Chapter 5 - Copyright Disputes

Summary

The domination of the Shakespeare publishing field by the Tonson cartel came under challenge from various quarters over the course of the eighteenth century. This chapter charts the efforts of a number of English publishers to break the cartel's monopoly. The legal and regulatory background is traced and the various challenges across the century are registered, including initiatives launched by Thomas Johnson, Robert Walker, Thomas Cotes and John Bell. Attention is paid to the first English edition of Shakespeare published outside London: Thomas Hanmer's text, issued in conjunction with the university press at Oxford. The chapter concludes with a consideration of John Stockdale's editions which, in one configuration, offered the first single-volume text to have appeared since the end of the seventeenth century.