Literary Sociability and Literary Property in France, 1775–1793

The first full-length, scholarly study of the Société des auteurs dramatiques (SAD), this book focuses on the first professional association for creative writers in European history. Brown traces how Beaumarchais led this group's fight for literary property legislation and worked to raise the status of men of letters. This study focuses on the form and meaning of eighteenth-century literary sociability, at the intersection of political reform, commercial theater, and writers' anxieties about their public identities.