What is it about?
British publishers needed to differentiate their books in a crowded market. They used language of identity to do so, focusing on "difference" or description of gender, race, age, class, and (dis)ability of the author. We show how the more socially marginalized the author, the more marketing language emphasizes that marginality. We also examine the role of capitalist consumption in this motivation.
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Why is it important?
We use an intersectional approach to analyze authorship language, which complicates histories that have primarily focused on only gender and class. Secondly, we identify what space authors have to advocate for themselves separate from the marketing language that highlighted their marginalized identities.
Perspectives
We loved writing this piece because it used an open-access dataset that captures authorship language on title pages (https://womensprinthistoryproject.com/). We looked at how the title pages performed gender and other aspects of identity, regardless of the author. This cultural imaginations of feminized authorship influences how actual women authors could (or could not) present themselves in public.
Kate Ozment
Case Western Reserve University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: ‘Come Buy This Book of Me’: Commodifying Difference in the Marketing of British Books, 1750–1830, November 2024, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004701656_025.
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