Patent Inventions: Intellectual Property and the Victorian Novel [Hardcover]

Clare Pettitt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 20, 2004

This book examines the shared rhetoric surrounding the creation of the "inventor" and the "author" in the 1830s, and the challenge of the emerging technologies of mass production to traditional ideas of art and industry. Patent Inventions argues that Victorian writers used the novel not just to reflect, but also to challenge received notions of intellectual ownership and responsibility, using close readings of work by Dickens, Thackeray, Gaskell, Eliot, and Hardy.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Breaks new ground in the way in which it moves among literary, manufacturing, and legal issues. It offers an extremely illuminating study of the development of ideas concerning invention and intellectual property in the nineteenth century, and their implications for theories of the literary marketplace, authorship and readership, and individualism."--Studies in English Literature 1500-1900

About the Author

Clare Pettitt worked in journalism and theatre in London for six years before completing a D.Phil at Oxford University, and then taking up a lectureship in Victorian literature at Leeds University in 1997. She is currently Director of Studies and Lecturer in English at Newnham College, Cambridge. She has published several articles about Elizabeth Gaskell and Charles Dickens, and is a regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 360 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (May 20, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 019925320X
• ISBN-13: 978-0199253203
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,813,526 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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