The rise of celebrity authorship: nineteenth-century print culture and antislavery

Abstract

"Literary celebrity in the nineteenth century emerged from a miscellaneous array of trending print forms, including antislavery writing, which was a popular, consumable form of literature in the period. Antislavery print culture could function as a pop culture, leveraging cultural myths about gender and authorship through print forms that connected readers with writers: printed collections of author signatures, descriptions of writers' homes, autobiography, biography, and travel writing. The Rise of Celebrity Authorship traces surprising relations among figures and across shared forms in the period: What do antislavery forms and figures tell us about literary celebrity and the networks of transatlantic print culture? Sarah Danielle Allison illuminates the collective creation of celebrity by tracing unexpected connections within this anarchic nineteenth-century literary marketplace. Bringing together book history with more recent computational approaches, The Rise of Celebrity Authorship shifts focus from the conventional literary work of major writers to the breadth of print forms circulating around them" -- Provided by publisher.

Contents

Introduction : Antislavery celebrity and the literary author -- Cards on the table : how data-driven approaches to literary history shaped this archive -- The collectible author : autographs, homes and haunts, and antislavery gift books -- White lady authoresses cross the Atlantic : antislavery gift books and travelogues -- Becoming the "real Uncle Tom" : a textual history of the lives of Josiah Henson -- A true history of Jane Eyre : the collaborative posthumous creation of Charlotte Brontë -- Coda: Refiguring authorship.