It's always a pleasure to speak at the Mises Institute.
I regard myself as a lonely soldier on the remote outpost of literature for the sake
of Austrian economics.
I'm always on the lookout of something in my field that might be relevant to Austrian
economics, and I hope I found a subject today, namely copyright.
This is a subject that has been of great interest to Austrian economics in recent years.
I myself have been persuaded by the people who are opposed to intellectual property.
I don't propose to go into the issue, but just to suggest how literary studies can actually
help us in this area.
It's surprising how much good material is available on copyright.
I brought along several books if people are interested in seeing them.
Literature professors do study books.
Study, The History of the Book, and a lot of good stuff has been written, at least on
the history of copyright, without necessarily taking a position against it. But these books
are very revealing. They, by going back to 1600, they show that copyright is a creation
of the state from the beginning, that for at least two centuries, copyright solely existed
for the Benefit of Publishers and not at all for authors, and above all that copyright
was a system of licensing, that kings used it to determine what would and would not be
published within their realm and to reward their favorites. Again, it's a long history,
I won't attempt to go into it. It is interesting that it's only in the 18th century that copyright
begins to be available to authors and it really is in the 19th century that the
current sort of cultural theories behind copyright emerge and there's a lot of
interesting scholarship on that subject and there's a overwhelming evidence that
our modern notion of what an author is is a product of the Romantic period and
Romantic ideology and that's why I'm going to focus today on the figure of
of William Wordsworth.
Now, when I was studying Romanticism in graduate school,
I never expected to make this sentence, but here it goes.
William Wordsworth was the Mickey Mouse of the 19th century.
That is, you may have noticed that whenever Mickey Mouse
threatens to come into the public domain,
miraculously, Congress decides to extend copyright.
And it turns out Wordsworth was the first example of this.
This is what I was amazed to discover, that really the first parliamentary debate in England
about extending copyright, it was at the time 14 to 28 years and then in 1842 it was expanded
to 42 years or the author's lifetime plus seven years, whichever was longer.
The debate over that copyright extension, the major act of copyright extension in the
In the early 19th century, really the first time Parliament devoted itself specifically to the issue of the length of copyright was fought over William Wordsworth.
A man named Sergeant Thomas Noon Tailford, a member of Parliament from Reading and a minor author, single-handedly raised the issue of copyright.
in 1837, parliament moved slowly, it wasn't until 1842 that the extension of copyright
was passed.
He was a great admirer of Wordsworth, had written about him and indeed enlisted him
in the cause.
So this is a very interesting example of how we are reliving stories from the 19th century.
When you go back, you see once again that the rhetoric of copyright extension was built
around celebrating a great author and how much he needed money and how his children
were going to go impoverished if his copyright wasn't extended and so on.
So it's a very interesting case study in seeing at least how copyright is sold to legislative
bodies and in the realm of public opinion.
Now, as it turns out, it was not just a campaign on behalf of Wordsworth, but he was enlisted
in it very actively.
He wrote some 40 to 50 letters.
Some appeared under his own name in newspapers in defense of this copyright extension.
Some appeared anonymously as if there was this huge groundswell in favor of the copyright
Extension.
Moreover, he lobbied individual members of parliament, including Sir Robert Peel, and
it didn't get any higher in those days than Sir Robert Peel.
He's after all the guy that carried the anti-corn law legislation.
And Wordsworth said he wouldn't organize a petition, but he'd happy to be to sign one,
and a number of other authors signed, Charles Dickens, Robert Browning, Harriet Martino.
Wordsworth was the only one who was actively engaged in this.
The others were willing to sign petitions, but moreover, it's quite evident that Talford's
arguments made in Parliament were very much derived from Wordsworth.
But Wordsworth went even beyond this.
He wrote a sonnet in favor of copyright.
Now this is what I figure I can really contribute to you.
You guys probably never dreamed a sonnet was ever written in favor of copyright. But here
goes. This was written in May 1838 as the campaign was revving up in Parliament. It's
called a plea for authors. Failing impartial measure to dispense to every suitor, equity
is lame. And social justice, just think what Hayek would have thought, social justice being
and Social Justice, stripped of reverence for natural rights, a mockery and a shame law, but a servile dupe of false pretense, if guarding grossest things from common claim, now and forever she, to works that came from mind and spirit, grudge a short-lived fence.
That's what a 28-year copyright is, it's a short-lived fence.
What? Length and privilege, a little tie for books? Yes! Heartless ones! Or be it proved
that it is a fault in us to have lived and loved like others, with like temporal hopes
to die, no public harm, that genius from a course be turned, and streams of truth dried
up even at their source?
Not the greatest sonnet ever written, I will tell you. If that wasn't enough though, Wordsworth
Joseph really turned on the rhetoric and wrote another sonnet, a plea to his grandchild,
sequel to a plea for authors. This is very hard to follow, so I'll basically say, I can't
believe my grandchild will be so poor because I don't have copyrights that he'll be dumb
and can't even read my books. Here it goes. Son of my buried son, see that's grandchild,
son of my buried son, while thus thy hand is clasping mine, it saddens me to think how
how want may press thee down, and with thee sink thy children left unfit through vain demand of culture, even to feel or understand my simplest lay, that to their memory may cling, hard fate, which happily need not be, did justice mold the statutes of the land, a book, time cherished and an honored name, are high rewards, but bound they nature's claim or reasons, no, hope spun in timid line from out the bosom of a modest home,
then through unambitious years to come, my careless little ones, for thee and thine.
Again, I think this is unique in the history of the world, poetry in favor of copyright
extension. By the way, Wordsworth believed in perpetual copyright, but was willing to
settle for 42 years plus seven. Now, it's interesting to examine the arguments that
Wordsworth and Tailford, his mouthpiece, made on behalf of the extension of copyright.
Because in many ways it's the inverse of the real issue of copyright. I mean that most
authors make their money in the first few months of what they publish. It's very rare
to go beyond that. But Wordsworth was in a different situation and it's something that
really frustrated him. He was not selling well as a poet. He was selling decently, but
he had this theory that his day would come. When Lyrical Ballads was first published,
this volume he published anonymously with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1798, he got 30 guineas
for it, guineas a pound plus a shilling. For the 1800 second edition, he got a hundred
Tell you how stupid my colleagues are. Some of them say, gee, look how little money he
got for his book, 100 pounds. Well, they've never heard of inflation or deflation. You
know, 100 pounds, it's hard to estimate, it's worth at least $20,000 today, probably more.
You could live decently for 150 pounds a year. That was a middle class income. So Wordsworth
Wordsworth was getting almost a year's income, I wonder if he split it with Coleridge, but
what annoyed him was Thomas More was getting £3,000 for Lala Rook, that Walter Scott was
getting £35,000 for some of his poems and that's billions of dollars right there.
And so Wordsworth was frustrated that he wasn't doing as well in the marketplace as other
of Poets, but he had this sense that he was truly great and they weren't, and that over
time their popularity would fade and he would become more and more popular. And indeed by
the 1830s he reports his income off his copyrights was about £1,500, which is again a lot of
money in those days. By the way, he was one of the first authors to hold on to his copyrights.
Most of us academics have given away our copyrights to the presses that publish our books and
it was very characteristic in those days for almost everybody to get whatever money they
could from the publisher initially and let the publisher bear the risk.
But Wordsworth did hold on to his copyrights and he therefore wanted them extended and extended
And his argument was that a great poet, an original genius, creates the taste by which
he is appreciated.
That's why Wordsworth wrote so many prefaces to his works, trying to explain to a non-buying
public how really great his poetry was.
And again, it's interesting that Talford uses that very language in the parliamentary debate.
So I'm going to read you a couple of things that Wordsworth said about, in defense of
extending the copyright.
The objections against Telford's proposed bill rest upon the presumption that it would
check the circulation of literature and by so doing would prove injurious to the public.
And indeed, the people who republished books, a famous one named Teg, were arguing that
Copyrights long enough, by extending it you'll keep the circulation of books down. We're
the ones who do cheap reprints and make books available to people. So Wordsworth recognizes
that objection. But this is what I love. This is so characteristic of the romantic poets.
But what we want in these times, and are likely to want still more, is not the circulation
of books, but of good books. And above all the production of works, the authors of which
which look beyond the passing day and are desirous of pleasing and instructing future
generations. Now there cannot be a question that the proposed
bill would greatly strengthen such desire. A conscientious author who had a family to
maintain and a prospect of descendants would regard the additional labor bestowed upon
any considerable work he might have at hand in the light of an insurance of money. Copyright
is insurance, kind of life insurance for authors,
upon his own life for the benefit of his issue,
and he would be animated in his efforts accordingly,
and would cheerfully undergo present privations
for such future recompense.
Deny it to him, and you unfeelingly leave
a weight upon his spirits, which must deaden his exertions,
or you force him to turn his faculties,
unless he is unjust to those whom both nature and law require
that he should provide for, to inferior employments.
So basically it's an argument that we need copyright because otherwise people, writers
will devote themselves to the mere fans and fashions of the moment in an effort to make
a quick buck, but to write a great work of literature you need to be able to take the
longer perspective and only the assurance he said a perpetual copyright would permit
that.
Might add there you notice he's obsessed as we saw on that second sonnet with his family.
He really wanted a form of property. He complains poets don't own land, but they could have
these perpetual copyrights that would be like a land to give to their descendants. Here's
another example of what he said on behalf. This actually was years before the actual
parliamentary debate. It's in 1808. He was saying, I'm told it is proposed to expand
and the right from fourteen years as it now stands after the decease of authors till twenty-eight.
This I think far too short a period. At least I'm sure there requires much more than that
length of time to establish the reputation of original productions, both in philosophy
and poetry, and to bring them consequently into such circulation that the authors and
the persons of their heirs of prosperity, there it is again, can in any degree be benefited,
I mean in a pecuniary point of view, for the trouble they must have taken to produce the
Works. The law as it now stands merely consults the interest of the useful drudges in literature
or flimsy and shallow writers whose works are upon a level with the taste and knowledge
of the age, while men of real power, like Wordsworth, who go before their age are deprived
of all hope of their families being benefited for their exertions.
So notice the theory here that poets need incentives to produce great work, that if they don't
have a perpetual copyright, they're just not going to put into poetry what they need to
produce great works. Now this is the same Wordsworth who in the 1800 preface to the
Lyrical Ballads defines poetry as the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings. That's his
It's a romantic theory of poetry that's spontaneous, it just flows out of you, it's overwhelming.
That is probably closer to the way he produces poetry than anything he says in these letters.
It in a way is such a mechanical view of poetry that the poet sits down and calculates, now
should I write something suited to the moment and make a lot of money to give my family,
or should I wait and do be a genius and if I have copyright then I can afford to wait
for my poetry to become famous. That's a very unromantic view of how poetry is produced.
For a more romantic view of how poetry is produced, I turn to a man named Ludwig von
Mises and a book called Human Action, which has some interesting discussion of copyright
in it, but particularly a section called The Creative Genius, in which Mises writes,
Far above the millions that come and pass away tower the pioneers, the men whose deeds
and ideas cut out new paths for mankind. For the pioneering genius to create is the essence
of life. To live means for him to create. He goes on to say the activities of these
prodigious men cannot be fully subsumed under the praxeological concept of labor. It's
This is really quite remarkable. People who think of Mises as viewing everything in economic terms don't realize that he was able to see that there's something that goes beyond that.
And I just want to read one more sentence from him, a saying about poems.
They are not the outcome of the employment of labor, which could have been devoted to the production of other amenities for the production of a masterpiece or philosophy or literature.
Poetry for Mises is indeed the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.
by saying that in this debate, Ludwig von Mises is the romantic and William Wordsworth
is the narrow-minded economic thinker who talks about incentivizing and the poetic indifference
curve.