Description
Book SynopsisAn underlying question, Ezell notes, is whether the Internet will inspire the reemergence of the "socialauthor, whose work can be circulated to readers without the assistance of a publishing firm.
Trade ReviewA complex, nuanced portrait of English reading and writing during the Restoration and early eighteenth century... Ezell's deeply intelligent, challenging book will thus interest not only early modern specialists, but a more general readership concerned with issues of authorial identity and technological change. -- Marjorie Swann Rocky Mountain Review Ezell's is a beautifully written and cogently argued study [and] an unqualified success. -- Scott Nixon Early Modern Literary Studies Margaret Ezell's most recent book, Social Authorship and the Advent of Print, as her previous work, The Patriarch's Wife (1987) and Writing Women's Literary History (1993), is a revisionist literary history at its best. -- Zeynep Tenger South Atlantic Review Ezell eloquently challenges her fellow scholars' equation, conscious or unconscious, of authorship with publication. -- Frederic D. Schwarz Technology and Culture In concise yet detailed fashion, Ezell shows us how commercial print culture eclipsed its vibrant manuscript counterpart. -- Allison Fraiberg College Literature Lucid and engaging in both style and argumentation. -- Gerald MacLean Journal of English and Germanic Philology Opens a new chapter in our understanding of writing and print in the Early Modern Era. -- Nicholas Hudson Eighteenth-Century Life 2002 Ezell's work has become the gold standard for responsible, revisionary literary historicizing in the early modern period... Her work is groundbreaking in the most refreshing and dynamic sense. -- Devoney Looser South Central Review 2004
