The relationship between a writer’s life and work is an area of immense and contentious academic interest - this student reader provides the textual material for undergraduates encountering the debate for the first time. Three sections outline the fundamental issues and present over 30 key extracts from the key writers on authorship, including pieces from Plato, Shelley, Freud, Eliot, Derrida, Barthes, Sartre, Foucault, Descartes, Nietzsche and Borges, amongst others. A general introduction puts the authorship debate into context, explaining the central theorectical positions and summarising the history of the debate from Plato to the 1990s. Individual introductions to each section review past material and outline possible future directions for the debate. This is an up-to-date and comprehensive reader providing a solid theorectical base for all students of authorship.