The fame machine
Subtitle: book reviewing and eighteenth-century literary careers
By: Frank Donoghue.
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 1996
Place of publication: Stanford, Calif
Language: eng
Number of pages: 213
Subjects: Sterne, Laurence, 1713-1768 -- Criticism and interpretation -- History -- 18th century; Goldsmith, Oliver, 1730?-1774 -- Criticism and interpretation -- History -- 18th century; Smollett, Tobias George, 1721-1771 -- Criticism and interpretation -- History -- 18th century; English literature -- 18th century -- History and criticism -- Theory, etc; Book reviewing -- Great Britain -- History -- 18th century; Women and literature -- Great Britain -- History -- 18th century; Criticism -- Great Britain -- History -- 18th century; Authorship -- History -- 18th century; Fame -- History -- 18th century; Canon (Literature)
Description: The Fame Machine explores how the concept of the literary career was reshaped by the commodification of writing in the eighteenth century, a period between an age of substantial sponsorship by the nobility and the fully developed literary market of the nineteenth century. It argues that, as the conditions of literary production shifted from a patronage system to an open market, the traditional means by which authors measured their success and acquired their credentials changed as well.

The book shows that in the open market critical periodicals stepped in and assumed the role of official arbiters of literary merit, to the extent that Byron would call the reviewers of his day the "monarch-makers in poetry and prose." In tracing this process, the author focuses on two successful mid-century journals, the Monthly Review (founded in 1749) and the Critical Review (founded in 1756), which dedicated themselves exclusively to reviewing new publications.

Examining the professional lives of Laurence Sterne, Oliver Goldsmith, Tobias Smollett, and several women authors, the book makes the case that the Reviews in effect constructed the narratives that we would now call literary careers.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [197]-207) and index.