Reimagining the Historian in Victorian England

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.

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

Auteur

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

Contenu

1. Introduction: From Rhetorical Diarrhea to a Branch of Science.- Part I. Historians as Scholars.- 2. Educated and Well-connected Oxbridge Men.- 3.Champions of a Virtuous Historian.- 4. Almost Antiquaries.- Part II. Historians as Educators.- 5. Teachers with Scientific Credentials.- 6. Mentors of the Scientific History.- 7. From Public Intellectuals to Radicalized Historians.- Part III. Historians as Entrepreneurs.- 8. Commercial but Scholarly Dignified Historians.- 9. Sincere and Insincere Advertisers.- 10. Air of a Dignified Historian.- 11. Conclusion: Heavenly Historians and their Persona.