Multiple Authorship and the Myth of Solitary Genius

by Jack Stillinger

This is a study of the collaborative creation behind literary works that are usually considered to be written by a single author. Although most theories of interpretation and editing depend on a concept of single authorship, many works are actually developed by more than one author. Stillinger examines case histories from Keats, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Mill, and T.S. Eliot, as well as from American fiction, plays, and films, demonstrating that multiple authorship is a widespread phenomenon. He shows that the reality of how an author produces a work is often more complex than is expressed in the romantic notion of the author as solitary genius. The cumulative evidence revealed in this engaging study indicates that collaboration deserves to be included in any account of authorial achievement.

272 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Jack Stillinger has been a member of the English faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign since 1958 and Center for Advanced Study Professor of English since 1970. He has published 26 books (monographs, textual studies, scholarly editions) and numerous articles and reviews, mainly on nineteenth-century British literature.

Stillinger has held fellowships and awards from, among others, the Woodrow Wilson and Guggenheim foundations, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Endowment for the Humanities and was the 1986 recipient of the Keats-Shelley Association's Distinguished Scholar Award. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Reviews

[Lobo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Doktorat in progress.