ABSTRACT
In his first two volumes, Odes of Anacreon (1800) and The Poetical Works of the Late Thomas Little, Esq. (1801), Thomas Moore adopted intermediary personae which strategically obscured his authorial identity. At the same time the growth of his reputation in the United States equalled that in Britain. In the United States, a system of unauthorised reprinting which was structured to occlude the rights of international authors provided a systemic mirror for his tactical authorial poses. Ironically, as Moore appeared in the British marketplace with his first orthonymous publication, Epistles, Odes, and Other Poems (1806), the reprinting of its contents in the United States began to reflect the strategic manipulations and disavowals that enriched the authorial status of his first two books. As Moore moved towards a more conventional model of orthonymous authorship at home, international agents acted beyond his control to preserve the complex authorial significations of his work. This chapter examines how the unauthorised reprinting of Moore’s writings in the United States enhances our understandings of the complex authorship evident in his early works.
