From ‘Strumpet’ to Craftsman: The Construction of the Author in Britain, 1700-1800
From ‘Strumpet’ to Craftsman: The Construction of the Author in Britain, 1700-1800

Summary/Abstract: This article highlights the controversial status of the author and the evolution of authorship between Ned Ward’s late seventeenth-century description of the Grub Street author as “strumpet” (1698) and Samuel Johnson’s “Lives of the Poets” (1779), where originality and creativity were necessary qualities for an author who became the owner of the work he produced. In this period, authorial identity underwent major changes and the portrait of the author evolved from “strumpet” to craftsman, from hack writer to tradesman, and from mercenary to original genius. In this case, not only did periodisation contribute to ensuring a sense of temporal order, but it also provided a sense of spatial order, within which historical changes occurred. The present study will illustrate how the figure of the modern author was moulded by such circumstances as the system of literary patronage, the world of print as profitable trade, the transformation of the literary marketplace, and the emergence of booksellers.

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