Dying to be Read: Gallows Authorship in Late Seventeenth-Century England

In her essay Dying to be Read, Margaret Ezells explores a media configuration of authorship that literally necessitates the death of the author as a condition sine qua non: the printed dying words of executed men and women in the Restoration period. The essay examines this type of gallows literature of the 1670 and 1680s as a form of performed narrative that highlights the complexity of seventeenth-century authorship practices.

Dying to be Read: Gallows Authorship in Late Seventeenth-Century England Academic Article