Limits of Familiarity

LINDSEY ECKERT is an assistant professor of English at Florida State University in Tallahassee, where her research and teaching focus on Romanticism and the history of text technologies.

"In her lucid examination of relationships between authors and readers, and especially writers' attempts to negotiate the boundaries between personal closeness and public exposure, Eckert establishes familiarity's centrality—as both promise and problem—to Romantic authorship."— Andrew Franta, author of Romanticism and the Rise of the Mass Public"The Limits of Familiarity draws on a wealth of source material from the prose nonfiction framework that scaffolds literary production, including private correspondence, reviews, the prefaces that frame collections of poetry, and the letters that fans of those poetry collections sent to their authors. . . . Eckert's analysis is satisfyingly thorough, and will be valuable for anyone interested in the reception history of celebrity, media history, and the power dynamics that shape popular and literary culture."— Prose Studies"Required reading for anyone interested in the history of Romantic readerships, media history, or the culture of celebrity, The Limits of Familiarity makes new and productively strange the concept of the familiar for Romanticist scholarship."— Keats-Shelley Journal"In this fascinating book, 'familiarity' emerges as a crucial term for understanding Romantic-period culture. Eckert shows how authors walked a tightrope between cultivating familiarity with their readers and being overfamiliar towards them. Archival research, astute historical interpretation, and insightful criticism combine to reveal a history that resonates in the present."— Tom Mole, editor of Romanticism and Celebrity Culture, 1750-1850"The Limits of Familiarity uses an impressive array of archival materials and its case studies are meticulously detailed...[Eckert] shows the tenuousness of the line between familiarity and over-familiarity—the same author can be praised or pilloried, depending on the cultural mood. [I]t is a book focused on a particular historical moment. Yet its resonances ring far wider." — The Times Literary Supplement"In this fascinating analysis of Romantic-era readership and reading practices, Lindsey Eckert explores the complex meanings of 'familiarity' and shows how attention to this concept can illuminate both the practice and the reception of writers including Charlotte Smith, William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, Caroline Lamb, and William Hazlitt."— Eighteenth-Century Fiction"With a wonderful eye for detail, Eckert opens rewarding angles of view on the often-contentious back-and-forth between authors and their publics that shaped Romantic-era literary culture. This remarkably lucid study contributes valuable new understanding both of writers' careers and of the activity of readers across multiple spheres of reception."— Eric Eisner, author of Nineteenth-Century Poetry and Literary Celebrity". . . a complex, enticing picture of Romantic celebrity—one that expands the terrain beyond the stories we're used to."— Eighteenth-Century Studies"[I]n her lively and clearly written book, Eckert turns our attention back to the surface of the veil [of familiarity], seeing it as integral to the workings of the Romantic-era literary marketplace, and not just in the newly emerging genre of the familiar essay."— The Wordsworth Circle

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsList of AbbreviationsIntroduction: Familiarity's " due bounds"1. Charlotte Smith, William Wordsworth, and the Problems of Reading Familiarity2. "Though a stranger to you": Byron's Poetics of Familiarity and Readerly Attachment3. Lady Caroline Lamb's Female Follies and the Dangers of Familiarity4. "the whole cursed story": William Hazlitt's Familiar Style5. Mediating a Manuscript Ethos: Familiarity in Albums and Literary AnnualsCoda: Lifting "the film of familiarity"NotesBibliographyIndex