Book review: Tom Mole (ed.), Romanticism and Celebrity Culture, 1750-1850

This review is of a collection of twelve essays which examine a period when ‘celebrity’ shifted from being something that you possessed to something you could be. Figures examined range from Byron, who can be found dominating personal commonplace books, to wannabes like Anne Hatton who tried several paths to fame. In his introduction Tom Mole argues that modern celebrity culture was born in the eighteenth century. He states this in his monograph Byron’s Romantic Celebrity (2007), however, the significance of this book is that it strikingly blends ‘interdisciplinary breadth with historical specificity’ by including essays on fashion, theatre, music, boxing, art, literature, and just being famous.