Walker v. Tonson in the Court of Public Opinion
Accounts of Shakespeare's reevaluation during the eighteenth century often mention the role of the publishing war between Jacob Tonson the younger and Robert Walker (1734–35) that flooded the market with inexpensive copies of his plays. Walker lacked the legal standing to sue his rival over the...
| Veröffentlicht in: | Huntington Library Quarterly. - University of Pennsylvania Press. - 75(2012), 1, Seite 95-112 |
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| Format: | Online-Aufsatz |
| Veröffentlicht: |
2012
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| Zugriff auf das übergeordnete Werk: | Huntington Library Quarterly |
| Schlagworte: | eighteenth-century editions of Shakespeare publishing and piracy copyright law William Chetwood William Feales Arts Social sciences Economics Law Behavioral sciences |
| Zusammenfassung: | Accounts of Shakespeare's reevaluation during the eighteenth century often mention the role of the publishing war between Jacob Tonson the younger and Robert Walker (1734–35) that flooded the market with inexpensive copies of his plays. Walker lacked the legal standing to sue his rival over the plays' copyrights, and the normally litigious Tonson declined to pursue his claim to Shakespeare in the courts; instead, the two men tried the case in the pages of their books and the popular press. In this essay, Robert Hamm Jr. examines the rhetoric of their advertising war. Their arguments over rightful ownership reveal how the new copyright regulation enacted by the Statute of Anne continued to compete with an older system determined by correctness and custom. |
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| ISSN: | 1544399X |
| DOI: | 10.1525/hlq.2012.75.1.95 |