Making Stars
396 pages, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
54 b&w, 10 color images
Paperback
Release Date:15 Jul 2022
ISBN:9781644532645
Hardcover
Release Date:15 Jul 2022
ISBN:9781644532652
Making Stars
Biography and Celebrity in Eighteenth-Century Britain
Edited by Nora Nachumi and Kristina Straub
SERIES:
Performing Celebrity
University of Delaware Press
In bringing biography and celebrity together, the essays in Making Stars interrogate contemporary and current understandings of each. Although biography was not invented in the eighteenth century, the period saw the emergence of works that focus on individuals who are interesting as much, if not more, for their everyday, lived experience than for their status or actions. At the same time, celebrity emerged as public fascination for the private lives of publicly visible individuals. Biography and celebrity are mutually constitutive, but in complex and varied ways that this volume unpacks. Contributors to this volume present us a picture of eighteenth-century celebrity that was mediated across multiple sites, demonstrating that eighteenth-century celebrity culture in Britain was more pervasive, diverse and, in many ways, more egalitarian, than previously supposed.
NORA NACHUMI is an Associate Professor in the Department of English and coordinator of the minor in Women’s Studies at Stern College for Women, Yeshiva University in New York, NY. She is the author of Acting Like a Lady: British Women Novelists and the Eighteenth-Century Stage and has published essays and book chapters on female novelists, playwrights, pedagogy and film adaptation.
KRISTINA STRAUB is a Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She is the author of Sexual Suspects: Eighteenth-Century Players and Sexual Ideology and Domestic Affairs: Intimacy, Eroticism, and Violence Between Servants and Masters in Eighteenth Century Britain, as well as numerous articles on eighteenth-century theatre, sexuality, and gender. She co-curated “Will & Jane: Shakespeare, Austen, and Literary Celebrity” at the Folger Shakespeare Library with Janine Barchas.
KRISTINA STRAUB is a Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She is the author of Sexual Suspects: Eighteenth-Century Players and Sexual Ideology and Domestic Affairs: Intimacy, Eroticism, and Violence Between Servants and Masters in Eighteenth Century Britain, as well as numerous articles on eighteenth-century theatre, sexuality, and gender. She co-curated “Will & Jane: Shakespeare, Austen, and Literary Celebrity” at the Folger Shakespeare Library with Janine Barchas.
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Nora Nachumi and Kristina Straub
PART I
REPRESENTING CELEBRITY ON THE STAGE AND THE PAGE
1 The Periodical and the Prism: Two Ways of Working at Celebrity in the Careers of Catherine Clive, Eliza Haywood, and Charlotte Charke
Stuart Sherman
2 Embodied Stage Biography and Celebrity in the Eighteenth Century
Semane Parsons
3 Image/Counterimage: Contesting Celebrity in Graphic Satire
Heather McPherson
PART II
MARKETING CELEBRITY IN THE MATERIAL WORLD
4 Modular Pope: Letters, Portraits, and the Collectible Celebrity
Sören Hammerschmidt
5 Biographical Fictions: Improvisation, Temporality, and the Celebrated Gunning Sisters, 1750 to Today
Kevin Bourque
6 Art and Merchandise, Followers and Fragility: Creating the Blueprint for Animal Celebrity
Glynis Ridley
PART III
LIFE WRITING AS SELF-DEFENSE
7 Neglected Genius: William Henry Ireland’s Quest for Anonymous Celebrity
Jack Lynch
8 Interpreting a Life: Theophilus Cibber, Celebrity Biography, and Public Adjudication
Elaine McGirr
9 Legal Stardom: Law, Life Writing, and Celebrity in the Case of Mary Bowes, Countess of Strathmore
Sarah Ailwood
PART IV
THE BODY AND THE BODY POLITIC
10 Creating Celebratory Memory: The Tombeaux des Princes
Anne Betty Weinshenker
11 Embodied Politics: Marlborough, Celebrity, and Secret History
Rebecca Tierney-Hynes
12 The Everyday Celebrity of “Sir” Jeffrey Dunstan, Mayor of Garrat
Miriam Wallace
PART V
WHOSE LIFE IS IT ANYWAY?
13 A “Universally Sorrowful Sensation”: National Mourning, Narrative, and Celebrity in the Posthumous Biographies of Princess Charlotte Augusta
Teri Doerksen
14 Spectacular Materials: The Afterlives of Murderess Mary Blandy
Kirsten T. Saxton
15 Extra-illustration, Participatory Biography, and the Construction of Celebrity
Jane Wessel
Notes on Contributors
Index
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Nora Nachumi and Kristina Straub
PART I
REPRESENTING CELEBRITY ON THE STAGE AND THE PAGE
1 The Periodical and the Prism: Two Ways of Working at Celebrity in the Careers of Catherine Clive, Eliza Haywood, and Charlotte Charke
Stuart Sherman
2 Embodied Stage Biography and Celebrity in the Eighteenth Century
Semane Parsons
3 Image/Counterimage: Contesting Celebrity in Graphic Satire
Heather McPherson
PART II
MARKETING CELEBRITY IN THE MATERIAL WORLD
4 Modular Pope: Letters, Portraits, and the Collectible Celebrity
Sören Hammerschmidt
5 Biographical Fictions: Improvisation, Temporality, and the Celebrated Gunning Sisters, 1750 to Today
Kevin Bourque
6 Art and Merchandise, Followers and Fragility: Creating the Blueprint for Animal Celebrity
Glynis Ridley
PART III
LIFE WRITING AS SELF-DEFENSE
7 Neglected Genius: William Henry Ireland’s Quest for Anonymous Celebrity
Jack Lynch
8 Interpreting a Life: Theophilus Cibber, Celebrity Biography, and Public Adjudication
Elaine McGirr
9 Legal Stardom: Law, Life Writing, and Celebrity in the Case of Mary Bowes, Countess of Strathmore
Sarah Ailwood
PART IV
THE BODY AND THE BODY POLITIC
10 Creating Celebratory Memory: The Tombeaux des Princes
Anne Betty Weinshenker
11 Embodied Politics: Marlborough, Celebrity, and Secret History
Rebecca Tierney-Hynes
12 The Everyday Celebrity of “Sir” Jeffrey Dunstan, Mayor of Garrat
Miriam Wallace
PART V
WHOSE LIFE IS IT ANYWAY?
13 A “Universally Sorrowful Sensation”: National Mourning, Narrative, and Celebrity in the Posthumous Biographies of Princess Charlotte Augusta
Teri Doerksen
14 Spectacular Materials: The Afterlives of Murderess Mary Blandy
Kirsten T. Saxton
15 Extra-illustration, Participatory Biography, and the Construction of Celebrity
Jane Wessel
Notes on Contributors
Index
Related Titles
Unsettling Sexuality
Queer Horizons in the Long Eighteenth Century
Edited by Jeremy Chow and Shelby Johnson
