Reimagining the Historian in Victorian England : Books, the Literary Marketplace, and the Scholarly Persona

What constitutes a historian? What skills and qualities should a historian cultivate? Who is entitled to define historians’ “physiognomy”? Victorians sought to answer these questions as history transformed from a Romantic literary pursuit into a modern discipline during the second half of the nineteenth century. This book offers a novel interpretation of this critical historiographical period by tracing how historians forged themselves a collective scholarly persona that legitimized their new disciplinary status. By combining historiography and book history, Elise Garritzen argues that historians appropriated titles, prefaces, footnotes, and other paratexts as an institutionalized space for fashioning the persona. Yet, historians did not have a monopoly on the persona as readers and reviewers offered their interpretations of the persona, and publishers influenced the paratextual presentation of the persona. By ascribing agency to paratexts and the literary marketplace, Garritzen makes an important shift in the way we perceive the formation of scholarly personae and modern disciplines. The book offers a novel approach to the role which scholarly virtues held in the Victorian society, the formation of scholarly communities, the commodification of knowledge, and the management of scientific reputations. It provides new insights for scholars interested in the history of humanities, science, and knowledge, book history, and Victorian culture. Acknowledgments Contents Abbreviations List of Figures 1 Introduction: From Rhetorical Diarrhea to a Branch of Science Impersonal Science and Scholarly Persona Personae in Books Persona of an English Historian A Composite Persona: A Historian, an Educator, an Entrepreneur, and a Middle-Class Man Non-Expert Commentators on the Persona Persona in Paratexts Chapter Outline Notes References Part I Historians as Scholars 2 Educated and Well-Connected Oxbridge Men Anatomy of a Title Page in a History Book Academic Degree: Non-expert Skills and Male Sociability Historians’ Careers and Three Possible Personae Questioning the Alternate Paths to Expertise in History Gendered Personae? Notes References 3 Champions of a Virtuous Historian Acceptable Hero Worship The Founder of the Oxford School Commendable Constitutional Historian Borrowing Virtuosity in Paratexts Hero Worship and Its Epistemic Consequences The Declining Aura of a Heroic Historian Notes References 4 Almost Antiquaries Completeness: Generalizations or Particularities Antiquarianism, History, and the Invisible Boundary Taking a Distance from Antiquarianism Big Books and the New Geographies of Reading * Notes References Part II Historians as Educators 5 Teachers with Scientific Credentials Popular, Small, or Something Else? Virtuosity of Educational Histories Innovativeness and Its Limits Pedagogical Visions * Notes References 6 Mentors of Scientific History The Bottom of the Page and Resolving Pedagogical Anxieties Introducing the Persona to Children A Model Persona in the Big Histories Imperfections in the Persona An Ethical, Fair, and Polite Persona Non-Teachable Virtues and the Sacred Band of Scientific Historians Notes References 7 From Public Intellectuals to Radicalized Historians From Impartial Knowledge to Political Propaganda Mary Hickson and Insistence on Impartiality Alice Stopford Green and the Persona of a Partisan Historian Notes References Part III Historians as Entrepreneurs 8 Commercial yet Scholarly Dignified Historians Entrepreneurial Persona History Books as Dignified Commodities Notes References 9 Sincere and Insincere Advertisers Advertising and Historians’ Moral Ambivalence Earnestness as a Marketing Strategy Fluidity of Honesty * Notes References 10 The Air of a Dignified Historian Dressing up the Persona Paratextual Design, the Persona, and Multiple Audiences Quality Marks the Persona * Notes References 11 Conclusion: Heavenly Historians and Their Personae Notes References Appendix: The Titles in the Paratext Database Index