Introduction

Abstract

In Henry Fielding’s The Author’s Farce (1730), the scribbler, Scarecrow, arrives at the printer Bookweight’s shop, proffering three texts. The first two, an attack on and defense of the “Ministry” respectively, Bookweight rejects, informing the audience in an aside that he already has such works in press. Scarecrow consequently hinges his hopes on his third effort:

SCARECROW: I have a Translation of Virgil’s Aeneid, with Notes on it. BOOKWEIGFIT: That, Sir, is what I do not care to venture on. You may try by SUBSCRIPTION, if you please, but I wou’d not advise you: for that Bubble is almost down: People begin to be afraid of Authors, since they have writ and acted like Stock-Jobbers. So to oblige a young Beginner, I don’t care if I Print it at my own Expence. SCARECROW: But pray, Sir, at whose Expence shall I eat? (1 249; 2.6)

This brief exchange reveals much about what was marketable to readers in the mid-eighteenth century. Desperate to earn some kind of living by the pen, Scarecrow first tries contemporary political polemic, usually a sure bet as Bookweight’s self-interested aside reveals.