Nineteenth-Century Transatlantic Reprinting and the Embodied Book

Taylor & Francis

Jessica DeSpain examines reprints by Charles Dickens, Susan Warner, Fanny Kemble and Walt Whitman to theorize the ongoing transatlantic transformation of texts that took place before adoption of the Chace Act of 1891. As authors, readers, and publishers struggled with the unpredictability of the textual body, the physical book and the physical body became metaphors of flux, and discourses of destabilized bodies inflected issues essential to transatlantic culture, including class, gender, religion and slavery. > Until the Chace Act in 1891, no international copyright law existed between Britain and the United States, which meant publishers were free to edit text, excerpt whole passages, add new illustrations, and substantially redesign a book's appearance. In spite of this ongoing process of transatlantic transformation of texts, the metaphor of the book as a physical embodiment of its author persisted. Jessica DeSpain's study of this period of textual instability examines how the ""