Victorian Celebrity Culture and Tennyson''s Circle

"By 1850, Alfred Tennyson was not merely the Poet Laureate, a commercially successful and critically acclaimed author, he was one of Britain's leading celebrities. Offering new analysis of the workings of Victorian celebrity, this volume explores the ever-expanding compass of Tennyson's fame and the efforts of the poet and others to control this phenomenon. It shows that Tennyson's retreat from mainland publicity to the secluded Isle of Wight and his limiting of his social circle to that of family and like-minded guests, only increased the demand of fans and tourists for access to the poet. Through an analysis of poetry, paintings, photography, illustrations, memoirs, reminiscences, diaries, letters, and newspaper and periodical articles, this book showsthat Tennyson's fashioning of his reluctant celebrity affected not only his own life and works, but also had an effect on his celebrity and non-celebrity friends, and on the (self-)construction of his fans. "--

List of contents

List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction 1. At Home with Tennyson: Virtual Literary Tourism and the Commodification of Celebrity in the Periodical Press 2. 'This is the sort of fame for which I have given my life': G. F. Watts, Edward Lear and Portraits of Fame and Nonsense 3. 'She Shall be Made Immortal': Julia Margaret Cameron's Photography and the Construction of Celebrity 4. Personal Museums: the Fan Diaries of Lewis Carroll and William Allingham 5. 'Troops of unrecording friends': Vicarious Celebrity in the Memoir 6. 'Much honour and much fame were lost': Idylls of the King and Camelot's Celebrity Circle Bibliography Index

Report

"[The authors'] engaging and attentive close readings of different media ally them to the methods of new formalism". Clara Dawson, The Tennyson Society

Product details

• Authors: Boyce, C Boyce, C. Boyce, Charlotte Boyce, Finnerty, P Finnerty, P. Finnerty, Paraic Finnerty, Paraic Millim Finnerty, A Millim, A. Millim, Anne-Marie Millim
• Publisher: Palgrave UK
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 30.10.2013
• EAN: 9781137007933
• ISBN: 978-1-137-00793-3
• No. of pages: 272
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > Other languages / Other literatures; B, Poetry, Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900, Literary studies: poetry & poets, Literary theory, Poetry and Poetics, European Literature, Literature, Modern—19th century, Nineteenth-Century Literature, British literature, British and Irish Literature, Palgrave Literature Collection, Literature—Philosophy