A history of celebrity from Byron to Beckham Love it or hate it, celebrity is one of the dominant features of modern life—and one of the least understood. Fred Inglis sets out to correct this problem in this entertaining and enlightening social history of modern celebrity, from eighteenth-century London to today's Hollywood. Vividly written and brimming with fascinating stories of figures whose lives mark important moments in the history of celebrity, this book explains how fame has changed over the past two-and-a-half centuries. Starting with the first modern celebrities in mid-eighteenth-century London, including Samuel Johnson and the Prince Regent, the book traces the changing nature of celebrity and celebrities through the age of the Romantic hero, the European fin de siècle, and the Gilded Age in New York and Chicago. In the twentieth century, the book covers the Jazz Age, the rise of political celebrities such as Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin, and the democratization of celebrity in the postwar decades, as actors, rock stars, and sports heroes became the leading celebrities. Arguing that celebrity is a mirror reflecting some of the worst as well as some of the best aspects of modern history itself, Inglis considers how the lives of the rich and famous provide not only entertainment but also social cohesion and, like morality plays, examples of what—and what not—to do. This book will interest anyone who is curious about the history that lies behind one of the great preoccupations of our lives. Some images inside the book are unavailable due to digital copyright restrictions.
Why do so many people care so much about celebrities? Who decides who gets to be a star? What are the privileges and pleasures of fandom? Do celebrities ever deserve the outsized attention they receive? In this fascinating and deeply researched book, Sharon Marcus challenges everything you thought you knew about our obsession with fame. Icons are not merely famous for being famous; the media alone cannot make or break stars; fans are not simply passive dupes. Instead, journalists, the public, and celebrities themselves all compete, passionately and expertly, to shape the stories we tell about celebrities and fans. The result: a high-stakes drama as endless as it is unpredictable. Drawing on scrapbooks, personal diaries, and vintage fan mail, Marcus traces celebrity culture back to its nineteenth-century roots, when people the world over found themselves captivated by celebrity chefs, bad-boy poets, and actors such as the "divine" Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923), as famous in her day as the Beatles in theirs. Known in her youth for sleeping in a coffin, hailed in maturity as a woman of genius, Bernhardt became a global superstar thanks to savvy engagement with her era's most innovative media and technologies: the popular press, commercial photography, and speedy new forms of travel. Whether you love celebrity culture or hate it, The Drama of Celebrity will change how you think about one of the most important phenomena of modern times.
Celebrity Across the Channel, 1750-1850 is the first book to study and compare the concept of celebrity in France and Britain from 1750 to 1850 as the two countries transformed into the states we recognize today. It offers a transnational perspective by placing in dialogue the growing fields of celebrity studies in the two countries, especially by engaging with Antoine Lilti’s seminal work, The Invention of Celebrity, translated into English in 2017. With contributions from a diverse range of scholarly cultures, the volume has a firmly interdisciplinary scope over the time period 1750 to 1850, which was an era marked by social, political, and cultural upheaval. Bringing together the fields of history, politics, literature, theater studies, and musicology, the volume employs a firmly interdisciplinary scope to explore an era marked by social, political, and cultural upheaval. The organization of the collection allows for new readings of the similarities and differences in the understanding of celebrity in Britain and France. Consequently, the volume builds upon the questions that are currently at the heart of celebrity studies.
Consider this edition your personal Parisian address directory for the renowned that have historically shaped France and the world. This illustrated guide transports you geographically and photographically to famous residences formerly occupied by historical leaders, noteworthy figures, revolutionaries, famous writers, performers, composers and visual artists. It is your map of the stars within Paris with profiles framing the unique impact and background of the occupants. Known and unknown history, hidden delights and fascinating stories pervade the history of Paris. This kaleidoscope of discovery, personalities, egos, scandals, conflict framed by sheer beauty creates a vivid tapestry defining over two millenniums. You may imagine that you already know Paris, but that view is solely a prism of the whole. Many of the narratives defy believability, yet they are true. This Famous Historic Guide is your alternative to conventional travel. It accommodates the restless visitor, tourist and resident seeking a unique and different perspective to traditional tourism. Paris remains one of the most beguiling, seductive and enchanting cities of the world. Its famed personalities are as statuesque and substantial as its iconic monuments. HISTORICAL FIGURES: Joan of Ark, Nicholas Flamel, Diane de Poitiers, Queen Margot of Navarre, Cardinal Richelieu, Marquises of Montespan and Maintenon, Madame du Barry, Benjamin Franklin, Marquis de Lafayette, Thomas Jefferson, Jacques Necker, Marie Le Normand, Eugene Vidocoq, Duke de Praslin, Napoleon III, La Paiva, Otto von Bismarck, Madame Claude, George Boulanger, Coco Chanel, Francois Mitterrand, Charles Parnell, Jacques Verges. John Adams, Karl Lagerfeld and Samuel de Champlain. BONAPARTE ERA: Napoleon Bonaparte, Desiree Clary, Empress Josephine, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, James Monroe, Pauline Bonaparte, Louis Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington. THINKERS/PHILOSOPHERS/WRITERS: Rene Descartes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, Marquis de Sade, Thomas Paine, Andre Chenier, Honore de Balzac, Victor Hugo, Emile Zola, Oscar Wilde, Colette, Sylvia Beach, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Alexandre Dumas, Alexis de Tocqueville, Alfred de Musset, Alphonse Daudet, Andre Breton, Andre Malraux, Guillaume Apollinaire, Arthur Rambeau, Blaise Pascal, Charles Baudelaire, Theophile Gautier, Duke of Saint Simon, Ernest Hemingway, Vicomte de Chateaubriand, Ezra Pound, Francoise Sagan, F. Scott Fitzgerald, George Sand, Gertrude Stein, Gustave Flaubert, Heinrich Heine, Ivan Turguenev, James Baldwin, James Joyce, Jean Cocteau, Leo Tolstoy, Jules Verne, Marcel Proust, Stendhal and PERFORMANCE ARTS: Moliere, Pierre Beaumarchais, Gioachino Rossini, Frederick Chopin, Franz Liszt, Richard Wagner, Hector Berlioz, Jacques Offenbach, Sarah Bernhardt, George Bizet, Jean Sibelius, Isadora Duncan, Josephine Baker, Edith Piaf, Jacques Tati, Brigitte Bardot, Francois Truffaut, Jeanne Moreau, Serge Gainsbourg, George Moustaki, Dalida, Alain Delon and Jim Morrison, VISUAL ARTS: Jacques-Louis David, Auguste Rodin, Theo van Gough, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Pablo Picasso, Alberto Giacometti, Alfonse Mucha, Amedeo Modigliani, Andre Masson, Constantin Brancusi, Camille Claudel, Edgar Degas, Eugene Delacroix, Jean-Baptiste Corot, Claude Monet, Francis Bacon, Gustave Dore, Gustave Moreau, Henri Matisse, Honore Daumier, Jean Renoir, Joan Miro, Kiki de Montparnasse, Man Ray, Yves Klein, Marc Chagall, Marcel Duchamp and Paul Gauguin, REVOLUTIONARIES: Count Mirabeau, Georges Danton, Camille Desmoulins, Maximilien Robespierre, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Ho Chi Minh and Jean-Paul Marat.
Frequently perceived as a characteristic of modern culture, the phenomenon of celebrity has much older roots. In this book Antoine Lilti shows that the mechanisms of celebrity were developed in Europe during the Enlightenment, well before films, yellow journalism, and television, and then flourished during the Romantic period on both sides of the Atlantic. Figures from across the arts like Voltaire, Garrick, and Liszt were all veritable celebrities in their time, arousing curiosity and passionate loyalty from their “fans.” The rise of the press, new advertising techniques, and the marketing of leisure brought a profound transformation in the visibility of celebrities: private lives were now very much on public show. Nor was politics spared this cultural upheaval: Marie-Antoinette, George Washington, and Napoleon all experienced a political world transformed by the new demands of celebrity. And when the people suddenly appeared on the revolutionary scene, it was no longer enough to be legitimate; it was crucial to be popular too. Lilti retraces the profound social upheaval precipitated by the rise of celebrity and explores the ambivalence felt toward this new phenomenon. Both sought after and denounced, celebrity evolved as the modern form of personal prestige, assuming the role that glory played in the aristocratic world in a new age of democracy and evolving forms of media. While uncovering the birth of celebrity in the eighteenth century, Lilti's perceptive history at the same time shines light on the continuing importance of this phenomenon in today’s world.
The first English-language monograph on the French dancer and model, Cléo de Mérode and the Rise of Modern Celebrity Culture explores the haunting legacy of this intriguing and glamorous figure, an international celebrity at the dawn of our star-struck modernity. Situating Mérode at a pivotal moment in the history of fame and visual culture, this study probes the neglected prehistory of a visual culture obsessed with celebrities and their images.
In this timely analysis of the economics of access that surround contemporary female celebrity, Hannah Yelin reveals a culture that requires women to be constantly ‘baring all’ in physical exposure and psychic confessions. As famous women tell their story, in their ‘own words’, constellations of ghostwriters, intermediaries and market forces undermine assertions of authorship and access to the ‘real’ woman behind the public image. Yelin’s account of the presence of the ghostwriter offers a fascinating microcosm of the wider celebrity machine, with insights pertinent to all celebrity mediation. Yelin surveys life-writing genres including fiction, photo-diary, comic-strip, and art anthology, as well as more ‘traditional’ autobiographical forms; covering a wide range of media platforms and celebrity contexts including reality TV, YouTube, pop stardom, and porn/glamour modelling. Despite this diversity, Yelin reveals seemingly inescapable conventions, as well as spaces for resistance. Celebrity Memoir: from Ghostwriting to Gender Politics offers new insights on the curtailment of women’s voices, with ramifications for literary studies of memoir, feminist media studies, celebrity studies, and work on the politics of production in the creative industries.
The fascination with celebrities may be a guilty pleasure, but it is also an increasingly important dimension of the way we organise social and political relationships. 'Celebrity Society' outlines the sociology of celebrity as a central characteristic of modernity, linking us together in unique and ever-changing ways.
