Decomposing Historians (with Elise Garritzen)

About this episode

The episode explores the image of historians in Victorian England through the analysis of historical book production.

Should you judge a book by its cover? Victorian historians and their readers did; and through examining the decisions that went into binding, titling, annotating and prefacing historical works, we can recover some of the anxieties and labour that went into creating the image of the historian we have today. This is Elise Garritzen's task, in 'Reimagining the Historian in Victorian England: Books, the Literary Marketplace, and the Scholarly Persona': a work which draws on over 500 nineteenth-century publications to shed light on the struggle to impose a respectable order on the chaos of history. Hosted by Joshua Shortman

People in this episode

Host: Joshua Shortman

Guest: Elise Garritzen

Topics covered

• Victorian historians
• historical works
• literary marketplace
• scholarly persona
• image of the historian

Keywords

• Victorian historians
• historical books
• scholarly persona
• literary marketplace
• nineteenth-century publications

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Reimagining the Historian in Victorian England: Books, the Literary Marketplace, and the Scholarly Persona

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