Saunders, David. Authorship and Copyright. New York: Routledge, 1992.

Siskin, Clifford. The Work of Writing: Literature and Social Change in Britain, 1700-1830. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1997.

Solomon, Harry M. The Rise of Robert Dodsley: Creating the New Age of Print. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1996.

Temple, Kathryn. Scandal Nation: Law and Authorship in Britain, 1750-1832. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 2003.

Ulman, H. Lewis. Things, Thoughts, Words, and Actions: The Problem of Language in Late Eighteenth-Century British Rhetorical Theory. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1994.

Warner, Michael. The Letters of the Republic: Publication and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1992.

Watt, Ian. The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding. Berkeley, 1957.

Woodmansee, Martha. The Author, Art, and the Market: Rereading the History of Aesthetics. New York: Columbia UP, 1994.

Woodmansee, Martha. "On the Author Effect: Recovering Collectivity." The Construction of Authorship: Textual Appropriation in Law and Literature. Ed. Martha Woodmansee and Peter Jaszi. Durham: Duke UP, 1994. 15-28.

Woodmansee, Martha. "The Genius and the Copyright: Economic and Legal Conditions of the Emergence of the 'Author.'" Eighteenth-Century Studies 17 (1984): 425-48.

Woodmansee, Martha. "The Interest in Disinterestedness: Karl Phillip Moretz and the Emergence of the Theory of Aesthetic Autonomy in Eighteenth-Century Germany." Modern Language Quarterly 45 (March 1984): 22-47.

Young, Edward. Conjectures on Original Composition. 1759. Leeds: Scolar P, 1966.

Ziff, Larzer. Writing in the New Nation: Prose, Print, and Politics in the Early United States. New Haven: Yale UP, 1991.

Zlotnick, Susan. Women, Writing, and the Industrial Revolution. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1998.