The Cambridge Handbook of Literary Authorship

This Handbook surveys the state of the art in literary authorship studies. Its 27 original contributions by eminent scholars offer a multi-layered account of authorship as a defining element of literature and culture. Covering a vast chronological range, Part I considers the history of authorship from cuneiform writing to contemporary digital publishing; it discusses authorship in ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, early Jewish cultures, medieval, Renaissance, modern, postmodern and Chinese literature. The second part focuses on the place of authorship in literary theory, and on challenges to theorizing literary authorship, such as gender and sexuality, postcolonial and indigenous contexts for writing. Finally, Part III investigates practical perspectives on the topic, with a focus on attribution, anonymity and pseudonymity, plagiarism and forgery, copyright and literary property, censorship, publishing and marketing and institutional contexts.

1. Introduction Ingo Berensmeyer, Gert Buelens and Marysa Demoor; Part I. Historical Perspectives: 2. Authorship in cuneiform literature Benjamin R. Foster; 3. Authorship in Ancient Egypt Antonio Loprieno; 4. Authorship in Archaic and Classical Greece Ruth Scodel; 5. Authorship in Classical Rome Christian Badura and Melanie Möller; 6. Conceptions of authorship in early Jewish cultures Mordechai Z. Cohen; 7. Modes of authorship and the making of Medieval English literature A. B. Kraebel; 8. Manuscript and print cultures 1500–1700 Margaret J. M. Ezell; 9. The eighteenth century: print, professionalization, and defining the author Betty A. Schellenberg; 10. The nineteenth century: intellectual property rights and 'literary larceny' Alexis Easley; 11. Industrialized print: modernism and authorship Sean Latham; 12. Postmodernist authorship Hans Bertens; 13. Chinese authorship Kang-i Sun Chang; 14. Literary authorship in the digital age Adriaan van der Weel; Part II. Systematic Perspectives: 15. Literary authorship in the traditions of rhetoric and poetics Kevin Dunn; 16. Authors, genres, and audiences: a rhetorical approach James Phelan; 17. The author in literary theory and theories of literature Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen; 18. Gender, sexuality, and the author: five phases of authorship from the Renaissance to the twenty-first century Chantal Zabus; 19. Postcolonial and Indigenous authorship Mita Banerjee; Part III. Practical Perspectives: 20. Attribution John Burrows and Hugh Craig; 21. Anonymity and pseudonymity Robert J. Griffin; 22. Plagiarism and forgery Jack Lynch; 23. Authorship and scholarly editing Dirk Van Hulle; 24. Copyright and literary property: the invention of secondary authorship Daniel Cook; 25. Censorship Trevor Ross; 26. Publishing and marketing Andrew King; 27. Institutions: writing and reading Jason Puskar.

Ingo Berensmeyer is Professor of Modern English Literature at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and a visiting professor at Ghent University. His previous publications include Mendacity in Early Modern Literature and Culture (co-edited with Andrew Hadfield, 2016), and over seventy essays in collections and journals, including New Literary History, Poetics Today, Studies in English Literature 1500–1900, Anglia, and Poetica.
Gert Buelens is senior full Professor of English and American Literature at Ghent University. His previous publications include The Future of Trauma Theory (co-edited with Durrant and Eaglestone, 2013), and over sixty essays in collections and journals, including Dickens Quarterly, Wallace Stevens Journal, Modern Philology, Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Diacritics, Studies in the Novel, Textual Practice, Criticism, and PMLA.
Marysa Demoor is senior full Professor of English Literature at Ghent University and a life member of Clare Hall, Cambridge. She is the author of Their Fair Share: Women, Power and Criticism in the Athenaeum, from Millicent Garrett Fawcett to Katherine Mansfield, 1870–1920 (2000) and the editor of Marketing the Author: Authorial Personae, Narrative Selves and Self-Fashioning, 1880–1930 (2004). With Laurel Brake, she edited The Lure of Illustration in the Nineteenth Century: Picture and Press (2009) and the Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism (2009).