Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

“Abused, Neglected,—Unhonoured,—Unrewarded”: The Economics Of Authorial Labor In The Writings Of Mary Robinson, Jennifer L. Airey

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

This essay examines one of the central preoccupations of Mary Robinson’s authorial career, a concern with the poor financial treatment of authors. Writers, Robinson suggests, are demeaned by predatory publishers, heartless or anti-intellectual aristocratic patrons, and a disinterested, distractible reading public, none of whom care to compensate the author for the labors of her pen. In a culture that neither recognizes nor rewards female intellect, women authors are particularly vulnerable, but Robinson’s criticisms transcend the problems caused by gender alone; male authors, too, could fall into penury when their labor was insufficiently valued. Rejecting the Romantic ethos of the solitary …