Manuscript Fiction and the Survival of Scribal Practices in the Age of Print

Abstract

abstract:This essay is based on an assembled corpus of anglophone works of fiction not printed during the author's lifetime. Many of these texts have been detached from their moorings of author, recipient, or even geographic origin. Emily C. Friedman discusses what we can and cannot say about manuscript fiction during the age of print—where there is consensus and an existing knowledge base, and where there are still unknowns. She focuses on some reasons why a work might not have entered print, and why an author of fiction might have considered scribal publication or circulation superior to print. She also considers the work that fan studies has done to describe a wider array of circulation methods. While technology changes, many of the challenges remain the same for writers, especially women writers.