1. Introduction Ingo Berensmeyer, Gert Buelens and Marysa Demoor; Part I. Historical Perspectives: 2. Authorship in cuneiform literature Benjamin R. Foster; 3. Authorship in Ancient Egypt Antonio Loprieno; 4. Authorship in Archaic and Classical Greece Ruth Scodel; 5. Authorship in Classical Rome Christian Badura and Melanie Möller; 6. Conceptions of authorship in early Jewish cultures Mordechai Z. Cohen; 7. Modes of authorship and the making of Medieval English literature A. B. Kraebel; 8. Manuscript and print cultures 1500-1700 Margaret J. M. Ezell; 9. The eighteenth century: print, professionalization, and defining the author Betty A. Schellenberg; 10. The nineteenth century: intellectual property rights and 'literary larceny' Alexis Easley; 11. Industrialized print: modernism and authorship Sean Latham; 12. Postmodernist authorship Hans Bertens; 13. Chinese authorship Kang-i Sun Chang; 14. Literary authorship in the digital age Adriaan van der Weel; Part II. Systematic Perspectives: 15. Literary authorship in the traditions of rhetoric and poetics Kevin Dunn; 16. Authors, genres, and audiences: a rhetorical approach James Phelan; 17. The author in literary theory and theories of literature Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen; 18. Gender, sexuality, and the author: five phases of authorship from the Renaissance to the twenty-first century Chantal Zabus; 19. Postcolonial and Indigenous authorship Mita Banerjee; Part III. Practical Perspectives: 20. Attribution John Burrows and Hugh Craig; 21. Anonymity and pseudonymity Robert J. Griffin; 22. Plagiarism and forgery Jack Lynch; 23. Authorship and scholarly editing Dirk Van Hulle; 24. Copyright and literary property: the invention of secondary authorship Daniel Cook; 25. Censorship Trevor Ross; 26. Publishing and marketing Andrew King; 27. Institutions: writing and reading Jason Puskar.