While scholarship on Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography describes his use of persona in nuanced terms, scholarship on Franklin’s earlier writings tends to characterize his use of persona as simply a device he used to eliminate personal details from his texts. This article, focused on Franklin’s Poor Richard persona, argues that he conceived of literary persona not simply as a tool to protect his anonymity, but also as a means of self-promotion and self-representation. Franklin used Poor Richard to make a space for himself in the literary marketplace, build a readership for the almanac, and create a positive public reputation for himself. Franklin’s early experiments in performing sincerity and authenticity through an invented personality prefigure the performances of identity he would deploy through his authorial persona in The Autobiography . Thus, by examining Franklin’s construction of identity in Poor Richard’s Almanack , we learn more about how he crafted a public identity for himself.
{"title":"Persona-lly Appealing: Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard and Authorial Self-Representation","authors":"Patricia F. Tarantello","doi":"10.21825/AJ.V5I1.2353","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21825/AJ.V5I1.2353","url":null,"abstract":"While scholarship on Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography describes his use of persona in nuanced terms, scholarship on Franklin’s earlier writings tends to characterize his use of persona as simply a device he used to eliminate personal details from his texts. This article, focused on Franklin’s Poor Richard persona, argues that he conceived of literary persona not simply as a tool to protect his anonymity, but also as a means of self-promotion and self-representation. Franklin used Poor Richard to make a space for himself in the literary marketplace, build a readership for the almanac, and create a positive public reputation for himself. Franklin’s early experiments in performing sincerity and authenticity through an invented personality prefigure the performances of identity he would deploy through his authorial persona in The Autobiography . Thus, by examining Franklin’s construction of identity in Poor Richard’s Almanack , we learn more about how he crafted a public identity for himself.","PeriodicalId":30455,"journal":{"name":"Authorship","volume":"5 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68394694","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Latané, David E. William Maginn and the British Press: A Critical Biography (London: Ashgate, 2013)","authors":"Jennifer Scott","doi":"10.21825/AJ.V5I1.2355","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21825/AJ.V5I1.2355","url":null,"abstract":"A review of Latane, David E.. William Maginn and the British Press: A Critical Biography . London: Ashgate, 2013. 378 pp. £95.","PeriodicalId":30455,"journal":{"name":"Authorship","volume":"28 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68394785","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A review of Innes M. Keighren, Charles W.J. Withers, Bill Bell's Travels into Print: Exploration, Writing, and publishing with John Murray, 1773-1859. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2015. 392 pp. $45.
{"title":"Keighren, Innes M., Charles W.J. Withers, Bill Bell. Travels into Print: Exploration, Writing, and publishing with John Murray, 1773-1859 (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2015)","authors":"J. Schelstraete","doi":"10.21825/AJ.V5I1.2326","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21825/AJ.V5I1.2326","url":null,"abstract":"A review of Innes M. Keighren, Charles W.J. Withers, Bill Bell's Travels into Print: Exploration, Writing, and publishing with John Murray, 1773-1859. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2015. 392 pp. $45.","PeriodicalId":30455,"journal":{"name":"Authorship","volume":"5 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68394816","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Delarivier Manley has long been discussed as a sensational and successful Tory political satirist of the early eighteenth century. In the late seventeenth century, however, she associated with Whigs, experimented with genres, and tested different techniques for marketing her texts. Mimicking the methods of celebrity actresses, Manley used paratextual addresses to engage public interest in a carefully curated identity, creating a commodity in her persona that she would employ throughout her career. This paper traces her developing persona in her first three publications: Letters Writen by Mrs. Manley, The Lost Lover, and The Royal Mischief. Although these texts are not explicitly political satire, they nevertheless explicate the preliminary and halting machinations of an astute businesswoman and the marketing tactics Manley would employ throughout her career. The result is a more complete and nuanced picture of Manley’s commercial authorship.
{"title":"“She writes like a Woman”: Paratextual Marketing in Delarivier Manley’s Early Career","authors":"Kate Ozment","doi":"10.21825/AJ.V5I1.2354","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21825/AJ.V5I1.2354","url":null,"abstract":"Delarivier Manley has long been discussed as a sensational and successful Tory political satirist of the early eighteenth century. In the late seventeenth century, however, she associated with Whigs, experimented with genres, and tested different techniques for marketing her texts. Mimicking the methods of celebrity actresses, Manley used paratextual addresses to engage public interest in a carefully curated identity, creating a commodity in her persona that she would employ throughout her career. This paper traces her developing persona in her first three publications: Letters Writen by Mrs. Manley, The Lost Lover, and The Royal Mischief. Although these texts are not explicitly political satire, they nevertheless explicate the preliminary and halting machinations of an astute businesswoman and the marketing tactics Manley would employ throughout her career. The result is a more complete and nuanced picture of Manley’s commercial authorship.","PeriodicalId":30455,"journal":{"name":"Authorship","volume":"5 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68394731","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Authorship in eighteenth-century Aberdeen often functioned differently than in London and Edinburgh. The Aberdeen model of authorship relied heavily on an intricate network of booksellers, patrons, readers, and critics involved in preparing a text to be consumed by the reading public; yet the prevailing narrative of the author as rising to “inspired genius” disallows for this network. The authorial career of poet Alexander Ross and his friend/mentorship with philosopher James Beattie offers a useful case study of the Aberdeen model—especially when approached through a lens of book history to consider the material practices surrounding the production of a literary work. Both Ross’s career in particular and eighteenth-century Aberdeen offer ways to historicize the concept of the “inspired genius” emerging at the end of the eighteenth century. Therefore, addressing the authorial careers of Ross and Beattie opens up new avenues for discussion, both of these poets in particular and of discourses of authorial practices in general.
{"title":"Publishing at \"the request of friends\": Alexander Ross and James Beattie’s Authorial Networks in Eighteenth-Century Aberdeen","authors":"Ruth Knezevich","doi":"10.21825/AJ.V5I1.2352","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21825/AJ.V5I1.2352","url":null,"abstract":"Authorship in eighteenth-century Aberdeen often functioned differently than in London and Edinburgh. The Aberdeen model of authorship relied heavily on an intricate network of booksellers, patrons, readers, and critics involved in preparing a text to be consumed by the reading public; yet the prevailing narrative of the author as rising to “inspired genius” disallows for this network. The authorial career of poet Alexander Ross and his friend/mentorship with philosopher James Beattie offers a useful case study of the Aberdeen model—especially when approached through a lens of book history to consider the material practices surrounding the production of a literary work. Both Ross’s career in particular and eighteenth-century Aberdeen offer ways to historicize the concept of the “inspired genius” emerging at the end of the eighteenth century. Therefore, addressing the authorial careers of Ross and Beattie opens up new avenues for discussion, both of these poets in particular and of discourses of authorial practices in general.","PeriodicalId":30455,"journal":{"name":"Authorship","volume":"5 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68394971","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A review of Cecilia Sayad's Performing Authorship: Self-Inscription and Corporeality in the Cinema . London: Tauris, 2013. xxvi + 181 pp. £16.99 (pb) / £56.00 (hb).
Arthur Conan Doyle and his consulting detective had been famous for more than ten years when Doyle came to write The Return of Sherlock Holmes. In the following essay, I argue that this experience of fame shaped the composition of the third series of Holmes stories, in which the detective is resurrected a decade after going over the Reichenbach Falls. The essay approaches celebrity as a competitive interaction in which the public, the press, and the celebrity vie for control. It is argued that the stories in The Return of Sherlock Holmes work to empower the various celebrities that they portray – including not just Holmes but also well-known aristocrats, statesmen, scholars, and female ‘beauties’ – and to disempower their rival co-participants in the celebrity dynamic: the public and the press.
{"title":"The Public, the Press, and Celebrities in The Return of Sherlock Holmes","authors":"Thomas Vranken","doi":"10.21825/AJ.V4I2.1441","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21825/AJ.V4I2.1441","url":null,"abstract":"Arthur Conan Doyle and his consulting detective had been famous for more than ten years when Doyle came to write The Return of Sherlock Holmes. In the following essay, I argue that this experience of fame shaped the composition of the third series of Holmes stories, in which the detective is resurrected a decade after going over the Reichenbach Falls. The essay approaches celebrity as a competitive interaction in which the public, the press, and the celebrity vie for control. It is argued that the stories in The Return of Sherlock Holmes work to empower the various celebrities that they portray – including not just Holmes but also well-known aristocrats, statesmen, scholars, and female ‘beauties’ – and to disempower their rival co-participants in the celebrity dynamic: the public and the press.","PeriodicalId":30455,"journal":{"name":"Authorship","volume":"4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68394677","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The evolution of our literate culture across the millennia has been marked by clearly identified and well-documented milestones in the history of reading and writing technologies. Changes in literacy, understood as the sum of reading and writing practices, have always followed such milestones at some remove. Not only are they much more diffuse in character and much harder to identify and describe, but they stand in a tenuous cause-and-effect relationship to the technologies in question. This article makes a plea for a stronger awareness of the effects of technology on our literate culture. Reading has always received a fair amount of attention (with the history of reading being a prominent subdiscipline of the field of book studies), but it should be recognized that its corollary, authorship, is a central, and, as digital technology is becoming ubiquitous—at least in the Western world—, increasingly important part of our literate culture, too. With Web 2.0 technology enabling more people than ever in history to write for public or at least semi-public consumption, the concept, definition and status of authorship is in need of radical revision.
{"title":"Appropriation: Towards a Sociotechnical History of Authorship","authors":"A. Weel","doi":"10.21825/AJ.V4I2.1438","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21825/AJ.V4I2.1438","url":null,"abstract":"The evolution of our literate culture across the millennia has been marked by clearly identified and well-documented milestones in the history of reading and writing technologies. Changes in literacy, understood as the sum of reading and writing practices, have always followed such milestones at some remove. Not only are they much more diffuse in character and much harder to identify and describe, but they stand in a tenuous cause-and-effect relationship to the technologies in question. This article makes a plea for a stronger awareness of the effects of technology on our literate culture. Reading has always received a fair amount of attention (with the history of reading being a prominent subdiscipline of the field of book studies), but it should be recognized that its corollary, authorship, is a central, and, as digital technology is becoming ubiquitous—at least in the Western world—, increasingly important part of our literate culture, too. With Web 2.0 technology enabling more people than ever in history to write for public or at least semi-public consumption, the concept, definition and status of authorship is in need of radical revision.","PeriodicalId":30455,"journal":{"name":"Authorship","volume":"4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68394990","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
To the enterprising journalists of early eighteenth-century Great Britain, the refined status of “author” remained elusive. Journalism itself was a nascent occupation formed in the processes of cultural legitimatization, commercialization, and politicization of authorship. In London, James Ralph, an American expatriate and political writer, emerged as a spokesman for journalism. In his Case of Authors by Profession or Trade , a short treatise published in 1758, Ralph argued that “professional” authors included journalists and other non-patroned writers. They deserved respect as an occupational group, and a special role in society. Ralph equated and extended the privileged notions of authorship and the role of the author — essentially, respectability and some limited independence from political and financial pressures — to his fellow journalists. His Case is worth revisiting because it shows how literary culture was being challenged in his era, extended and subverted as it was by his fellow journalists and their more transitory creations.
对于18世纪早期英国那些有进取心的记者来说，“作者”的高贵地位仍然是难以捉摸的。新闻业本身是在文化合法化、商业化和作者身份政治化的过程中形成的一种新兴职业。在伦敦，美国侨民、政治作家詹姆斯·拉尔夫(James Ralph)成为了新闻界的代言人。在他1758年出版的《按职业或行业划分的作家案例》(Case of Authors by Profession or Trade)一书中，拉尔夫认为“职业”作家包括记者和其他非资助作家。作为一个职业群体，他们理应受到尊重，在社会中扮演着特殊的角色。拉尔夫将作者的特权概念和作者的角色——本质上是受人尊敬和不受政治和经济压力影响的有限独立性——等同并扩展到他的记者同行身上。他的案例值得重新审视，因为它显示了文学文化在他的时代是如何受到挑战的，被他的同行记者和他们更短暂的创作所扩展和颠覆。
{"title":"Writer by Trade: James Ralph’s Claims to Authorship","authors":"Will Mari","doi":"10.21825/AJ.V4I2.1439","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21825/AJ.V4I2.1439","url":null,"abstract":"To the enterprising journalists of early eighteenth-century Great Britain, the refined status of “author” remained elusive. Journalism itself was a nascent occupation formed in the processes of cultural legitimatization, commercialization, and politicization of authorship. In London, James Ralph, an American expatriate and political writer, emerged as a spokesman for journalism. In his Case of Authors by Profession or Trade , a short treatise published in 1758, Ralph argued that “professional” authors included journalists and other non-patroned writers. They deserved respect as an occupational group, and a special role in society. Ralph equated and extended the privileged notions of authorship and the role of the author — essentially, respectability and some limited independence from political and financial pressures — to his fellow journalists. His Case is worth revisiting because it shows how literary culture was being challenged in his era, extended and subverted as it was by his fellow journalists and their more transitory creations.","PeriodicalId":30455,"journal":{"name":"Authorship","volume":"4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68395008","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This essay explores Dorothy Wordsworth’s collaborative, “pluralist” model of selfhood and authorship as it is elaborated in her Grasmere journal (1800-03). Nature and community, for her, are extensions of the self rather than (as they often are for her brother William) external forces to be subsumed by the self of the solitary artist. This model, however, is the site of ambivalence and conflict, and is therefore “imperfect” – a word Wordsworth herself uses to qualify the “summary” she believes her journal as a whole provides. It is “imperfect” not because it is inferior, weak, or deficient in some way, but because it is riddled with tension and inconsistency. Wordsworth embraces processes of collaborative creativity, but she also expresses – largely through her narrations of illness – dissatisfaction with such processes, and she sometimes finds relief in her solitary, melancholic musings. In these ways, she at once subverts, reworks, and reinforces conventional, ‘solitary genius’ paradigms of authorship.
{"title":"An “imperfect” Model of Authorship in Dorothy Wordsworth’s Grasmere Journal","authors":"H. Meek","doi":"10.21825/AJ.V4I2.1440","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21825/AJ.V4I2.1440","url":null,"abstract":"This essay explores Dorothy Wordsworth’s collaborative, “pluralist” model of selfhood and authorship as it is elaborated in her Grasmere journal (1800-03). Nature and community, for her, are extensions of the self rather than (as they often are for her brother William) external forces to be subsumed by the self of the solitary artist. This model, however, is the site of ambivalence and conflict, and is therefore “imperfect” – a word Wordsworth herself uses to qualify the “summary” she believes her journal as a whole provides. It is “imperfect” not because it is inferior, weak, or deficient in some way, but because it is riddled with tension and inconsistency. Wordsworth embraces processes of collaborative creativity, but she also expresses – largely through her narrations of illness – dissatisfaction with such processes, and she sometimes finds relief in her solitary, melancholic musings. In these ways, she at once subverts, reworks, and reinforces conventional, ‘solitary genius’ paradigms of authorship.","PeriodicalId":30455,"journal":{"name":"Authorship","volume":"38 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68395049","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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