Fashioning Authorship in the Long Eighteenth Century: Stylish Books of Poetic Genius (Palgrave Studies in the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Cultures of Print)

This book examines a singular cultural formation of the long eighteenth century, the poetic genius who was also a lady or gentleman of fashion. It applies an innovative mix of approaches -- book history, Enlightenment and twentieth-century philosophy, visual studies, and material analyses of fashions in books and in dress -- to specific editions of Alexander Pope, Mary Robinson and Lord Byron. In its material analyses of these books, this study looks closely at bindings, letterforms, engravings, newspaper advertisements, correspondence, and other ephemera. In its theoretical approaches, it takes up the interventions of Locke and Kant in connection with the visual theories of Richardson, Hogarth, and Reynolds. These investigations point ultimately to a profound connection between Enlightenment formulations of subjectivity, genius, and fashion, a link that is relevant to the construction of celebrity in our own cultural moment "Dedication "--"Preface"--"Acknowledgements" -- "Abbreviations" -- "Contents" -- "List of Figures " -- "Chapter 1: Introduction" -- "Note" -- "Chapter 2: Freedom, Nature, and the English School of Commercial Art" -- "Richardsonâ#x80;#x99;s Empiricist Visuality" -- "Hogarth and the Synthesis of Perception" -- "Reynoldsâ#x80;#x99; Commercialized Idealism" -- "Kant, Genius, and the Legacy of Fragmentation" -- "Sympathy and Genre-Crossing" -- "Notes" -- "Chapter 3: The Plural Book and the Authorial Portrait" -- "The Sociology of the Plural Book" -- "What Did the Unitary Book Look Like?" -- "Silent Writing, Melancholy, and the Punctual Self" -- "Notes" -- "Chapter 4: Popeâ#x80;#x99;s Fashionable Hand Book" -- "Popeâ#x80;#x99;s Works of 1717" -- "Licentious Genius and The Essay on Criticism" -- "The Frontispiece Portrait" -- "Closing" -- "Epilogue" -- "Notes" -- "Chapter 5: Mary Robinson: Fashioning Freedom" -- "Robinsonâ#x80;#x99;s Book: John Bell and the Poems of 1791" -- "Ainsi va le monde" -- "The Frontispiece Portrait" -- "Closing" -- "Epilogue" -- "Notes" -- "Chapter 6: Byronâ#x80;#x99;s Fashionable Abstention" -- "The Billingsgate of Bedlam" -- "A Paltry Exhibition" -- "â#x80;#x9C;God of life, and poesy, and lightâ#x80;#x9D;" -- "Closing" -- "Notes" -- "Bibliography." One view of the author in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain held that poetic genius could reside in the lady or gentleman of fashion. Fashioning Authorship in the Long Eighteenth Century examines this cultural trope of genius-as-fashionista by applying an innovative mix of approaches—book history, Enlightenment and twentieth-century philosophy, visual studies, and material analyses of fashions in books and in dress—to specific editions of Alexander Pope, Mary Robinson and Lord Byron. In its material analyses of these books, Fashioning Authorship looks closely at bindings, letterforms, engravings, newspaper advertisements, correspondence, and other ephemera. In its theoretical approaches, it takes up the interventions of Locke and Kant in connection with the visual theories of Richardson, Hogarth, and Reynolds. These investigations point ultimately to a profound connection between Enlightenment formulations of subjectivity, genius, and fashion, a link that is relevant to the construction of celebrity in our own cultural moment. Front Matter....Pages i-xvii Introduction....Pages 1-9 Freedom, Nature, and the English School of Commercial Art....Pages 11-57 The Plural Book and the Authorial Portrait....Pages 59-84 Pope’s Fashionable Hand Book....Pages 85-122 Mary Robinson: Fashioning Freedom....Pages 123-164 Byron’s Fashionable Abstention....Pages 165-204 Back Matter....Pages 205-229