{"id":753,"date":"2017-01-18T13:03:44","date_gmt":"2017-01-18T13:03:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/?p=753"},"modified":"2022-06-27T12:36:50","modified_gmt":"2022-06-27T16:36:50","slug":"mark-rose-authors-in-court-scenes-from-the-theater-of-copyright","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/2017\/01\/18\/mark-rose-authors-in-court-scenes-from-the-theater-of-copyright\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Rose. Authors in Court: Scenes from the Theater of Copyright"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mark Rose. Authors in Court: Scenes from the Theater of Copyright<\/em><\/a>. Cambridge, MA; London, England: Harvard University Press, 2016. xiv, 219 p. ill. ISBN 9780674048041. US $29.95 (hardback).<\/p>\n

With the recent litigation of Authors Guild v. Google<\/a> in late 2015 and the much publicised discussions surrounding Fair Use and Permissions and the International James Joyce Foundation<\/a>, it would be hard to argue against the opportune timing of Mark Rose\u2019s new book, Authors in Court: Scenes from the Theater of Copyright<\/em><\/a>, a deeply considered, reflective expansion and development of ideas tested some thirty years ago by the critic in a single chapter of his ground-breaking Authors and Owners: The Invention of Copyright<\/em><\/a> (1993). Indeed, this new book, also published by Harvard University Press, might be easily regarded as the mature progeny of that earlier issue.<\/p>\n

Rose\u2019s Authors in Court<\/em>\u00a0is a volume of incredible scope and erudition, the mature considerations of a great specialist and a well-read generalist, with plenty of learning to share. Starting with the much-storied incident of British author Daniel Defoe\u2019s public humiliation at being pilloried for seditious libel in 1703, Rose takes his readers along an international, diachronic journey told by a series of six historical studies or sketches, each one wisely selected to explore a different principle in our conception of \u201cintellectual property\u201d out of that of the author\u2019s physical \u201ccopy\u201d (ix-xii). From the Defoe episode we are shown how before the famous Statute of Anne<\/a>, an act of Great Britain of 1710, intended for the \u201cEncouragement of Learning, by Vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or Purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned,\u201d authors\u2019 only legal right to their text was the punishment they would receive if their ideas offended (7-9). From here, Rose goes on to describe in exquisite detail six incidents of authors in court, where the author was the plaintiff. Rose retells the famous fiasco of Pope v. Curll (1741), in which Alexander Pope sued mercenary publisher Edmund Curll for the unauthorized publication of his literary correspondence, a landmark case giving authors some minor protections over their literary properties (11-35). Next, Rose moves on to Stowe v. Thomas (1853), in which abolitionist author Harriet Beecher Stowe famously lost the right to prevent her slave narrative Uncle Tom\u2019s Cabin<\/em> (1852) from being translated into German (36-63). Rose follows these with explorations of great multimedia variety: case studies of celebrity photographer Napoleon Sarony\u2019s successful suit against the Burrow-Giles Lithographic Company (1884) for their exploitative, commercialistic copying of his Oscar Wilde No. 18<\/em><\/a> (1882; 64-90); of playwright Anne Nichols\u2019s unsuccessful battle with Universal Pictures Corporation (1930) to gain legal protection for the stock characters of her play Abie\u2019s Irish Rose<\/em><\/a> (1922; 91-115); of J. D. Salinger\u2019s suit against Random House (1987), as an attempt to invoke copyright legislation to prohibit the paraphrase of his unpublished, private letters for an unauthorized biography (116-47); and that of folk photographer Art Roger\u2019s suit for infringement against Jeff Koons (1955\u2013), a post-modern artist who adapted one of Art\u2019s \u201cart\u201d\u00a0photographs<\/a> satirically, into a grotesque statue<\/a> (1992; 148-79). These cases take us from England to America as they jump around chronologically from 1741 to present day.<\/p>\n

Although there is a little something for everyone in this book, what attracted me most, and proved most memorable, was Rose\u2019s keen eye for fun, fascinating anecdotes. Rose shows that as courts are public institutions and as authors are public figures the intertwining of the two is often a key feature of authorship construction: today\u2019s authors self-fashion through their dealings with members of the legal profession, just as Defoe did when he wrote his famous Hymn to the Pillory<\/em> (1703) to reproach a legal system which, in his case, would appear to have been at variance with societal expectations (2). Some of the anecdotes to come out in relation to authors and their dealings with the law include: Pope\u2019s successful prank to trick renegade publisher Curll into swallowing an emetic (12); Stowe\u2019s poignant description of her academic husband\u2019s poor business sense, causing her to be industrious and business-minded in the protection of her writings (46); Wilde\u2019s contracting with businessman-financier Richard D\u2019Oyly Carte on the elaborate suits and costuming to be worn by Wilde at all times while overseas (71); Wilde\u2019s back-handed swipe at photographer Sarony\u2019s mass-reproduced photographs in The Canterville Ghost <\/em>(1887), where the family replaces the oils with prints from this new means of mechanical-chemical reproduction (88); Nichols\u2019s alliance with self-educated lawyer and eccentric Moses L. Malevinsky (98-102); and Salinger\u2019s little-examined personal friendship with Judge Learned Hand, a major figure in the Nichols case (119). Rose\u2019s new book is, as the title implies, as much about authors as it is about the courts.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a lot of \u201cnew material\u201d in the book, which shouldn\u2019t be overlooked. Chapter Three, \u201cEmancipation and Translation: Stowe v. Thomas (1853),\u201d is, one assumes, Rose\u2019s Astor Lecture<\/a>, \u201cStowe v. Thomas: Uncle Tom\u2019s Cabin<\/em> in Court\u201d (Oxford, 30 April 2013), published here for the first time. I have not been successful in\u00a0locating much that Rose has published about Sarony or Nichols, or Salinger or Koons, so it would appear as if Rose is exploring new scholarly territory, which is very commendable.<\/p>\n

Authors in Court<\/em> is admirable in its scope, exceptionally well written, and entertaining. It offers a rich vocabulary in legal terms and distinctions (e.g., \u201cinfringement\u201d vs. \u201cplagiarism,\u201d 98), making it of use to undergraduate and graduate literary scholars. It is a worthy successor and conclusion to Rose\u2019s earlier monograph Authors and Owners: The Invention of Copyright<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Joshua McEvilla
\nIndependent Scholar<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mark Rose. Authors in Court: Scenes from the Theater of Copyright. Cambridge, MA; London, England: Harvard University Press, 2016. xiv, 219 p. ill. ISBN 9780674048041. US $29.95 (hardback). With the recent litigation of Authors Guild v. Google in late 2015 and the much publicised discussions surrounding Fair Use and Permissions and the International James Joyce […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1888],"tags":[1918],"class_list":["post-753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","tag-copyright"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=753"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2551,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753\/revisions\/2551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}