English Advance Access published online on October 4, 2009
English, doi:10.1093/english/efp031
THE MODERN FIGURE OF THE AUTHOR, SARAH FIELDING, AND THE CASE OF THE HISTORIES OF SOME OF THE PENITENTS OF THE MAGDALEN HOUSE
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Abstract |
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In this article I posit that the modern figure of the author – single, original, and proprietary – has shadowed attempts to ascribe authorship to The Histories of Some of the Penitents of the Magdalen House (1760), a novel of interest both for the development of narrative style and because it was part of the propaganda efforts of the Magdalen Hospital for Repentant Prostitutes. I observe that a model of collaborative authorship was already in place in the eighteenth century, and I consider the role of speculation in matters of attribution when questions are murky, as they are regarding authorship of this text. Noting matters of biography and using internal evidence for my argument, I consider collaborative authorship for this text, with Sarah Fielding as one worker, likely Sarah Scott, and possibly including contributions from other writers. In closing, I note ways that thinking about collaborative authors for The Histories can lead to new research into the reform energies of the Bath community of women (Fielding and Scott among them), and I suggest that, particularly, we scholars who work on women writers move our attribution studies beyond the shadow of the single, original and proprietary figure of the modern author.
* Correspondence to Carolyn Woodward, Department of English, University of New Mexico. I would like to acknowledge the hospitality of Zimmerman Library, the University of New Mexico, in particular those services provided by Randy Moorehead in the Interlibrary Loan Department.