<i>Byron's Romantic Celebrity: Industrial Culture and the Hermeneutic of Intimacy</i> (review)

Abstract

BYRON'S ROMANTIC CELEBRITY: INDUSTRIAL CULTURE AND THE HERMENEUTIC OF INTIMACY. By Tom Mole. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Pp. xiv + 227. ISBN 978 1 4039 9993 1. £45.00. 'From Shelley onwards, serious criticism of Byron has often defined itself by turning away from celebrity's meretricious glitter to weigh the real merits of his poetry', Tom Mole tells us, before adding cheerfully: 'this book reverses that procedure by making Byron's celebrity its subject'. It does indeed - this is a serious book about Byron that also sets out to address a perceived lack of 'a history of celebrity'. Unsurprisingly Mole argues that modern celebrity culture began in the Romantic period and that Lord Byron is not only one of its earliest examples but also one of its 'most astute critics'. The old narrative of Byron's celebrity would be that he found himself famous in 1812, then courted and despised this popularity until 1816 when its sudden evaporation showed him how worthless the reading public and his own investment in it had been. His later years would be distinguished by a studious attention to unfashionable formal disciplines and a satirical goading of his ex-audience. Tom Mole's book does not overturn this account; rather we re-read it through a new lens. The book begins with a beautifully articulated discussion of the etymology of 'celebrity', carefully distinguishing it from fame with the help of Hazlitt so that we are to understand that 'celebrity' is to 'fame' what 'tourism' is to 'travel' - to use another cultural divide that Byron helped to shape. Mole is very good at telling us the precise number of conditions that are required in order to fulfil certain paradigms or the exact number of reasons for a particular outcome: 'Celebrity is a cultural apparatus consisting of three elements: an individual, an industry, and an audience'. The industry bit is very important, as this is a 'print culture' monograph, developed at Glasgow, where Mole worked with Clifford Siskin, and judiciously placed in Palgrave's 'Cultures of Print' series. Mole concedes that there were elements of celebrity culture before the end of the eighteenth century - he goes back as far as theatrical celebrity in 1660 - and while one is tempted to insert the Roman gladiators of the first century as an earlier example, the defining characteristic of celebrity for Mole is the manipulative power of modern technology, specifically the mass production of the printed word or image. The eight chapters of the book follow Byron's participation in and gradual rejection of this industry. Chapter 2, on 'An Ode to the Framers of the Frame Bill', is based on Mole's groundbreaking 2003 article in the Keats-Shelley Journal. It contains his fascinating reconstruction of the passage of the Frame Bill in February-March 1812, which allows us to understand the newspaper publication of Byron's poem as a genuine contribution to the parliamentary debate, thus correcting previous accounts of the poem which saw it as a belated comment after the event. Mole makes his point well: '[Byron] is intervening in an ongoing process, in a poem that may well have influenced the important amendment that reduced attempted framebreaking to a misdemeanour'. Mole then reflects on his discoveries, suggesting that 'there are two ways to theorise the position' of Byron's poem: we could argue that his reliance on the print industry makes him 'complicit in the process of dehumanising industrialisation', or that Byron 'appropriates the technology of the press' for humane ends. Inclining to the second while deftly evading any kind of partisan commitment, Mole uses this discussion to bring in the 'two kinds of agency' his book revolves around: the agencies of text and poet closely followed by the 'two poles' of 'Lord Byron the cultural producer and Lord Byron the cultural product'. …