Collaborative Writing in the Long Nineteenth Century
Sympathetic Partnerships and Artistic Creation

Examining social and material dimensions of collaboration, this book reveals the diverse networks of nineteenth-century literary exchange.

Heather Bozant Witcher (Author)

9781316513491, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 17 March 2022

250 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.2 cm, 0.541 kg

Bringing the collaborative process to life through an array of examples, Heather Witcher shows that sympathetic co-creation is far more than the mere act of writing together. While foregrounding the material aspects of collaboration – hands uniting on the page, blank space left for fellow contributors, the writing and exchanging of drafts – this study also illuminates its social aspects and its reliance on Victorian liberalism: dialogue, the circulation of correspondence, the lived experience of collaboration, and, on a less material plane, transhistorical collaborations with figures of the past. Witcher takes a broad approach to these partnerships and, in doing so, challenges traditional expectations surrounding the nature of authorship itself, not least its typical classification as a solitary activity. Within this new framework, collaboration enables the titles of 'coauthor,' 'influencer,' 'editor,' 'critic,' and 'inspiration' to coexist. This book celebrates the plurality of collaboration and underscores the truly social nature of nineteenth-century writing.

Introduction
1. Adam Smith's liberal sympathy
2. 'O you pretty Pecksie!': The collaborative process of Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley
3. Written-visual aesthetics: The Rossettis and the Pre-Raphaelites
4. Typographical adventures: William Morris, community, and the Kelmscott Press
5. Sim and Puss: The sympathetic mirroring of Michael Field
6. Towards empathy: Vernon Lee's psychological aesthetics
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural history [HBTB], Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 [DSBF], Literary theory [DSA]