Keeping Out of Court II

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the tricks used in the book trade to print, market, distribute, and circulate satiric works. It also discusses Jonathan Swift and the Act of Anne, the first modern copyright law. Although the statute protected booksellers by requiring the formal registration of publications, it also benefited authors, by giving them a mechanism for selling their rights, sometimes even in exchange for legal protection. Swift, for instance, found numerous accomplices to absorb the repercussions of his publications in exchange for editorial freedom with his texts and the profits extending from copyright. This chapter shows how the ruses used to distribute a range of illicit works fundamentally shaped the visual and material qualities of printed satire. It also reorients discussions of copyright law away from the historical model—what intellectual property was—to how satirists and those in the book trade exploited the provisions of the Act of Anne to create legal protections.