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This paper explores how an article by Marita Mathijsen on literary subsidies in the nineteenth century (1996, Nederlandse letterkunde) has served as a prelude to later research on post-romantic private literary patronage in The Netherlands on the one hand, and Dutch government policy on the other. It provides an overview of research carried out by Dutch researchers since 1996 into practices of and discourses on the public and private support of authors. Over the past two centuries, governments and private citizens have taken care of writers in multiple ways, with varying motives and with varying degrees of success. Since 1996, researchers have researched these practices from a number of angles. One important question they grappled with was whether these forms of public and private support are essentially similar and should be examined as such, or essentially different. Another dilemma: is it more effective to approach and examine writers after 1850 as passive recipients of charitable (emergency) aid, or to emphasize their role as (non)equal partners in the reciprocal relationships they maintained with their public or private benefactors? In the last section of the paper, the author outlines four directions in which (inter)national patronage research could develop over the next 25 years.

The early modern commercial book market was the cradle of authorial branding. Authors and publishers increasingly explored the construction of authorial brands: a set of recurring and recognizable characteristics associated with authorial images. This chapter looks at branding in the context of the media landscape of the early modern Dutch Republic. Authorial branding developed over time in conjunction with new conceptions of the individual, technological innovations, and the changing role of – amongst others – patrons and publishers. Analyses of the branding of Jan Jansz. Starter (1593-1626) and Sara Maria van der Wilp (1716-1803) illustrate how the non-formalized, dynamic constellation of the literary f ield inspired various agents to create a range of (multifaceted) author brands on the spectrum ‘economic-symbolic’.

In 2011, the Netherlands was invited to be the guest of honour at the Beijing Book Fair. This fair attracted controversy that revealed the tensions that exist between nation branding, public diplomacy, and literary autonomy: while its sponsor, the Ministry of Culture, regarded the fair as a perfect marketing opportunity, Amnesty International used the occasion to protest repression in China. Dutch authors invited to participate in the fair forged an alternative position by emphasizing their status as autonomous artists. However, an analysis of the debate in the Dutch media shows that both the Ministry, Amnesty International, the Dutch Foundation for Literature, and many authors interpreted the contact between Chinese and Dutch authors as a clash between an open(-minded) culture and a closed one.

ispartof: Branding Books Across the Ages. Strategies and Key Concepts in Literary Branding pages:31-60 ispartof: pages:31-60 status: Published online