Dying to be Read: Gallows Authorship in Late Seventeenth-Century England

Authors

  • Margaret J.M. Ezell

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21825/aj.v3i1.1068

Keywords:

Gallows authorship, broadsheets, early modern print culture, confession, crime, Margaret J.M. Ezell

Abstract

In her essay “Dying to be Read”, Margaret Ezell’s explores a media configuration of authorship that literally necessitates the “death of the author” as a condition sine qua non: the printed “dying words” of executed men and women in the Restoration period.  The essay examines this type of “gallows literature” of the 1670 and 1680s as a form of “performed narrative” that highlights “the complexity of seventeenth-century authorship practices”.

Author Biography

Margaret J.M. Ezell

Margaret J.M. Ezell is Distinguished Professor of English and the Sara and John Lindsey Chair of Liberal Arts at Texas A&M University. Her publications include The Patriarch's Wife: Literary Evidence and the History of the Family, Writing Women's Literary History, and Social Authorship and the Advent of Print. Presently she is completing a volume in the new Oxford University literary history series covering the period 1645-1714.

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Published

2014-03-31

How to Cite

Ezell, M. J. (2014). Dying to be Read: Gallows Authorship in Late Seventeenth-Century England. uthorship, 3(1). https://doi.org/10.21825/aj.v3i1.1068

Issue

Vol. 3 No. 1 (2014)

Section

Special Topic: Reconfiguring Authorship

License

Authorship allows authors to hold both the copyright and the publishing rights over their work without restrictions. However, a mention of their first publication in Authorship will be highly appreciated.