ABSTRACT
In this essay, I address the murky nature of ownership of and responsibility over examples of anonymous, never-published fiction, and the effects of that murkiness on my project, Manuscript Fiction in the Age of Print 1750–1900. This database makes more discoverable works of never-published fiction currently held by dozens of archives in the United States and Great Britain, many of which have only approximate dates of composition and little authorial or provenance information. The essay discusses logistical, budgetary, and legal challenges before turning to the still more-numinous ethical quandaries that arise when working with material that was never part of a commercial print marketplace. Unpublished manuscript fiction provides an unusual and useful edge case for discoverability, description, digitization, and dissemination. While technology and the march of time will alleviate some of the specific challenges of transcription and copyright limits discussed in this essay, questions about our responsibility to material, and the double-edged sword of “access”, will remain as long as some notion of ownership, authority, and privacy remain.
