Authorship, Activism and Celebrity

Sandra Mayer is a literary and cultural historian based at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, working on the intersections of literary celebrity, activism and life-writing.Ruth Scobie is a scholar of eighteenth-century literature and colonialism. She is the author of Celebrity Culture and the Myth of Oceania in Britain 1770-1823 (2019).

Authorship, Activism, and Celebrity offers a welcome account of literary activism that is historically and culturally diverse, from the 18th to the 21st centuries, from England to South Africa to Tamil Nadu. Featuring a range of scholarly and creative positions on the question of whether celebrity impedes or empowers literary authors’ capacity to militate for social change, this volume is intellectually capacious in its analysis of 'the complex entanglements of celebrity, artistic integrity and political agency.'

• Notes on ContributorsAcknowledgementsForewordMeena Kandasamy (author, academic and activist)1. Introduction: The Idea of the AuthorSandra Mayer (Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austria) and Ruth Scobie (University of Oxford, UK) 2. 'Let's Deal with the People Oppressing All of Us': Benjamin Zephaniah in ConversationBenjamin Zephaniah (poet, performer, activist) and Malachi McIntosh (University of Oxford, UK) Section 1. Art as Activism3. Clearing a Space for Multiple, Marginal Voices: The Writers’ Activism of PENPeter D. McDonald (University of Oxford, UK), Margie Orford (author; former president, PEN South Africa), Rachel Potter (University of East Anglia, UK), Carles Torner (author, executive director PEN International) and Laetitia Zecchini (CNRS Paris, France)4. Live at the Polari Salon: Literary Performance as ActivismEllen Wiles (Exeter University, UK) 5. 'Bugger Universality': An Exchange with Antjie KrogAntjie Krog (University of the Western Cape, South Africa) and Peter D. McDonald (University of Oxford, UK)Section 2. Activism and the Literary Industry6. Moving Between Worlds: A Writer and a Publisher in ConversationKirsty Gunn (University of Dundee, UK) and David Graham (managing director, Batsford Books, UK)7. Resisting Stereotypes: Art, Activism and the Literature IndustryElleke Boehmer (University of Oxford, UK), Alice Guthrie (translator, editor, curator; Exeter University, UK), Daniel Medin (American University of Paris, France), Charlotte Ryland (director, Stephen Spender Trust; University of Oxford, UK) and Alan Taylor (editor, Scottish Review of Books, UK)8. Fanny Fern and Nellie Bly: Unstable I'sEva Sage Gordon (The Graduate Center, CUNY, USA)Section 3. The Invention of the Public Intellectual9. The Critical Pedagogy of Fiction in Democratic Public SpheresOdile Heynders (Tilburg University, the Netherlands)10. A ‘Passive Spectactress’?: Frances Burney and the Eighteenth-Century Writer as Social ActivistAnna Paluchowska-Messing (Jagiellonian University, Poland)11. 'The Indian Cobbett': Radicalism, Empire and Literary Celebrity in the Life of James Silk Buckingham (1786-1855)Kieran Hazzard (University of Oxford, UK)12. 'Literary Criticism Only': Jeyamohan and the Author as Conservative Activist in 'Aram' (2022)Divya A. (Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India)Section 4. Writing Europe13. European Connections: Literary Networks, Political Authorship and the Future of Europe DebateBenedict Schofield (University of Bristol, UK)14. Vernon Lee: Transnational Activism aqnd Protest Literature for Art and PeaceElisa Bizzotto (Iuav University of Venice, Italy)15. On Behalf of the Nation: Knut Hamsun and the Politics of AuthorshipTore Rem (University of Oslo, Norway)16. Conclusion: Looking On… Kirsty Gunn (University of Dundee, UK)BibliographyIndex