ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the competing claims of ownership of the texts of Oroonoko and, concomitantly, of those tropes which arose from the printing and staging of the story to reflect and help shape national attitudes toward female authorship, slavery and race. It addresses the authorial and editorial manipulation of those Oroonoko tropes which reflect shifting notions of authorship and English colonial power. The chapter deals with Thomas Southerne's, John Hawkesworth's, Francis Gentleman's, John Ferriar's and the Anonymous dramatic texts. The material and social foundation of Southerne's Eighteenth-century success with the marketing of Oroonoko lies in the developing print industry and changes in notions of copyright. Behn's actual literary property in Oroonoko expired with the initial publication in 1688 after she had sold the text to William Canning. In place of the competitive binary underlying so much Oroonoko criticism, the chapter suggests a reflexive grid that takes into account the complete network of interrelated prose and dramatic publications.
