This paper considers how authorship of eighteenth-century exploration narratives is best understood through the dynamic material and social domains of books, rather than by considering the Explorer as the origin of exploration and its narratives. The distinct regulatory and corporate domains, predisciplinary vantage points, author effects, and bibliographic codes through which exploration accounts were produced often differed significantly from those in commercial and literary domains. Dr. Craciun suggests that the undertheorized association of Explorer with the proprietary commercial Author is misleading, but that it provides an opportunity for discerning distinct, asynchronous strands in the history of authorship and print.
Picture credit: William Bradford, 1880, Near Midnight, Labrador, courtesy of the Huntington American Art Collection
