Based on the historical development of authorial rights and copyright, this essay aims to analyze crucial points that have greatly contributed to establishing the idea of the author`s copyright. The author was first permitted to own a copyright, limited as it was, only after the introduction of the Statute of Anne of 1710. The crucial turning point in the development of the modern authorship was the rulings of 1774, which rejected the London booksellers` claim to the perpetual copyright, a claim that hid a scheme to control authorial property unlimitedly under the aegis of copyright. After this landmark decision in the House of Lords, the author`s proprietary right to his works becomes more apparent. The ramifications of the eighteenth-century literary property debate is instrumental in constructing the modern idea of the author. Far from being timeless and universal, the concept of the private authorship mostly grows out of Romanticism, which espouses originality and self-representation. William Wordsworth, in his effort to live by the pen and later to promote his writings in the literary market, identifies himself as a proprietory author. For him, the author is not only an economic agent, but a lawful owner of a special kind of commodity, the work. His idea of copyright suggests that Romantic doctrine of originality and the logic of commodification are mutually implicated.