SOURCE: Hepburn, James. “The Historical Background: The Long Quarrel Between Author and Publisher.” In The Author's Empty Purse and the Rise of the Literary Agent, pp. 4-21. London: Oxford University Press, 1968.

In the following excerpt, Hepburn discusses the animosity between authors and publishers in the nineteenth century, theorizing that this tension was the result of developing ideas about ownership and originality, and the uneasy relationship between art and commerce.

WITMORE.

What, art thou not cured of scribbling yet? 

LUCKLESS.

No, scribbling is as impossible to cure as the gout. 

WITMORE.

And as sure a sign of poverty as the gout of riches. 

—Henry Fielding, The Author's Farce, 1730

According to Samuel Smiles, it was Thomas Campbell and not Byron who said that Barabbas was a publisher. Whoever it was, by the early nineteenth century the publisher was fit subject for the suspicions of authors, having by then established himself...