ABSTRACT
It was not until the passage of the Chace Act of 1891 that foreign writers were offered copyright protection for their publications in the United States. Up until that time, American publishers were free to reprint foreign works at will without seeking permission from or providing compensation for the authors or original publishers. However, the works of American authors could be protected in England if they were published there first. This state of affairs led the Critic to proclaim in June 1851 that “the British Author is subjected to a double injury; the American writer shares the patronage of readers in England, and the American Publisher plunders him in America ... So long as the American Authors and Publishers can command the monopoly, both of our markets and of their own, they will not follow our example” (“The Copyright Question” 251). By February 1852, the Critic’s rhetoric had intensified: “We are not craving a boon; we are demanding justice. If American privateers were to seize our merchantmen, they would not ... be committing a greater crime than is the piracy of English books by American publishers. The demand for reparation would be swift in the one case; let it be no longer delayed in the others” (“International Copyright with America” 88). Other writers were even less judicious in their criticism, comparing the state of transatlantic copyright law not only to the piracy of a merchant ship, but also to slavery.1
