Early Modern Authorship and Prose Continuations: Adaptation and Ownership from Sidney to Richardson

Early Modern Authorship and Prose Continuations provides the first in-depth account of fictional sequels in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Examining instances of stories being continued by someone other than the ‘original’ author, it asks precisely what this distinction has meant historically. Why have some continuations been defined as ‘spurious,’ and what can this tell us about the development of Early Modern attitudes towards authorship, originality, and narrative closure? Nuanced case studies spanning the period 1590 to 1760 explore paratextual disputes surrounding works by authors including Sir Philip Sidney, John Bunyan, and Samuel Richardson. Prefaces, commendatory verses, and correspondence provide evidence about the motivations of continuation-writers, the responses of authors and ‘proprietors’ to these texts, and the changing relationships between professional authors and their readers. Making connections between copyright law and literature, Early Modern Authorship and Prose Continuations thus serves as a valuable context for contemporary debates about ‘fanfiction’ and literary property.