Mediating Authorship: Wordsworth, Copyright and Media History

This essay presents William Wordsworth's advocacy for the reform of copyright laws as an event in Romantic media history. Previous scholars have discussed the poet's engagement with Thomas Noon Talfourd's petition in the 1830s as indicative of the period's larger negotiation of the economic and cultural values of literary art. This essay argues that beyond issues of economic and aesthetic recognition, Wordsworth is aware of the significance of copyright as a central means of shaping the author's communication with his readers. Within the proliferating mediascape in print in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Wordsworth draws on the agency afforded by copyright to intervene in the process of mediation. Proposing mediation as an important new analytical approach to the discourses and practices of Romantic authorship, this essay outlines Wordsworth's efforts toward controlling the codes and channels of communication as crucial concerns in the period's evolving print culture.