The Emergence of the English Author

The historical construction of authorship is of enormous interest to scholars and critics. Yet an important aspect of the historical emergence of the author--the literary biography or life of the poet--has received scant attention. In The Emergence of the English Author Kevin Pask offers the first full-scale history of the cultural construction of literary authority in early modern England and studies the early life-narratives of major English poets Chaucer Sidney Spenser Donne and Milton.