Writing in Public: Literature and the Liberty of the Press in Eighteenth-Century Britain

310 Pages·2018·8.626 MB·English

by  Trevor Ross

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Literature and the Liberty of the Press
in Eighteenth-Century Britain
TREVOR ROSS
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© 2018 Johns Hopkins University Press
AH rights reserved. Published 2018
Printed in the United Stares of America on acid-free paper
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Johns Hopkins University Press
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Dara
Names: Ross, Trevor Thornton, 1961-author.
Title; Writing in public : literature and the liberty of the press in eighteenth-century
Britain / Trevor Ross.
Description: Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, [2018I |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 20170584451 ISBN 9781421426310 (hardcover : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9781421426327 (electronic) | ISBN 1421426315 (hardcover : alk. paper) |
ISBN 1421426323 (electronic)
Subjects: LCSH: Literature and society—Great Britain—History—18th century. |
Copyright—Great Britain—History—18th century. | Democracy and the arts—
Great Britain.
Classification: LCC PR448.S64 R67 2018 | DDC 820.9/005—dc23
LC record available at https://iccn.loc.gov/2o17o58445
A caralog record for this book is available from the British Library.
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Writing in Public I
COPYRIGHT
I Literature in the Public Domain 35
2 The Fate of Style in anAge of Intellectual Property 75
DEFAMATION AND PRIVACY
3 What Does Literature Publicize? hi
4 How Criticism Became Privileged Speech: The Case
of Carr v. Hood (1808) 150
SEDITIOUS LIBEL
5 Literature and the Freedom of Mind 175
Epilogue: Unacknowledged Legislators 225
Notes 239
Index 289

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Material in several chapters has appeared in earlier forms. The first chapter is
a substantial revision of “Copyright and the Invention of Tradition,” Eighteenth-
Century Studies 26.1 (1992): 1-27. Copyright © 1992 American Society for
Eighteenth-Century Studies. A shorter version of the second chapter appeared as
“The Fate of Style in an Age of Intellectual Property,” ELH 80.3 (2013): 747—82.
Copyright © The Johns Hopkins University Press. Reprinted with permission
by The Johns Hopkins University Press. The epilogue reworks some paragraphs
from “The Changing Public Functions of Literature, from Early to Late Moder­
nity,” in Imitatio-Inventio: The Rise of “Literature"from Early to Classic Modernity,
ed. Mihaela Irimia and Dragos Ivana (Bucharest: Institutul Cultural Roman, 2010).
I thank these publications for permission to reuse that work here.
Preliminary research for this study was supported through a grant from the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Heather Meek
provided me with valuable assistance by trawling through early trial records. I
thank the anonymous reader at Johns Hopkins University Press for alerting me
to several important items of recent scholarship.
This book is for Lyn.
i 2.
Writing in Public
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INTRODUCTION
Writing in Public
On May 3, 1695, pre-publication censorship in England came to an end when
a bill to renew the Licensing Act failed to emerge from committee. From that
date, Macaulay declared, “English Literature was emancipated, and emancipated
forever, from the control of the government.”1 Emancipation was far from
total. For decades thereafter, governments regulated the press through a mixed
battery of legal and economic measures. Proceedings for seditious libel, stamp
taxes, restrictions on parliamentary reporting, control of distribution through
the post, and the reestablishment of trade monopolies under the Copyright Act
all served to limit the extent and fervor of printed communication. Most signifi­
cantly for literary production, the Stage Licensing Act of 1737 ensured that the
theater would labor under censorship for more than two centuries.
We need not subscribe to Macaulay’s Whig narrative of emancipation, how­
ever, to recognize that the end of licensing was as consequential for English so­
ciety as the revolutionary settlement of 1688—1689 was for *cs political order and
the financial revolution of 1694 for its economic. Despite setbacks and crackdowns,
the scope of licit speech widened measurably over the next century, with a free
press ever more loudly heralded as the “bulwark of the English constitution.”2
The new regime of copyright, which uncoupled anti-piracy protection from
censorship, transformed authorship into a profession and publishing into an
industry. The periodical press, which mushroomed in the wake of licensing’s