Most British prose fiction of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century did not explicitly identify a specific, real person as author. From 1750 to 1789, the median yearly share of new fiction books that were published anonymously was 85%. The share of anonymous works began to fall about 1790 and bottomed out at 40% about 1805. The share of anonymous works then rose again to about two-thirds in the late 1820s and early 1830s.^ Many novels indicated their authors using general social categories or references to other novels. Common attributions of this sort were “By a Lady,” “By a Young Lady,” “The First Literary Attempt of a Young Lady,” and “By the Author of {an earlier, well-known work, e.g. Waverly}.”^ The author description and the text itself provided resources for imagining the author.

Commercial circulating libraries largely mediated competition for attention to novels in England in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. Commercial circulating libraries offered a large share of anonymously authored fiction. For example, Thomas Lowndes ran in London “one of the earliest, largest, and most successful circulating libraries in Britain.” Fiction accounted for 10% of his 6,290-title catalog circa 1766. Anonymously authored fiction accounted for 56% of the fiction. Similarly, in provincial Yorktown, Michael Heavisides operated a small circulating library. Fiction accounted for 90% of his 466-title catalog in 1790. Anonymously authored fiction accounted for 75% of the circulating library’s fiction titles.^

Authorship of most British prose fiction of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century was not associated with the teaching authority of a specific, real person. Authors of such work did not compete within institutions that organized competition for acclaim among specific, real persons. Rather, authorial attributions and imaginative constructions of authorship were tactics in intense competition for attention.