eBook

Women, Celebrity, and Literary Culture between the Wars

Hammill, Faye

2009,2007

Overview

As mass media burgeoned in the years between the first and second world wars, so did another phenomenon-celebrity. Beginning in Hollywood with the studio-orchestrated transformation of uncredited actors into brand-name stars, celebrity also spread to writers, whose personal appearances and private lives came to fascinate readers as much as their work.Women, Celebrity, and Literary Culture between the Warsprofiles seven American, Canadian, and British women writers-Dorothy Parker, Anita Loos, Mae West, L. M. Montgomery, Margaret Kennedy, Stella Gibbons, and E. M. Delafield-who achieved literary celebrity in the 1920s and 1930s and whose work remains popular even today. Faye Hammill investigates how the fame and commercial success of these writers-as well as their gender-affected the literary reception of their work. She explores how women writers sought to fashion their own celebrity images through various kinds of public performance and how the media appropriated these writers for particular cultural discourses. She also reassesses the relationship between celebrity culture and literary culture, demonstrating how the commercial success of these writers caused literary elites to denigrate their writing as \"middlebrow,\" despite the fact that their work often challenged middle-class ideals of marriage, home, and family and complicated class categories and lines of social discrimination. The first comparative study of North American and British literary celebrity,Women, Celebrity, and Literary Culture between the Warsoffers a nuanced appreciation of the middlebrow in relation to modernism and popular culture.

• Publisher: University of Texas Press
• Subject: 20th century / American literature / American literature -- Women authors -- History and criticism / Authors and readers / Authors and readers -- History -- 20th century / Authorship / Authorship -- Economic aspects -- History -- 20th century / Biography / Economic aspect / Economic aspects / English literature / English literature -- Women authors -- History and criticism / Fame / Fame -- Economic aspects -- History -- 20th century / History / History and criticism / Language & Literature / LITERARY CRITICISM / LITERARY CRITICISM / General / LITERARY CRITICISM / Women Authors / Popular culture / Popular culture -- History -- 20th century / Women and literature / Women and literature -- History -- 20th century / Women Authors / Women authors, American -- 20th century -- Biography / Women authors, American--20th century / Women authors, English / Women authors, English -- 20th century -- Biography
• ISBN: 0292716443, 9780292716445