from History of Copyright

Before the publication, the author has an undeniable and unlimited right.
Think of a man like Dante, Molière, Shakespeare. Imagine him at the time when
he has just finished a great work. His manuscript is there, in front of him;
suppose that he gets the idea to throw it into the fire; nobody can stop him.
Shakespeare can destroy Hamlet, Molière Tartufe, Dante the Hell.

But as soon as the work is published, the author is not any more the master. It
is then that other persons seize it: call them what you will: human spirit,
public domain, society. It is such persons who say: I am here; I take this
work, I do with it what I believe I have to do, [...] I possess it, it is with
me from now on.

- Victor Hugo, 1870, Chair of L'Association Litteraire Internationale

The
author and the owner of the copy may both say about it with the same
right: it is my book! but in a different sense. The first regards the
book as writing or speech; the second only as the mute instrument that
delivers the speech to him or the public, i.e. as a copy. This right of
the author is however no right to the thing, namely the copy (since the
owner may burn it before the author's eyes), but an innate right in his
own person, that is to prevent another from delivering it to the public
without his consent, which consent can by no means be presumed, because
he has already given it exclusively to another.

-Immanuel Kant, Von der Unrechtmäßigkeit des Büchernachdrucks, 1785