Definition
An adjective without a fixed legal signification. Courts and statutes use "literary" in its ordinary sense: pertaining to books, writings, learning, and the composition of original works. In legal contexts, the word appears most often in two settings. First, as a modifier of property — "literary property" refers to an author's exclusive right in an original composition, the precursor concept to what modern law calls copyright. Second, as a qualifier of purpose — "literary purposes" or "literary institutions" appears in tax exemption statutes, charitable trust instruments, and nonprofit incorporation frameworks to describe organizations devoted to learning, letters, or the cultivation of knowledge.
Because the word carries no specialized legal meaning distinct from its common meaning, courts consistently treat it as an ordinary English word and give it its common, contextual sense.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Relating to literature; relating to writers or the profession of literature; knowledgeable of or appropriate to literature rather than everyday writing; bookish.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Of or pertaining to letters or literature; pertaining to learning or learned men." Webster illustrates with "literary fame," "literary history," and "literary conversation," and distinguishes those versed in literature as a profession.
The legal and common meanings are closely aligned, which is precisely why courts reach for the ordinary definition. The gap worth noting is one of scope: in legal usage, "literary" has been stretched to cover functional written works — instruction manuals, databases, software code — that no ordinary reader would call literary. Modern copyright law applies to "literary works" in a technical, capacious sense that far exceeds the cultured-writing connotation the word carries in everyday speech.
Common Confusion
"Literary property" (the common-law author's right in an unpublished work) and "copyright" (the statutory right in a published work) were historically distinct doctrines, not synonyms. Under the older common law, an author held perpetual literary property in an unpublished manuscript; publication could extinguish that right and substitute whatever statutory protection existed. The two concepts have largely merged under modern copyright frameworks, but researchers working in historical sources must keep them separate. Anderson's definition reflects this older distinction explicitly.
"Literary works" as used in modern copyright statutes is a defined term of art covering any works expressed in words, numbers, or other verbal or numerical symbols — including computer programs. This technical statutory meaning is far broader than the adjective "literary" standing alone.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encounter "literary" in at least three distinct research streams, and conflating them creates confusion.
First, in copyright and intellectual property history: pre-statutory sources discuss "literary property" as a common-law concept with its own body of doctrine. When reading 18th- and 19th-century cases and treatises, the phrase signals common-law authorial rights, not modern copyright. The transition from literary property to statutory copyright is a critical doctrinal shift that the historical sources in this corpus straddle directly.
Second, in tax and charitable law: statutes exempting "literary institutions" or property devoted to "literary purposes" from taxation have generated substantial case law about what qualifies. Courts applying these statutes have variously included and excluded libraries, learned societies, lyceums, and educational publishers. Because the word has no fixed legal meaning, outcomes varied by jurisdiction and era. Researchers should not assume that a finding in one state's cases controls another's.
Third, in modern copyright law: the Copyright Act's category of "literary works" is defined broadly enough to include software and databases. A researcher moving between historical sources using "literary" in its cultivated sense and modern statutory materials using "literary works" as a term of art must recognize the definitional shift or risk serious anachronism.
The Rapalje & Lawrence entry retrieved under this headword is not responsive — it concerns lis pendens — suggesting that Rapalje & Lawrence contains no substantive entry for "literary" and that any research relying on that source for this term should look elsewhere.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's (both editions) and Anderson's converge on the same core proposition: "literary" has no fixed legal signification and must be taken in its ordinary meaning. This is unusual candor for legal dictionaries, which more often imply that every legal term carries a distinct technical sense. The acknowledgment across multiple sources reinforces that courts approaching the word in novel contexts have genuine interpretive latitude.
Anderson's adds the most substantive legal content, defining "literary property" as an author's right in an original composition produced by the exertion of rational powers — a formulation that echoes the labor-and-creativity rationale underlying intellectual property theory generally. Anderson's cross-reference to occupancy is notable: it situates literary property within the broader framework of first-possession theory, treating the author's mental labor as a form of original acquisition analogous to physical occupation of unclaimed land.
Black's description of "literary persons as learned, erudite" and "literary institutions as those where the positive sciences" are taught reflects a broad 19th-century usage that linked literary to general learned culture, not merely belles-lettres. This wider scope supported expansive readings of tax exemptions for institutions that combined scientific and humanistic education.
What the historical dictionaries miss: none addresses the modern statutory expansion of "literary works" to cover functional and computational works. Researchers using these sources as interpretive anchors for modern copyright questions will find them insufficient on that point.
Jurisdictional Note
The meaning of "literary purposes" in state tax exemption and charitable trust law varied considerably by jurisdiction throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. Some courts read the term narrowly to require cultivation of belles-lettres; others applied it broadly to any institution devoted to learning or the diffusion of knowledge. Federal copyright law now provides a uniform statutory definition of "literary works," but state-law questions about exemptions and charitable purposes remain subject to local interpretation.