Secondary Source Report on The Conditions of Fame: Literary Celebrity in Australia between the Wars written by David Carter

By Cassidy Pearson 

Complete citation: Carter, D. (2015). The Conditions of Fame: Literary Celebrity in Australia between the Wars. Journal of Modern Literature, Vol. 39, (1), pp. 170-187.doi: 10.2979/jmodelite.39.1.170

 

 

Image Credit: December 1, 1926 Vogue Issue. Retrieved from Vogue Archives: https://archive.vogue.com/issue/19261201

 

Key Words:  Australia, Celebrity, Periodicals, Modernity, Authorship

Brief Overview: The late Victorian period was “both the first and the only mass literary age” (pp. 173.) with the introduction of new media and entertainment such as photography, cinema, wireless (radio) and the gramophone.

 

Summary of key points:

Vogue and Vanity Fair readers were in a league of their own.

Magazines like this were more focused on the celebrity gossip, rather than educational purposes.

The Victorian Era was the rise in interest in celebrity culture, design, fashion.

Important Quotations:

“it is useful to think of these magazines as occupying the same public sphere as the commercial theatre, which was also their bread and butter: they were overflowing with theatre reviews, news and gossip, celebrity and personality features, and photo-galleries of theatre stars.” (pp. 173).

 

“Sophistication meant, in part, being neither cowed by highbrow modernism nor “consumed” by lowbrow entertainment, but able to seek distinction in both. Thus a photograph of James Joyce with Sylvia Beach or studio portraits of Shaw and G.K. Chesterton could appear together (in Home) with portraits of Hollywood stars Greta Garbo and Myrna Loy, or artistic female nudes, on much the same plane and with much the same kind of weight and presence.” (pp. 184)

 

The features around which the two modern magazines were organized are those described by Faye Hammill in regard to their international contemporaries, Vogue and Vanity Fair, both of which were available in Australia: Vanity Fair competitive at an annual subscription of £1.10.0 and Vogue expensive at £2.8.0 compared to Home at 10s.6d. Vogue and Vanity Fair readers, “elite in class rather than intellectual terms,” were encouraged “to seek distinction in all aspects of their lives” (Hammill, Women 36); such was the case for readers of Home and BP This content downloaded from 137.219.5.13 on Fri, 28 Aug 2020 12:25:05 UTC All use subject to ht 184 Journal of Modern Literature Volume 39, Number 1 Magazine. Although addressed as if to “an already sophisticated metropolitan elite” the magazines offered “an education in sophistication designed for those who aspired towards membership of that elite” (pp. 184).

 

“The celebrity roll call of visitors to Australia is impressive—Harry Houdini, Harry Lauder, Lilly Langtry, Ignacy Jan Paderewski, Benno Moiseiwitsch, Jascha Heifetz, Fritz Kreisler, Clara Butt, Fedor Chaliapin, Anna Pavlova, and Melba. Although the visitors were mostly in “high” art forms—opera and classical music—they arrived very much as modern celebrities, were covered intensively in the press and on radio, and were enormously popular with local audiences.” (pp. 181).

 

 

 Usefulness to our group topic or individual project:

 I found Victoria’s comment about the world being very Kardashian-ified and famous people being famous for no particular reason quite interesting. Celebrity culture is not something I ~really~ care about. Which might be rare for a millennial. I really know nothing about what celebrities are doing and how they got famous. I would like to focus my essay on the transition of fame in the early 1920’s to the 1950’s and see how celebrities changed – I could only imagine the interest in fame and fortune grew, so I am hoping that magazines reflect this. I would like to focus on one American magazine, and one Australian. Perhaps Vanity Fair and Home magazine as Home was compared to Vanity Fair/Vogue/Harpers Bazaar.