Reimagining the Historian in Victorian England, 1st ed. 2023 Books, the Literary Marketplace, and the Scholarly Persona

What constitutes a historian? What skills and qualities should a historian cultivate? Who is entitled to define historians? ?physiognomy?? Victorians sought to answer these questions as history transformed from a Romantic literary pursuit into a modern discipline during the second half of the nineteenth century. This book offers a novel interpretation of this critical historiographical period by tracing how historians forged themselves a collective scholarly persona that legitimized their new disciplinary status. By combining historiography and book history, Elise Garritzen argues that historians appropriated titles, prefaces, footnotes, and other paratexts as an institutionalized space for fashioning the persona. Yet, historians did not have a monopoly on the persona as readers and reviewers offered their interpretations of the persona, and publishers influenced the paratextual presentation of the persona. By ascribing agency to paratexts and the literary marketplace, Garritzen makes an important shift in the way we perceive the formation of scholarly personae and modern disciplines. The book offers a novel approach to the role which scholarly virtues held in the Victorian society, the formation of scholarly communities, the commodification of knowledge, and the management of scientific reputations. It provides new insights for scholars interested in the history of humanities, science, and knowledge, book history, and Victorian culture.

1.       Introduction: From Rhetorical Diarrhea to a Branch of Science.

Impersonal Science and Scholarly Persona.

Personae in Books.

Persona of an English Historian.

A Composite Persona: A Historian, an Educator, an Entrepreneur, and a Middle-Class Man.

Non-Expert Commentators on the Persona.

Persona in Paratexts.

Chapter Outline.

References.

Part I: Historians as Scholars.

2.     Educated and Well-Connected Oxbridge Men.

Anatomy of a Title Page in a History Book.

Academic Degree: Non-Expert Skills and Male Sociability.

Historians’ Careers and Three Possible Personae.

Questioning the Alternate Paths to Expertise in History.

Gendered Personae?.

References.

3.     Champions of a Virtuous Historian.

Acceptable Hero-Worship.

The Founder of the Oxford School

Commendable Constitutional Historian.

Borrowing Virtuosity in Paratexts.

Hero-Worship and its Epistemic Consequences.

The Declining Aura of a Heroic Historian.

References.

4.     Almost Antiquaries.

Completeness: Generalizations or Particularities.

Antiquarianism, History, and the Invisible Boundary.

Taking a Distance from Antiquarianism..

Big Books and the New Geographies of Reading.

References.

Part II: Historians as Educators.

5.     Teachers with Scientific Credentials.

Popular, Small, or Something Else?.

Virtuosity of Educational Histories.

Innovativeness and its Limits.

Pedagogical Visions.

References.

6.     Mentors of Scientific History.

The Bottom of the Page and Resolving Pedagogical Anxieties.

Introducing the Persona to Children.

A Model Persona in the Big Histories.

Imperfections in the Persona.

An Ethical, Fair, and Polite Persona.

Non-Teachable Virtues and the Sacred Band of Scientific Historians.

References.

7.     From Public Intellectuals to Radicalized Historians.

From Impartial Knowledge to Political Propaganda.

Mary Hickson and Insistence on Impartiality.

Alice Stopford Green and the Persona of a Partisan Historian.

References.

Part III: Historians as Entrepreneurs.

8.     Commercial but Scholarly Dignified Historians.

Entrepreneurial Persona.

History Books as Dignified Commodities.

References.

9.     Sincere and Insincere Advertisers.

Advertising and Historians’ Moral Ambivalence.

Earnestness as a Marketing Strategy.

Fluidity of Honesty.

References.

10.        The Air of a Dignified Historian.

Dressing up the Persona.

Paratextual Design, the Persona, and Multiple Audiences.

Quality Marks the Persona.

References.

11.        Conclusion: Heavenly Historians and Their Persona.

References.

Elise Garritzen is an Academy of Finland researcher at the University of Helsinki. Her research revolves around European historiography, cultural history, and book history.

Traces the transformation of history from a Romantic literary pursuit into a modern academic discipline

Examines the role which epistemic and moral virtues held in the Victorian society and scholarly culture

Offers a novel approach to themes that have enjoyed great interest in the history of science