Modernism, Celebrity and the Public Personality

Abstract

This article takes for its subject the complex relationship between modernist literature and the celebrity system of values arising in the late nineteenth century and hitting its ascendancy in the early twentieth century. A wide range of scholarly work in the field is surveyed, particularly those investigating modernism within contexts of celebrity, promotional culture and value. The article aims to break down the relationship between modernism and celebrity into two major component parts – first, the self‐authoring and promotional side of modernism and, second, the reception of modernism within a celebrity‐culture framework, whether through the institutions, the media or the audience that make modernist figures into ‘public personalities’.