Literary Copyright

In the Gilded Age, when publishers held all the power and authors struggled for fair compensation, Charles Dudley Warner mounted a passionate defense of the creative mind. 'Literary Copyright' argues that copyright law should protect not just the publication of works, but the fundamental right of authors to own what they create. Warner saw a system rigged in favor of commercial interests, where writers signed away their intellectual property for short-term gains and publishers reaped the long-term rewards. He advocates for longer copyright terms, fairer contracts, and a publishing ecosystem that values artistic excellence over mere marketability. What makes this 19th-century treatise still pulse is its timeless relevance: Warner's complaints about exploitation of creators, the precarity of literary labor, and the tension between art and commerce could have been written yesterday. For anyone who has ever wondered why authors struggle to survive from their work, or why the publishing industry often seems designed to benefit everyone except the people who actually write, this is a foundational text that explains how we got here.