Ozment, Kate Elizabeth (2018-03). The Author and the Agent: Women's Writing and Commercial Publishing in Early Modern England. Doctoral Dissertation.
Thesis
Writing from the end of the seventeenth century through the mid-eighteenth century in England, the fair triumvirate of wit--consisting of Aphra Behn, Delarivier Manley, and Eliza Haywood--are pivotal figures in the history of feminist literary recovery. What has been key to their contemporary popularity is that each used print to reach their audiences. Yet for women who consistently printed their work, little is known about their publishing practices: how they chose their booksellers, how much they were paid, or what input they may have had over design. My dissertation recovers this history and argues that a historically accurate account of women's publishing reshapes literary studies, economic history, bibliography, and book history. Three chapters explore the relationship between authors and booksellers and the influence that tradesmen have on the development of women's writing. As financiers, booksellers had economic motivations for encouraging the feminine personas that Behn, Manley, and Haywood created to sell their work. These personas are often described as individual constructions, but booksellers provided the paratextual space and augmented authors' textual choices through graphic design and advertising. This conclusion emphasizes that female professional authors were as equally influenced by their economic status as their gender, and I determine that a nuanced interpretation of the intersections of class and gender is necessary for authors who inhabit the literary marketplace. I conclude that feminist recovery work was essential for bringing Behn, Manley, and Haywood back into the academy, but it operates with what Kathryn R. King describes as "feminist models of marginalisation." These models are useful in discursive and social settings, but they do not translate to a book market that valued and courted women's efforts. Discursive models also participate in their own form of marginalization by neglecting to explore the non-textual material work of the book trade that these authors engaged in. This project demonstrates how a broader view of women's authorship that accounts for the rhetoric of print, what Lisa Maruca calls "text work," recasts them as actively engaged with the business of books.
