Copyright and the Value of Performance, 1770-1911

Derek Miller is John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University, Massachusetts.

• Introduction: copyright, commodification, and performance; 1. Performance's valuable propriety, 1770–1833; 2. Ontologies of the performance-commodity, 1833–86; 3. Audiences, actors, and value, 1852–1911; 4. The performance-commodity at work, 1833–1911; Epilogue: valuing performance today; Appendix: timeline of major legislation and litigation affecting performance rights.

'Derek Miller's superb study examines how live performances of drama and music became objects of legally protected commodification between 1770 and 1911. In addition to his extended treatment of nearly a dozen major legal cases, Miller supplies a wealth of material from dozens of minor disputes as well as some wonderful archival finds from case files. Copyright and the Value of Performance will be important for literary and performance historians for its expanded account of what copyright is, was, and can be.' John Shanahan, Modern Drama