The Author and the Agent: Women's Writing and Commercial Publishing in Early Modern England
Abstract
Writing from the end of the seventeenth century through the mid-eighteenth
century in England, the fair triumvirate of wit—consisting of Aphra Behn, Delarivier
Manley, and Eliza Haywood—are pivotal figures in the history of feminist literary
recovery. What has been key to their contemporary popularity is that each used print to
reach their audiences. Yet for women who consistently printed their work, little is known
about their publishing practices: how they chose their booksellers, how much they were
paid, or what input they may have had over design. My dissertation recovers this history
and argues that a historically accurate account of women’s publishing reshapes literary
studies, economic history, bibliography, and book history.
Three chapters explore the relationship between authors and booksellers and the
influence that tradesmen have on the development of women’s writing. As financiers,
booksellers had economic motivations for encouraging the feminine personas that Behn,
Manley, and Haywood created to sell their work. These personas are often described as
individual constructions, but booksellers provided the paratextual space and augmented
authors’ textual choices through graphic design and advertising. This conclusion
emphasizes that female professional authors were as equally influenced by their
economic status as their gender, and I determine that a nuanced interpretation of the
intersections of class and gender is necessary for authors who inhabit the literary
marketplace.
I conclude that feminist recovery work was essential for bringing Behn, Manley,
and Haywood back into the academy, but it operates with what Kathryn R. King
describes as “feminist models of marginalisation.” These models are useful in discursive
and social settings, but they do not translate to a book market that valued and courted
women’s efforts. Discursive models also participate in their own form of marginalization
by neglecting to explore the non-textual material work of the book trade that these
authors engaged in. This project demonstrates how a broader view of women’s
authorship that accounts for the rhetoric of print, what Lisa Maruca calls “text work,”
recasts them as actively engaged with the business of books.
Citation
Ozment, Kate Elizabeth (2018). The Author and the Agent: Women's Writing and Commercial Publishing in Early Modern England. Doctoral dissertation, Texas A & M University. Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /173379.