A book whose implications extend far beyond the geographical and temporal boundaries of its subject. Anyone who wishes to know the answer to Foucault's famous question, 'What is an author?, ' should start here with Hesse's illuminating study of the transformation of the author from the privileged creation of the absolutist state, to the civic hero of public enlightenment, to the bourgeois head of household. . . . The consequences of the political, economic, and ideological struggles so brilliantly explored in this book continue to shape our own cultural politics."—Stephen Greenblatt, author of Shakespearean Negotiations