Walter Scott and fame
Subtitle: authors and readers in the romantic age
By: Robert Mayer
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2017
Language: eng
Number of pages: 221
ISBN-13: 9780198794820
Subjects: Authorship; Friends and associates; Criticism and interpretation; Fame; History
Other titles: Walter Scott & fame
Description: Walter Scott and Fame is a study of correspondences between Scott and socially and culturally diverse readers of his work in the English-speaking world in the early nineteenth century. Examining authorship, reading, and fame, the book is based on extensive archival research, especially in the collection of letters to Scott in the National Library of Scotland. Robert Mayer demonstrates that in Scott's literary correspondence constructions of authorship, reading strategies, and versions of fame are posited, even theorized. Scott's reader-correspondents invest him with power but they also attempt to tap into or appropriate some of his authority. Scott's version of authorship sets him apart from important contemporaries like Wordsworth and Byron, who adhered, at least as Scott viewed the matter, to a rarefied conception of the writer as someone possessed of extraordinary power. The idea of the author put in place by Scott in dialogue with his readers establishes him as a powerful figure who is nevertheless subject to the will of his audience. Scott's literary correspondence also demonstrates that the reader can be a very powerful figure and that we should regard reading not just as the reception of texts but also as the apprehension of an author-function.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.