What is an Author? is an influential lecture given by French philosopher, sociologist and historian, Michel Foucault, on literary theory. The work considers the relationship between author, text, and reader; concluding that:
“The Author is a certain functional principle by which, in our culture, one limits, excludes and chooses: (…) The author is therefore the ideological figure by which one marks the manner in which we fear the proliferation of meaning.”

For many, Foucault's lecture mirrors much of Roland Barthes' essay Death of the Author.