The Trouble with Ownership: Literary Property and Authorial Liability in England, 1660-1730 by Jody Greene

Abstract

MLR, I02.2, 2007 48 I 'the instability of all books' (p. 3), and 'the insufficiencyand contingency of purely aesthetic judgements' (p. 6). Inwhat follows, however, theeditors present the reader with a variety of perspectives, oftenwith opposing voices placed alongside each other, thus providing a genuine sense of debate. The criticalmaterial ishelpfully divided into sections such as 'Textuality', 'Histo ries', 'Appropriation', 'Identities', and 'Materiality'. Each section opens with a brief introduction by one or twoof thegeneral editors, and isdivided up furtherintosubsec tions,with questions at the end of each to ensure thatwe are absorbing and reflecting upon what we have read. The firstsection on 'Textuality', for example, contains important recentwork by critics such asMargreta de Grazia and Peter Stallybrass, Lukas Erne, and Jeffrey Masten, and provides a thought-provoking survey of current debates concerning themateriality of the book, the collaborative nature of Renais sance authorship, and the futureof editing. Both David Scott Kastan and Jonathan Goldberg remind us of the fluidityand instability of Shakespeare's texts, and raise the possibility that soon we may findourselves reading them in electronic versions, as thiswill enable us to compare and contrast the textual variants of, say,Romeo and 3'uliet as we read. Gary Taylor also makes a brief appearance, suggesting thatShake speare has had enough critical attention, and that 'we should be editing someone else' (p. 58). The effectof this is exhilarating, ifsomewhat bewildering, and one cannot help wondering whether students in search of enlightenment might find their sense of theperiod-which textswe ought to read,who wrote them, and inwhat form we read them-destabilized and interrogated before theyhave had a chance to gain any idea of theRenaissance, stable or otherwise, in the firstplace. Indeed, several of the critics represented in thebook's penultimate section on 'Materiality' askwhether we should be studying literary texts at all, or ifwe should be focusing our attention on 'the detailed and changing world of concrete bodies, commodities and things' (p. 278). It isboth refreshing and revealing, then, to find that the final section of the book isentitled 'Values', and provides awelcome corrective to this theoretical questioning of the value and distinctiveness of literaryart. Pointing to the emergence of the new aestheticism, this section includes notable work fromPatricia Parker, Kiernan Ryan, and John Joughin,with Fernie suggesting that 'The issue of value inRenaissance stu dies remains intriguinglyopen' (p. 356). It is a telling comment on the current state of the subject thatmuch of thismaterial feels genuinely exciting and cutting-edge. Perhaps the question of value ought to have been highlighted earlier in the volume, with the 'General Introduction' inparticular placing greater emphasis on the impor tance and complexity of this issue. None the less, on the evidence of Reconceiving the Renaissance, one imagines thatEnglish students leaveQueen's University Belfast feeling challenged, informed, and stimulated, and with the distinct impression that theygot their money's worth. UNIVERSITY OF READING RICHARDMEEK The Trouble with Ownership: Literary Property and Authorial Liability inEngland, I660-I730. By JODY GREENE. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press. 2005. V+272 Pp. $49.95. ISBN 978-O-8122-3862-4. This is an excellent book, which covers new ground in the fieldof the struggle of the press and,most of all, of individual authors ofpotentially seditious books tocome into theirown inearlymodern England. Itsmost intriguing feature is the fact that itplays on the fruitfulambiguity of the term 'toown', in its meaning ofboth 'topossess' and 'to acknowledge', 'to take liability for',with the intentionof showing the fact thatauthors of books and pamphlets gradually became willing to admit to having written their 482 Reviews works iftheywere entitled toprofit frompublic recognition of literaryproperty: this is themain contention of thepresent work, which profitsnot only froman exhaustive knowledge of existing secondary bibliography, but also from archival research. The book is divided into two parts, devoted respectively to a historical-legal survey and to three case studies of particular eighteenth-century authors. The firstpart recalls and examines in detail-the history of the regulation of the press from the times of Henry VIII to the expiring, in I695, of the last regulatory bill inEnglish history, a fact which put an end topre-publication censorship. The key figureof thispart isSir Roger L'Estrange, Surveyor...