Skip to main content
University of Michigan Press
Fulcrum logo

Share the story of what Open Access means to you

a graphic of a lock that is open, the universal logo for open access

University of Michigan needs your feedback to better understand how readers are using openly available ebooks. You can help by taking a short, privacy-friendly survey.

  1. Home
  2. Spectacular Disappearances: Celebrity and Privacy, 1696-1801

Spectacular Disappearances: Celebrity and Privacy, 1696-1801

Julia H. Fawcett 2016 Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license This open access version made available with the support of libraries participating in Knowledge Unlatched.
Open Access Open Access
How can people in the spotlight control their self-representations when the whole world seems to be watching? The question is familiar, but not new. Julia Fawcett examines the stages, pages, and streets of eighteenth-century London as England's first modern celebrities performed their own strange and spectacular self-representations.  They include the enormous wig that actor Colley Cibber donned in his comic role as Lord Foppington--and that later reappeared on the head of Cibber's cross-dressing daughter, Charlotte Charke. They include the black page of Tristram Shandy, a memorial to the parson Yorick (and author Laurence Sterne), a page so full of ink that it cannot be read. And they include the puffs and prologues that David Garrick used to heighten his publicity while protecting his privacy; the epistolary autobiography, modeled on the sentimental novel, of Garrick's protégée George Anne Bellamy; and the elliptical poems and portraits of the poet, actress, and royal courtesan Mary Robinson, a.k.a. Perdita.

Linking all of these representations is a quality that Fawcett terms "over-expression," the unique quality that allows celebrities to meet their spectators' demands for disclosure without giving themselves away. Like a spotlight so brilliant it is blinding, these exaggerated but illegible self-representations suggest a new way of understanding some of the key aspects of celebrity culture, both in the eighteenth century and today. They also challenge divides between theatrical character and novelistic character in eighteenth-century studies, or between performance studies and literary studies today. The book provides an indispensable history for scholars and students in celebrity studies, performance studies, and autobiography—and for anyone curious about the origins of the eighteenth-century self.

Read Book
  • EPUB (2.34 MB)
  • PDF (5.3 MB)
Buy Book
ISBN(s)
  • 978-0-472-90061-9 (open access)
  • 978-0-472-11980-6 (hardcover)
Subject
  • Theater and Performance
  • Literary Studies:18th Century Literature
Citable Link
  • Table of Contents

  • Stats

  • Cover
  • Half Title
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • Contents
  • Acknowledgments
  • Introduction
  • Chapter 1. The Celebrity Emerges as the Deformed King
  • Chapter 2. The Growth of Celebrity Culture
  • Chapter 3. The Canon of Print
  • Chapter 4. The Fate of Overexpression in the Age of Sentiment
  • Chapter 5. The Memoirs of Perdita and the Language of Loss
  • Coda: Overexpression and Its Legacy
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
  • Index
104 views since August 16, 2018
University of Michigan Press logo

University of Michigan Press

Powered by Fulcrum logo

  • About
  • Blog
  • Feedback
  • Contact
  • Contribute
  • Accessibility
  • Preservation
  • Privacy
  • Terms of Service
  • Log In
© University of Michigan Press 2020
x This site requires cookies to function correctly.