Fashioning Authorship in the Long Eighteenth Century ─ Stylish Books of Poetic Genius

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.

Gerald Egan is Lecturer in English at California State University, Long Beach, USA. His research interests include British Romanticism and the long eighteenth century, Enlightenment philosophy, visual culture, and theories of fashion. He is currently working on an edited collection on fashion and literary authorship from the eighteenth century to the present.