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A Brief History of Authorship
On first glance it would seem the definition of "author" hardly needs explanation, but this is a twenty-first century perception. Albee (2015) defines an author as, “the person responsible for creating a written work.” In addition, Albee notes that other content creators, such as a “composer, compiler, or editor of a work” can also be given that title. Johns, writing in The Nature of the Book says, “an author is taken to be someone acknowledged as responsible for a given printed (or sometimes written) work” (p.xxi, ). In “What is the History of Books”, Darton observes that details of “the basic conditions of authorship remain obscure for most periods of history (p.75)”. However, it is possible to chart changes. The role of author in book history has not been constant, but instead has evolved over time. Issues of intellectual and creative independence, ownership and control of ones work, and technological innovations have impacted this evolution. From the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, wealthy aristocrats sponsored writers and printers as patrons. The support of a patron provided financial, social and professional benefits. Authors (who initially distanced themselves from their work with pen names for social reasons such as stigma or gender discrimination) later in the 18th and 19th centuries began to struggle for control of their work, which was often appropriated for use by others and altered and printed without their permission. Walter Scott, author of Ivanhoe, is an example of an author who began his career with a pseudonym and later partnered with a printer to control the publication of his work (Albee, 2015). In the nineteenth century, technological innovations in the printing process and legal protections that strengthened author control over their work created a space for authorship as a profession (Albee, 2015). A growing demand for popular works by an increasingly literate audience made authorship profitable for a wider group of writers. In the twentieth and twenty-first century, technology has not only transformed how authors create content, (on typewriters, and later word processors) but also how they have reached audiences via self-publishing, the internet and ebooks. The concept of the author, resistant to change from perceptions of what Haynes, (p.290-291, 2005) called the “ individual, autonomous, and inspired figure” is itself in a state of flux as collaborations create projects generated by many individuals working together, blurring notions of singular authorship not just in scientific studies, but also in fiction (Osbourne and Holand,2009). |