Based on extensive archival work, Characters before Copyright shows that fan fiction proliferated in the eighteenth century and explains why this phenomenon emerged when it did.

How did authors control the literary fates of fictional characters before the existence of copyright? Could a second author do anything with another author's character? Situated between the decline of the privilege system and the rise of copyright, literary borrowing in eighteenth-century Germany has long been considered unregulated. This book tells a different story. Characters before Copyright documents the surprisingly widespread eighteenth-century practice of writing fan fictionliterary works written by readers who appropriate preexisting characters invented by other authorsand reconstructs the contemporaneous debate about the literary phenomenon. Like fan fiction today, these texts took the form of sequels, prequels, and spinoffs. Analyzing the evolving reading, writing, and consumer habits of late-eighteenth-century Germany, Characters before Copyright identifies the social, economic, and aesthetic changes that fostered the rapid rise of fan fiction after 1750. Based on archival work and an ethnographic approach borrowed from legal anthropology, this book then uncovers the unwritten customary norms that governed the production of these works. Characters before Copyright thus reinterprets the eighteenth-century literary commons, arguing that what may appear to have been the free circulation of characters was actually circumscribed by an exacting set of rules and conditions. These norms translated into a unique type of literature that gave rise to remarkable forms of collaborative authorship and originality. Characters before Copyright provides a new perspective on the eighteenth-century book trade and the rise of intellectual property, reevaluating the concept of literary property, the history of moral rights, and the tradition of free culture.

Rules for Raising Little Girls "As the father of a daughter, I wish I'd read this very funny book sooner, if only to know that it's OK for a grown man to wear a tutu." - Dave Barry "Required reading for any parent who doesn't know pants from leggings." - Dan Zevin, author of Dan Gets a Minivan: Life at the Intersection of Dude and Dad It's easy to imagine how you'd raise a boy--all the golf outings, lawnmower lessons, and Little League championships you'd attend--but playing dad to a little princess may take some education. In Oh Boy, You're Having a Girl, Brian, a father of three girls, shares his tactics for surviving this new and glittery world. From baby dolls and bedtime rituals to potty training and dance recitals, he leads you through all the trials and tribulations you'll face as you're raising your daughter. He'll also show you how to navigate your way through tough situations, like making sure that she doesn't start dating until she's fifty. Complete with commandments for restroom trips and properly participating in a tea party, Oh Boy, You're Having a Girl will brace you for all those hours playing house--and psych you up for the awesomeness of raising a daughter who has you lovingly wrapped around her little finger. "Somehow, Brian Klems has taken one of the most traumatic situations known to a father--having a daughter--and made it into something so completely hilarious you'll laugh until you've got oxygen deprivation!" - W. Bruce Cameron, author of 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter

***Updated 2020 Edition*** LEARN THE RIGHT WAY... ...to set your book up for long-term success, improve sales opportunities, and protect your investment, including: Everything you need to know about ISBNs, Barcodes, Copyright, & LCCNs. Make sure your book can be distributed by any distributor. Never have to abandon your hard-earned reader reviews. Ensure your book can be printed by any printer. Add your book to the major book industry databases. Prevent your advance reading copies from being re-sold. Avoid legal headaches and missed filing deadlines. “Straightforward and easy to digest, this is one how-to that every new author or publisher should have in their arsenal!" —Brooke Warner, Publisher of She Writes Press and author of Green-Light Your Book: How Writers Can Succeed in the New Era of Publishing “An essential guide to publishing identifiers, their benefits and uses, and (most importantly) what NOT to do. Required reading for every new entrant into book publishing – and for those who have been here a while, it’s never too late to go back to the sound fundamentals that David Wogahn provides here." —Laura Dawson, Numerical Gurus “...proceed with confidence in spending your time and dollars to get it done right, the first time.” —Carla King, Self-Pub Boot Camp “…a thorough and deceptively simple guide for independent authors and publishers…”

Winner, Matei Calinescu Prize, Modern Language Association Winner, 2021 Modernist Studies Award, Modernist Studies Association Long before the US Supreme Court announced that corporate persons freely "speak" with money in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010), they elaborated the legal fiction of American corporate personhood in Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad (1886). Yet endowing a non-human entity with certain rights exposed a fundamental philosophical question about the possibility of collective intention. That question extended beyond the law and became essential to modern American literature. This volume offers the first multidisciplinary intellectual history of this story of corporate personhood. The possibility that large collective organizations might mean to act like us, like persons, animated a diverse set of American writers, artists, and theorists of the corporation in the first half of the twentieth century, stimulating a revolution of thought on intention. The ambiguous status of corporate intention provoked conflicting theories of meaning—on the relevance (or not) of authorial intention and the interpretation of collective signs or social forms—still debated today. As law struggled with opposing arguments, modernist creative writers and artists grappled with interrelated questions, albeit under different guises and formal procedures. Combining legal analysis of law reviews, treatises, and case law with literary interpretation of short stories, novels, and poems, this volume analyzes legal philosophers including Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Frederic Maitland, Harold Laski, Maurice Wormser, and creative writers such as Theodore Dreiser, Muriel Rukeyser, Gertrude Stein, Charles Reznikoff, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and George Schuyler.

A parody of Gone with the wind, this novel tells the story of Cynara, the mulatto half-sister born into slavery who eventually triumphs.

Detailed advice (and plenty of sample forms, worksheets and agreements) on everything from getting a business started to kicking out an unwanted partner later. - Los Angeles Times - It is the most definitive, complete and current do-it-yourself patent book ever written and it is written in easy-to-understand laymen's terms. - Mary Bellis, Inventor's Guide at About.com - Every step of the patent process is presented in order in this gem of a book, complete with official forms - San Francisco Chronicle - David Pressman is a practicing patent attorney, a former patent examiner, and the author of Patent It Yourself. His book is easy to understand and can save thousands of dollars by writing your own patent application, or by writing much of it, and having a patent agent or attorney edit and write the claims section. - Jack Lander, The Inventor's Bookstore - Like all law, [patent law] is pretty complex stuff. This clearly written guide will help minimize legal fees by preparing you to do what you can for yourself.- Mike Maza, Dallas Morning News - The book presents complicated procedures in easily digested chunks, with anecdotes, forms and plenty of old-fashioned good advice - The Denver Post - The most complete and authoritative work on patents and inventions for laypersons - InventNet - Contains all necessary forms and instructions plus advice on marketing your invention. - Money Magazine - The best roll-up-your-sleeves guide for filers who don't want to pay a ransom. - Inc.- Patent It Yourself is a top-notch reference for patent and trademark information. - San Francisco Examiner

This book argues that moral rights provisions in copyright law rest on a misunderstanding, or romanticisation, of the role of the author. The Romantic conception of authorship, as a lone genius, creating from nothing, sensitive and vulnerable, has helped publishers push for strong copyright reform. But is this conception borne out in practice – especially in a world of meme culture, of artificial intelligence generated art and poetry, and of open source and fan fiction? This book probes the romantic vignette of the author through its legal adoption. Moral rights are rights that attach to the non-economic – for example, intellectual or emotional – interests of an author in their work. Much like defamation, moral rights see the right of reputation as superior to the right of freedom of expression. However, unlike defamation, moral rights are not protecting against defamatory actions against a person. In most jurisdictions, they are provisions set within copyright regimes; regimes whose purpose is to incentivise innovation. Challenging the way we think about authorship and how it should be protected by law, the book draws on a wide range of historical and contemporary examples to demonstrate how moral rights can constitute a barrier to transformative creativity. While authors and artists require strong rights to protect their ability to earn an income and incentivise creativity, moral rights, the book argues, may in turn actually harm their ability to do so. This timely criticism of moral rights will appeal to researchers, students, policy makers and lawyers working in the area of intellectual property law, as well as legal theorists, sociolegal scholars and legal historians with relevant interests.

Many Victorian novels take place not in the steam-powered railway present of that era, but in the recent past: a world moving by stage and mail coach. Ruth Livesey explores the historical consciousness of such works by Dickens, Bronte, Eliot, and Hardy, and explains how they convey an idea of a national belonging through a sense of local place.

Quentin Jacobson has spent a lifetime loving Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs into his life - dressed like a ninja and summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge - he follows. After their all-nighter ends, Q arrives at school to discover that Margo has disappeared.