ABSTRACT
This chapter examines different modes of authorship evident across the publication history of Thomas Moore’s Lalla Rookh, considering the influence of various nonauthorial agents. It describes the details of the work’s publication by Longmans from its first edition in 1817 to its final edition in 1880. The chapter examines case studies within the sequence of changing formats, print runs, illustrations, and prices of Lalla Rookh over this period, illustrating how these changes were precipitated by the general procedures of publishing, as well as by external forces, such as changes to the market, copyright law, and the circumstances of both reader and author. In so doing, it presents a model for describing the publication history of a single literary work by showing the reciprocal influences of publisher, author, reader, and market in shaping the material and textual form of a single literary work over the course of more than sixty years. The chapter examines the material, textual, and paratextual forms of Lalla Rookh’s authorised and unauthorised publication to expose the shifting presentation and formulation of its author during the course of the work’s publication.
