The incorporated joint-stock company, ancestor of the modern corporation, developed slowly and unevenly in Victorian Britain. Its emergence as a business form and as a legal form was controversial, contested, and not at all inevitable; it was not the product of an emergent liberal–capitalist consensus, nor an urgent economic necessity (Ireland 2010; Loftus 2009; Taylor 2006). In 1844, there were only 947 joint-stock companies in England, and by 1885, after decades of corporate law liberalization, such companies only represented between 5% and 10% of all English business organizations ( Johnson 2006, p. 219). Nonetheless, the incorporated joint-stock company was a persistent source of cultural anxiety. As an impersonal vehicle for transacting business beyond the boundaries of a knowable community, the incorporated joint-stock company collaborated in the incomplete and fitful disentanglement of business from personal relationships, personal character, and personal responsibility.

Item Type:	Research Book Chapter
Keywords:	literature, economics, corporations, corporate space
Research Division:	Language, Communication and Culture
Research Group:	Literary Studies
Research Field:	North American Literature
Objective Division:	Cultural Understanding
Objective Group:	Communication
Objective Field:	Languages and Literature
UTAS Author:	Moore, R (Dr Robbie Moore)
ID Code:	117798
Year Published:	2019 (online first 2018)
Deposited By:	Office of the School of Humanities
Deposited On:	2017-06-27
Last Modified:	2018-12-19
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