Sentiment and Celebrity: Nathaniel Parker Willis and the Trials of Literary Fame

by Thomas N. Baker

Overview

How did the stately, republican literary world of Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper give way to the sensationalist, personality-saturated mass market society of the late nineteenth century? In answering this question, Sentiment and Celebrity tells the story of a man the New York Times once called "the most talked-about author in America." A widely admired, if controversial, master of the sentimental appeal, poet and "magazinist" Nathaniel Parker Willis (1806-1867) was a pioneer in the modern business of celebrity. In his heyday, he knew both popularity and success as few other American writers had. Willis, who became the gossip-dishing darling of the middle class and whose sister was the popular writer Fanny Fern (of Ruth Hall fame), was a shrewdly self-styled man of letters who attained international fame by publicizing the renowned figures of the day, including himself, and by playing to, or playing upon, the sentimental desires of his readers. By the 1840s, he could count himself among the nation's highest paid writers and most influential arbiters of fashion and feeling (especially with genteel women), though he could also describe himself, accurately enough, as one of the "best abused" literary men of his generation. With fame and self-promotion came unexpected, perhaps unforeseeable, burdens, and scandal followed eventually.

By charting the various controversies that surrounded Willis, this book shows how the cultural and commercial impulses that fostered antebellum America's new love of fame and fashion drew sustenance from the concurrent allure of genteel cultivation and sentiment. Still, perennial tensions between desires for privacy and the invasive impulses of publicity, and between desires for sincerity and the appeal of social and commercial artifice, rendered this cultural conjunction highly unstable. Readers of Willis were both attracted to and disturbed by his written work and his very person; he introduced new possibilities for fashion, taste, and celebrity, and these new modes of thought and emotion were at once enchanting and unsettling. Because this cultural instability and the impulses that spawned it cut across a number of discourses, and because, in many ways, this double-edged quality remains central to our modern celebrity culture, Sentiment and Celebrity will appeal to students and scholars of several disciplines, among them literary studies, women's studies, sociocultural history, and communication studies.

As Thomas N. Baker demonstrates in these fascinating pages, not only does Willis's story enrich our understanding of the early history of celebrity and the development of this country's literary marketplace in the years before the Civil War, it also shows how the cultural phenomena of sentiment and celebrity have gone hand in hand since their inception. Given the countless ways in which fame (literary or otherwise) continues to pervade (and pervert) the American Dream, Baker's book is a "life and times" study that speaks directly to our own lives.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195120738
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	12/31/1998
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Thomas N. Baker is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky.

Table of Contents

	Chronology	ix
1	Celebrity Comes of Age	3
2	Beauty's Apostle	13
3	American Pelham	39
4	The Spy Who Came to Dinner	61
5	The Coming Aristocracy	86
6	Affairs of Honor	115
7	Trials of Celebrity	134
8	Outrageous Fictions	158
9	Echoes	187
	Notes	193
	Sources and Bibliography	227
	Index	243
	Plates follow page	114

What People are Saying About This

Patricia Cline Cohen

This is an absorbing study of a self-absorbed (but now nearly forgotten) poet and essayist who helped to invent our modern-day cult of celebrity. N.P. Willis retailed his own cosmopolitan personality and those of other writers of his day, turning gossip into a saleable commodity and gaining fame and fans in the process. Thomas N. Baker's deeply researched book brings to life an important segment of the cultural vanguard of the mid-19th century New York intellectual world, promoted to self-importance via the new techniques of celebrity journalism. The downside of celebrity is fully displayed as well, when public characters become engulfed in scandalous events that become front-page news. Baker has produced a rich and engaging story about the burdens of fame that resonates with modern-day concerns about the public's right to know intimate details of a public figure's life.
— University of California, Santa Barbara

Michael Winship

Although chiefly known today for his ties to Fanny Fern and Harriet Jacobs, N.P. Willis is a fascinating figure in his own right, and this book goes a long way toward explaining his significance. Baker does a fine job of exploring Willis's career while making a solid contribution to our understanding of the culture of celebrity, fashion, and society in antebellum America.
— University of Texas at Austin

Rachel Klein

A serious study of N.P. Willis is long overdue. Willis was an author, editor, and self-styled arbiter of taste who sparked adoration, condemnation, respect, and ridicule on a wide public stage. His life offers a fascinating perspective on the dynamics of the sentimental literary scene in which he played so important a role. By focusing attention on Willis's public persona, Baker's wonderful book illuminates the historical development of celebrity itself.
— University of California, San Diego

Editorial Reviews

"Although chiefly known today for his ties to Fanny Fern and Harriet Jacobs, N. P. Willis is a fascinating figure in his own right, and this book goes a long way toward explaining his significance. Baker does a fine job of exploring Willis's career while making a solid contribution to our understanding of the culture of celebrity, fashion, and society in antebellum America."—Michael Winship, University of Texas at Austin

"A serious study of N. P. Willis is long overdue. Willis was an author, editor, and self-styled arbiter of taste who sparked adoration, condemnation, respect, and ridicule on a wide public stage. His life offers a fascinating perspective on the dynamics of the sentimental literary scene in which he played so important a role. By focusing attention on Willis's public persona, Baker's wonderful book illuminates the historical development of celebrity itself."—Rachel Klein, University of California at San Diego

"This is an absorbing study of a self-absorbed (but now nearly forgotten) poet and essayist who helped invent our modern-day cult of celebrity. N. P. Willis retailed his own cosmopolitan personality and those of other writers of his day, turning gossip into a saleable commodity and gaining fame and fans in the process. Thomas N. Baker's deeply researched book brings to life an important segment of the cultural vanguard of the mid-nineteenth century New York intellectual world, promoted to self-importance via the new techniques of celebrity journalism. The downside of celebrity is fully displayed as well, when public characters become engulfed in scandalous events that become front-page news. Baker has produced a rich and engaging story about the burdens of fame that resonates with modern-day concerns about the public's right to know intimate details of a public figure's life."—Patricia Cline Cohen, University of California at Santa Barbara

"Full of interesting documentary information about Willis and antebellum celebrity culture, Baker's analysis of this considerable body of evidence is both careful and insightful....[A]n important contribution to nineteenth-century cultural studies."—Resources for American Literary Study

From the Publisher