The places they are featured and the things they are famous for may change, but society has been obsessed with celebrities for thousands of years and will continue to do so. You might follow athletes, politicians, musicians, or royalty- all wildly different paths. However, celebrity is the one trait they all share. But why do we follow celebrities and how long have they had a hold over us? Dead Famous by Greg Jenner traces celebrity and fame over thousands of years, and why we can’t look away!
Dead Famous: An Unexpected History of Celebrity from Bronze Age to Silver Screen, Greg Jenner
Celebrity, with its neon glow and selfie pout, strikes us as hypermodern. But the famous and infamous have been thrilling, titillating, and outraging us for much longer than we might realise. Whether it was the scandalous Lord Byron, whose poetry sent female fans into an erotic frenzy; or the cheetah-owning, coffin-sleeping, one-legged French actress Sarah Bernhardt, who launched a violent feud with her former best friend; or Edmund Kean, the dazzling Shakespearean actor whose monstrous ego and terrible alcoholism saw him nearly murdered by his own audience – the list of stars whose careers burned bright before the Age of Television is extensive and thrillingly varied.
Celebrities could be heroes or villains; warriors or murderers; brilliant talents, or fraudsters with a flair for fibbing; trendsetters, wilful provocateurs, or tragic victims marketed as freaks of nature. Some craved fame while others had it forced upon them. A few found fame as small children, some had to wait decades to get their break. But uniting them all is the shared origin point: since the early 1700s, celebrity has been one of the most emphatic driving forces in popular culture; it is a lurid cousin to Ancient Greek ideas of glorious and notorious reputation, and its emergence helped to shape public attitudes to ethics, national identity, religious faith, wealth, sexuality, and gender roles.
Why You Should Read This…
Contrary to what I expected, this book is arranged thematically rather than chronologically. This doesn’t seem like it should be crucial but I think that being able to link different figures across periods made this a much more interesting book for me! History books can often feel dry and textbook-ish but Jenner has easily avoided that!
While this book does include several figures that I was aware of- Charles Dickens, Nell Gwynn, Shirley Temple, etc- there were also countless figures I had never heard of. I would normally be happy to learn something new from a book but I thought it was particularly apropos in a book about celebrity. This is certainly a pop history book that largely serves an entertainment purpose, but I finished it with many questions. What does celebrity mean within history? And how do we quantify it in an age where anyone can put their name out in the world to “make it big”?
Is Dead Famous by Greg Jenner on your to-read list?
Cheers,
The Historian
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