Patent Inventions Intellectual Property and the Victorian Novel

This book examines the shared rhetoric surrounding the creation of the "inventor" and the "author" in the 1830s, and the challenge of the emerging technologies of mass production to traditional ideas of art and industry. Patent Inventions argues that Victorian writers used the novel not just to reflect, but also to challenge received notions of intellectual ownership and responsibility, using close readings of work by Dickens, Thackeray, Gaskell, Eliot, and Hardy.

Clare Pettitt worked in journalism and theatre in London for six years before completing a D.Phil at Oxford University, and then taking up a lectureship in Victorian literature at Leeds University in 1997. She is currently Director of Studies and Lecturer in English at Newnham College, Cambridge. She has published several articles about Elizabeth Gaskell and Charles Dickens, and is a regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement.