ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author aims to give the interplay between fixed social identity and self-determination a more specific focus by proposing that the development of authorship in early modern England derives much of its energy from the constant up-and-down movements within changing occupational strata. The development of a sense of ownership, as conditioned by broader movements toward commodity culture, represents a major moment in the history of authorship as a vocation. Vocation is an important term, as work was a major category that early moderns used to conceptualize social life. The concept of vocation fragmented into two competing ideas. The first takes a calling to be labor in a specific trade that determines one's identity and fortune. The second view of the calling is the one espoused by early modern society's more radical elements: that labor in any calling is virtuous.
