The Author in Court: Pope v. Curll (1741)

Abstract

On 4 June 1741 Alexander Pope, represented by his friend William Murray, later Lord Mansfield, filed a complaint in Chancery against his ancient enemy the bookseller Edmund Curll. At issue was a volume of letters Curll had published five days earlier entitled Dean Swift's Literary Correspondence that contained letters to and from Pope and Jonathan Swift as well as further letters from Dr. John Arbuthnot, Lord Bolingbroke, John Gay, and others. Pope filed his complaint under the terms of the Statute of Anne (8 Ann. c. 19), the world's first copyright statute, and he claimed the rights, curiously enough by modern thinking, both in his own letters and in those sent to him by Swift, seeking an injunction to prevent Curll from selling any further copies of the book. The injunction was issued and, after a response from Curll moving to dissolve, it was continued by Lord Chancellor Hardwicke but only for those letters written by Pope, not for those sent to him by Swift.' Pope v. Curll, in which the rule was established that copyright in a letter belongs to the writer, remains a foundational case in English and American copyright law. Pope is also one of the first