Literary Couplings

Writing Couples, Collaborators, and the Construction of Authorship

Marjorie Stone, Judith Thompson, Marjorie Stone, Judith Thompson

• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Year: 2006
• Print ISBN: 9780299217648, 9780299217600
• eBook ISBN: 9780299217631
• Subtopic: Literary Biographies

This innovative collection challenges the traditional focus on solitary genius by examining the rich diversity of literary couplings and collaborations from the early modern to the postmodern period. Literary Couplings explores some of the best-known literary partnerships—from the Sidneys to Boswell and Johnson to Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes—and also includes lesser-known collaborators such as Daphne Marlatt and Betsy Warland. The essays place famous authors such as Samuel Coleridge, Oscar Wilde, and William Butler Yeats in new contexts; reassess overlooked members of writing partnerships; and throw new light on texts that have been marginalized due to their collaborative nature. By integrating historical studies with authorship theory, Literary Couplings goes beyond static notions of the writing "couple" to explore literary couplings created by readers, critics, historians, and publishers as well as by writers themselves, thus expanding our understanding of authorship.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Prologue: Signs of the Times: Five Snapshots of Contemporary Authorship
• Contexts and Heterotexts: A Theoretical and Historical Introduction. Marjorie Stone & Judith Thompson
• I. Early Modern “Coupled Worke”
• II. Romantic Joint Labor
• III. Victorian Complementarities and Crosscurrents
• IV. Literary Modernity: Mythmakers and Muses
• V. Writing Back: Postcolonial and Contemporary Contestation and Retrospection
• Taking Joint Stock: A Critical Survey of Scholarship on Literary Couples and Collaboration. Marjorie Stone & Judith Thompson
• Bibliography
• Contributors
• Index