Window mode follows your eyes with your camera, in this browser only: no picture or position leaves your device.
Joseph Ferdinand Keppler - The Pirate Publisher - Puck Magazine - Restoration by Adam Cuerden
Original artist: Joseph Ferdinand Keppler (1838-1894)
1886
- Classification
- Photograph
- Museum
- Wikimedia Commons
- Credit line
- https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2011661385/ by way of http://adamcuerden.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d5onmxh
- Rights
- Public domain, as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
About this work
The Pirate Publisher—An International Burlesque that has the Longest Run on Record by Joseph Ferdinand Keppler, published as a centrefold in Puck, v. 18, no. 468 (1886 February 24). A commentary on the state of copyright laws that, prior to a 1911 treaty, generally offered no protection to foreign authors and works.
In the cartoon, hordes of German, Norwegian, French, English, and American authors surround a publisher who republishes their newly-created works without attribution or royalties in a foreign country, as international law then allowed. Of note is W. S. Gilbert, fifth from the right in the front row, as the many unauthorised or "pirate" productions of H.M.S. Pinafore caused him and Arthur Sullivan to première The Pirates of Penzance in America, to at least gain the initial profits there before anyone else could exploit it, and the title and subject of The Pirates of Penzance is sometimes - although somewhat dubiously in my opinion - considered to partially be a reference to the issue of pirate productions of their works. Other authors shown include Mark Twain, Tennyson, Robert Browning, F. C. Burnand, Émile Zola, Jules Verne, Victorien Sardou, Wilkie Collins, Oliver…
