Edel Semple

2020 July

The Birth and Death of the Author: A Multi-Authored History of Authorship in Print

"Authorial Identity and Print in John Taylor’s Common Whore and Arrant Thiefe Pamphlets"

Routledge

New York

Published

1

John Taylor, the Water Poet; authorship; pamphlets; early modern; early modern print; whore; thief; criminals in literature; Renaissance; early modern English literature.

This chapter explores authorial identity, the print market, and readers in two pamphlets by the prolific seventeenth-century writer John Taylor, the Water Poet. While A Common Whore and An Arrant Thiefe wittily praise their trivial and transgressive subjects, they also illuminate Taylor’s efforts to fashion an authorial image as an honest and witty labouring class author. In this endeavour, Taylor seeks to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by print and to reimagine publication and the pamphlet form as legitimate, valuable, and worthwhile. This chapter is part of the edited volume "The Birth and Death of the Author: A Multi-Authored History of Authorship in Print."

Andrew J. Power

https://www.routledge.com/The-Birth-and-Death-of-the-Author-A-Multi-Authored-History-of-Authorship/Power/p/book/9781138311169