Choosing the fi rst essay collection to appear in the Modernist Literature and Culture series felt like a big decision: a big decision that, ultimately, was no decision at all. Scholarly presses are rightly wary of taking a risk on collections, which often don’t sell as well as monographs; in kicking off the series, Mark and I had an agreement with our editor, Shannon McLachlan, that we’d establish MLC exclusively with monographs. But we also knew that there would be room, when the time was right, for just the right collection. And then at just the right moment, Paul Saint-Amour brought it to us: Modernism and Copyright. A collection “by many hands,” in that quaint old publishing phrase, can prove its worth by doing one of two things. The fi rst is to bring together ten or twelve luminaries to polish up a topic that has started to lose its luster. A mixture of established and younger scholars, for instance, on the current status of “the death of the Author” (still dead?), or New Directions in [Your Problematic Here] . Such a volume serves to establish the state-of-the-discipline, or state-of-the-discourse: it might venture one or two forward-looking pieces, but its primary project is consolidation, as it attempts to master all it surveys