Hostname: page-component-7bb8b95d7b-l4ctd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-09-13T02:11:41.888Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Francis Kirkman's Counterfeit Authority: Autobiography, Subjectivity, Print

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Jody Greene
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This essay explores the relation between print culture and literary authority in seventeenth-century England, through the career of the rogue author, translator, and autobiographer Francis Kirkman. Barred from traditional forms of authority by his middle-class birth and rudimentary education, Kirkman claimed new forms of self-authorization promised by the press. In his autobiography, The Unlucky Citizen, as well as in his biography of the impersonator Mary Carleton, the self-styled “German Princess,” Kirkman developed strategies of counterfeiting authority to compensate for the traditional entitlements he, like Carleton, lacked. These strategies involved harnessing the press to circulate authoritative versions of his authorial persona that were intended to substitute for his unauthorized status. Kirkman's ultimate failure to “gain some Reputation by being in Print” is instructive for scholars interested in the history of autobiography and in the changing conditions of authorship in the first era of print culture. (JG)

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 121 , Issue 1: Special Topic: The History of the Book and the Idea of Literature , January 2006 , pp. 17 - 32
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2006

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Amelang, James S. The Flight of Icarus: Artisan Autobiography in Early Modern Europe. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1998.Google Scholar
Bald, R. C. “Francis Kirkman, Bookseller and Author.” Modern Philology 41 (1943): 17–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Booy, David. Personal Disclosures: An Anthology of Self-Writings from the Seventeenth Century. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1997.Google Scholar
The Case of Madam Mary Carleton, Lately Stiled the German Princess. London: printed for Samuel Speed and Henry Marsh, 1663.Google Scholar
Chalmers, Hero. “‘The Person I Am; or, What They Made Me to Be’: The Construction of the Feminine Subject in the Autobiographies of Mary Carleton.” Women, Texts, and Histories, 1575–1760. Ed. Brant, Clare and Purkiss, Diane. London: Routledge, 1992. 104–94.Google Scholar
Chandler, F. W. The Literature of Roguery. Vol. 1. New York: Franklin, 1958. 2 vols.Google Scholar
Cobbett's Complete Collection of State Trials and Proceedings for High Treason and Other Crimes and Misdemeanors: From the Earliest Period to the Present Time. Vol. 6. London: R. Bagshaw, 1809–28. 34 vols.Google Scholar
Cooley, Jennifer. Courtiers, Courtesans, Pícaros, and Prostitutes: The Art and Artifice of Selling One's Self in Golden Age Spain. New Orleans: UP of the South, 2002.Google Scholar
Davis, Lennard J. Factual Fictions: The Origins of the English Novel. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1996.Google Scholar
Delany, Paul. British Autobiography in the Seventeenth Century. London: Routledge, 1969.Google Scholar
de Man, Paul. “Autobiography as De-facement.” The Rhetoric of Romanticism. New York: Columbia UP, 1984. 67–81.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. Given Time: 1. Counterfeit Money. Trans. Kamuf, Peggy. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1992.Google Scholar
Dunn, Peter N. Spanish Picaresque Fiction: A New Literary History. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1993.Google Scholar
Forman, Gail I. “The Life and Works of Francis Kirkman: A Study in Restoration Publishing.” Diss. U of Maryland, 1972.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. “What Is an Author?” Textual Strategies. Ed. Harari, Josué V. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1979. 141–60.Google Scholar
Gallagher, Catherine. Nobody's Story: The Vanishing Acts of Women Writers in the Marketplace, 1670–1820. Berkeley: U of California P, 1994.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greenblatt, Stephen. Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1980.Google Scholar
“Greensickness.” The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989.Google Scholar
Greg, W. W. Some Aspects and Problems of London Publishing between 1550 and 1650. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1956.Google Scholar
Head, Richard. The English Rogue. Pt. 1. London: printed for Francis Kirkman, 1672.Google Scholar
Heale, Rosemary. Autobiography and Authorship in Renaissance Verse: Chronicles of the Self. New York: Palgrave, 2003.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johns, Adrian. The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1998.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kenner, Hugh. The Counterfeiters: An Historical Comedy. Garden City: Anchor, 1973.Google Scholar
Kietzman, Mary Jo. The Self-Fashioning of an Early Modern Englishwoman: Mary Carleton's Lives. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004.Google Scholar
Kirkman, Francis. The Counterfeit Lady Unveiled, Being a Full Account of the Birth, Life, Most Remarkable Actions, and Untimely Death of Mary Carleton, Known by the Name of the German Princess. London: printed for Peter Parker, 1673.Google Scholar
Kirkman, Francis, trans. The Famous History … of Amadis de Gaule … Being the Sixth Part. London: printed by Jane Bell, 1652.Google Scholar
Kirkman, Francis, trans. The Loves and Adventures of Clerio and Lozia. London: printed by J. M., 1652.Google Scholar
Kirkman, Francis. “The Preface to the Reader.” Head A3r–A3v.Google Scholar
Kirkman, Francis. The Unlucky Citizen, Experimentally Described in the Various Misfortunes of an Unlucky Londoner. London: printed by Anne Johnson for Francis Kirkman, 1673.Google Scholar
Mascuch, Michael. Origins of the Individualist Self: Autobiography and Self-Identity in England, 1591–1791. New York: Polity, 1997.Google Scholar
McKeon, Michael. The Origins of the English Novel, 1600–1740. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1987.Google Scholar
Mumby, Frank Arthur. Publishing and Bookselling, Part One: From the Earliest Times to 1870. London: Cape, 1974.Google Scholar
Parker, Patricia. Shakespeare from the Margins: Language, Culture, Context. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1996.Google Scholar
Peterson, Spiro. The Counterfeit Lady Unveiled and Other Criminal Fiction of Seventeenth-Century England. New York: Harbor, 1961.Google Scholar
Plant, Marjorie. The English Book Trade. 1939. London: Allen, 1974.Google Scholar
Porter, Roy, and Hall, Lesley. The Facts of Life: The Creation of Sexual Knowledge in Britain, 1650–1950. New Haven: Yale UP, 1995.Google Scholar
Ross, Marlon B. “Authority and Authenticity: Scribbling Authors and the Genius of Print in Eighteenth-Century England.” The Construction of Authorship: Textual Appropriation in Law and Literature. Ed. Woodmansee, Martha and Jaszi, Peter. Durham: Duke UP, 1994. 231–57.Google Scholar
Rowell, Roland. Counterfeiting and Forgery: A Practical Guide to the Law. London: Butterworths, 1986.Google Scholar
Saunders, J. W. “The Stigma of Print: A Note on the Social Bases of Tudor Poetry.” Essays in Criticism 1 (1951): 139–64.Google Scholar
Stewart, Susan. Crimes of Writing: Problems in the Containment of Representation. Durham: Duke UP, 1994.Google Scholar
Todd, Janet, and Spearing, Elizabeth. Introduction. Counterfeit Ladies. Ed. Todd and Spearing. New York: New York UP, 1994.Google Scholar
Wall, Wendy. The Imprint of Gender: Authorship and Publication in the English Renaissance. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1993.Google Scholar