Jody Greene is Associate Professor of Literature and Women's Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

"Greene's book is marvelously smart and analytic, but not just a 'think' book spun out of a few months in the library. The research here is of the hard kind: primary sources, legislative records, court cases. Greene is a real scholar in the classic sense."-John Bender, Stanford University "Greene's lucid and fluidly written study explores the shifting calculus of ownership as it is worked out in the emerging print culture, a government attempting to keep up in turbulent times, and a legal system predicated on rights arising from property in land and tangible assets."-Eighteenth-Century Fiction "An excellent book, which covers new ground in the field of the struggle of the press and, most of all, of individual authors ... in early modern England."-Modern Language Review

• IntroductionPART I. THE TROUBLE WITH OWNERSHIP1. Authorship and the Regulation of the Press2. The Trials of Ownership: Finding the Author in CourtPART II. THE DANGEROUS FATE OF AUTHORS3. Daniel Defoe, the Act of Anne, and the Obligations of Ownership4. Revenge of the Straw Woman: Disowning The Dunciad5. Hostis Humani Generis: Owning PollyNotesBibliographyIndexAcknowledgments

Jody Greene is Associate Professor of Literature and Women's Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

"Greene's book is marvelously smart and analytic, but not just a 'think' book spun out of a few months in the library. The research here is of the hard kind: primary sources, legislative records, court cases. Greene is a real scholar in the classic sense."-John Bender, Stanford University "Greene's lucid and fluidly written study explores the shifting calculus of ownership as it is worked out in the emerging print culture, a government attempting to keep up in turbulent times, and a legal system predicated on rights arising from property in land and tangible assets."-Eighteenth-Century Fiction "An excellent book, which covers new ground in the field of the struggle of the press and, most of all, of individual authors ... in early modern England."-Modern Language Review

• IntroductionPART I. THE TROUBLE WITH OWNERSHIP1. Authorship and the Regulation of the Press2. The Trials of Ownership: Finding the Author in CourtPART II. THE DANGEROUS FATE OF AUTHORS3. Daniel Defoe, the Act of Anne, and the Obligations of Ownership4. Revenge of the Straw Woman: Disowning The Dunciad5. Hostis Humani Generis: Owning PollyNotesBibliographyIndexAcknowledgments

Jody Greene is Associate Professor of Literature and Women's Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

"Greene's book is marvelously smart and analytic, but not just a 'think' book spun out of a few months in the library. The research here is of the hard kind: primary sources, legislative records, court cases. Greene is a real scholar in the classic sense."-John Bender, Stanford University "Greene's lucid and fluidly written study explores the shifting calculus of ownership as it is worked out in the emerging print culture, a government attempting to keep up in turbulent times, and a legal system predicated on rights arising from property in land and tangible assets."-Eighteenth-Century Fiction "An excellent book, which covers new ground in the field of the struggle of the press and, most of all, of individual authors ... in early modern England."-Modern Language Review

• IntroductionPART I. THE TROUBLE WITH OWNERSHIP1. Authorship and the Regulation of the Press2. The Trials of Ownership: Finding the Author in CourtPART II. THE DANGEROUS FATE OF AUTHORS3. Daniel Defoe, the Act of Anne, and the Obligations of Ownership4. Revenge of the Straw Woman: Disowning The Dunciad5. Hostis Humani Generis: Owning PollyNotesBibliographyIndexAcknowledgments