Ronan Deazley Legal History Books sku-912790841 Copyright

Ronan Deazley's hardcover On the Origin of the Right to Copy is listed under Legal History Books, SKU sku-912790841. It traces British copyright law from the lapse of the Licensing Act 1662 in 1695 through the Statute of Anne 1709 and the eighteenth century, ending with the House of Lords decision in Donaldson v Becket in 1774. The title gives the period as 1695-1775.

The book challenges the familiar account of copyright changing from a publisher's right to an author's right. It argues that legislation intended to regulate booksellers and publishers came to recognize an author's intellectual work as property through a more complex process than reformers anticipated.