Overview

How did women in early modern England protect their investments in copyrights and realize profits from them? This new study explores the ways that women who owned copyright sought to turn manuscripts into money and protect their investments in intellectual property for themselves and their posterity. Through an analysis of previously unpublished archival sources and a new examination of print sources, this study shows that women copyright proprietors contributed to the establishment of copyright as a sellable commodity at a time when it was still undefined. Women Proprietors of Copyright charts a new history of copyright and women’s labor in the book trade at a crucial period of its development.

Full Product Details

Author:   Leah Orr
Publisher:   Brill
Imprint:   Brill
Volume:   8
Dimensions:   Width: 15.50cm , Height: 0.60cm , Length: 23.50cm
Weight:   0.187kg
ISBN:  

9789004737914

ISBN 10:   900473791
Pages:   102
Publication Date:   21 August 2025
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
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Table of Contents

Preface 1 Legalities: Was Literary Property Really Property?  1 Women in the Standard Story of the Emergence of Copyright  2 Women and Patents in the Book Trade  3 Women Producers and Rights to Their Creation 2 Women Authors as Owners 3 Women Legatees as Owners 4 Women Proprietors in the Stationers’ Company  1 Restoration Women in the Stationers’ Registers  2 Eighteenth-Century Women and the Stationers: Mary Cooper  3 Women outside the Trade in the Register 5 Women at Book Trade Sales  1 Copyrights Belonging to Elizabeth Pawlett (1720)  2 Copyrights Belonging to Mary Matthews (1720)  3 Copyrights Belonging to Christian Bowyer (1736)  4 Mary Cooper as a Purchaser at Trade Sales  5 Private Sales among the Trade 6 Women in Court  1 Using Patents as a Proxy for Copyright: Elizabeth Nutt  2 Establishing a Legacy: Mary Wellington Conclusion Bibliography Index

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Author Information

Leah Orr is Professor of English at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette. She works on fiction, women writers, and the book trade in the long eighteenth century and is the author of two books, most recently Publishing the Woman Writer in England, 1670–1750 (2023).

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