This book traces the nineteenth-century origins and rapid spread of the photographic author portrait. Innovatively exploring the combined socio-cultural, media- and photo-historical, and literary critical dynamics that shaped the trans- and intermedial production, uses, and reception of author portraits as exemplars of modern celebrity, it provides new perspectives on authorship as fundamentally shaped by photography. Based on extensive archival research, the book shows how photographic portraits of French authors were not mere visual appendages to their published works but significantly impacted on the (self-) presentation and reception of writers as cultural celebrities, through the unique affordances of the new medium.

This book traces the nineteenth-century origins and rapid spread of the photographic author portrait. Innovatively exploring the combined socio-cultural, media- and photo-historical, and literary critical dynamics that shaped the trans- and intermedial production, uses, and reception of author portraits as exemplars of modern celebrity, it provides new perspectives on authorship as fundamentally shaped by photography. Based on extensive archival research, the book shows how photographic portraits of French authors were not mere visual appendages to their published works but significantly impacted on the (self-) presentation and reception of writers as cultural celebrities, through the unique affordances of the new medium.

This book traces the nineteenth-century origins and rapid spread of the photographic author portrait. Innovatively exploring the combined socio-cultural, media- and photo-historical, and literary critical dynamics that shaped the trans- and intermedial production, uses, and reception of author portraits as exemplars of modern celebrity, it provides new perspectives on authorship as fundamentally shaped by photography. Based on extensive archival research, the book shows how photographic portraits of French authors were not mere visual appendages to their published works but significantly impacted on the (self-) presentation and reception of writers as cultural celebrities, through the unique affordances of the new medium.