This opening chapter explores the background to the notion of the death of the author and the debates around this postulate. Turning back to much earlier developments that lay the ground work for Barthes’ pronouncement such as key ideas from Matthew Arnold and, in the twentieth century the ideas of Wimsatt and Beardsley such as the “intentional fallacy.” The chapter then gives a detailed reading of Barthes’ essay and of Foucault’s “What is an Author,” in order to situate the reader in relation to the analysis to follow. It then surveys works of criticism that have thematized these developments subsequently including work by Seàn Burke, Judith Ryan, Mark McGurl, Timothy Bewes, and others. The final section surveys key concepts such as decolonization itself as well as related analysis of literary intention from a black and decolonizing perspective in the early work of Henry Louis Gates Jr. This survey of the debates thus sets up the chapters to follow in their discussion of challenges to the death of the author postulate.