The Profession of English Letters - Hardcover

J.W. Saunders ' subject is one whose boundaries are unusually hard to define. The history of authorship as a profession abuts on the history of literature, of literary taste, of economics; on biography; on economics; on biography; on criticism; on social history. To say that this book is best regarded as a readable first attempt at a comprehensive history of English authorship, rather than the definitive work that has long been needed, is as much commentary on the difficulties of the task as on Saunders' accomplishment. The Profession of English Letters is both informative and stimulating. This is a history of English literary profession from Chaucer to the present day. It describes the evolution of a literary profession dedicated to providing a service as distinctive and as valuable as that provided by the professions of law and medicine. From the medieval origins the story is taken through the Renaissance with its many contradictions to the establishment of a profession by Augustans, and then onwards through the stresses of Romanticism to problems of the mass market and the profession today. From these pages one can derive how much authors earned from their production in various epochs; of the patronage system and the relation between writers and the court; of the shifts in literary fashion which affected the marketability and cash values of their work; and how the social status of professional writers has improved in recent centuries.