Dr. Gaston Franssen (1977) is assistant professor of Literary Culture at the University of Amsterdam. Rick Honings is Scaliger Professor Special Collections at Leiden University and a specialist in nineteenth-century Dutch and Dutch Indies literature. In 2018 he published Star Authors in the Age of Romanticism: Literary Celebrity in the Netherlands, the international edition of his monograph De dichter als idool: Literaire roem in de negentiende eeuw (2016). In 2021, he co-edited De postkoloniale spiegel: De Nederlands-Indische letteren herlezen. Currently, he works with a research team on the NWO Vidi project Voicing the Colony: Travelers in the Dutch East Indies, 1800-1900. He is editor-in-chief of the journal Indische Letteren.

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• Idolizing Authorship: An Introduction Gaston Franssen and Rick Honings Part 1: The Rise of Literary Celebrity 1. The Olympian Writer: Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832) Silke Hoffmann 2. The Dutch Byron: Nicolaas Beets (1814-1903) Rick Honings 3. Enemy of Society, Hero of the Nation: Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) Suze van der Poll Part 2: The Golden Age of Literary Celebrity 4. From Bard to Brand: Holger Drachmann (1846-1908) Henk van der Liet 5. In the Future, When I Will Be More of a Celebrity: Louis Couperus (1863-1923) Mary Kemperink 6. À la Recherche de la Gloire: Marcel Proust (1871-1922) Sjef Houppermans 7. The National Skeleton: Ezra Pound (1885-1972) Peter Liebregts Part 3: The Popularization of Literary Celebrity 8. Playing God: Harry Mulisch (1927-2010) Sander Bax 9. Literary Stardom and Heavenly Gifts: Haruki Murakami (1949) Gaston Franssen 10. Sincere e-Self-Fashioning: Dmitrii Vodennikov (1968) Ellen Rutten 11. The Fame and Blame of an Intellectual Goth: Sofi Oksanen (1977) Sanna Lehtonen.