Romantic Fragmentation and Victorian Censorship: Rethinking Nineteenth-Century Authorship

This essay examines how and to what extent the growth and professionalization of the publishing industry during the nineteenth century created in­consistencies between the text that was originally produced by an author and the text that eventually appeared as a published book. Drawing on con­temporary literary theory's conflicting views on the status and significance of the author, it attempts a reconciliatory approach that views the author and the literary text as social entities that interact with the reader. On this ground, the essay discusses examples drawn from the publishing industry's interference with Romantic fragments on the one hand, and Victorian cen­sored texts on the other in order to highlight the ways in which the pub­lishing industry has shaped the nineteenth-century author and his/ her work; subsequently, this analysis helps explore the implications that the mediation of the publishing industry has for the consumption of nineteenth-century literature nowadays