The Economics of Authorship in Eighteenth-Century Germany and Britain

Abstract

The relative backwardness of eighteenth-century German literature and the presumed ambivalence of German writers towards political power have traditionally been explained by the lack of a copyright law in Germany, which meant that German writers, in contrast to their British contemporaries, were often financially dependent on the state. This paper argues that the differences between British and German writers in economic terms have been overstated. British copyright law did not in fact serve the interests of writers to the extent that has traditionally been supposed. In Germany and Britain the situation of writers was determined more by the underlying economics of the publishing trade, especially the high cost of book production, which enabled publishers to pursue monopolistic practices and tilted the tables in favour of publishers and against writers. This argument has further implications for our understanding of the politics of German literature in the late eighteenth century.