Abstract
This chapter examines the relationship between literature and fashion in one of the most influential nineteenth-century literary periodicals, Fraser’s Magazine. Established in 1830 under the editorship of William Maginn, Fraser’s became known for its scathing satirical treatment of ‘fashionable novels’ and the cult of dandyism, most notably embodied by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Yet texts such as Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus (1833–4) and William Thackeray’s Yellowplush Papers (1837), both serialized in Fraser’s during the 1830s, express a more ambivalent fascination with the analogy between literature and fashion than their satirical mode might suggest. Fashion in clothing becomes a productive metaphor for considering the nature of literary production within an expanding market economy, characterized by the proliferation of periodicals and other forms of print ephemera.
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Notes
- 1.
The etymological association of fashion and modernity is famously discussed in Charles Baudelaire’s essay on the artist Constantin Guys, ‘The Painter of Modern Life’ (1863). According to Roland Barthes, the temporal condition of fashion is resistant to historical narrative: ‘as long as its rhythm remains regular, Fashion remains outside history; it changes, but its changes are alternative, purely endogenous: it is no more than a question of simple diachrony’ (296). For a detailed account of the development of the literary market from the early to mid-nineteenth century, see Erickson, especially chapter 6.
- 2.
The most substantial recent critical study of the genre is Copeland’s The Silver Fork Novel, but see also Adburgham and Sadoff.
- 3.
On Fraser’s campaign against fashionable literature see Latané (141–7); for the magazine’s construction of an alternative image of professional authorship, see Leary and Fisher.
- 4.
Fraser’s concerted attacks on Bulwer-Lytton, for example, are usually ascribed to a mixture of personal and party political motives. With regard to the latter, Maginn explicitly positioned Fraser’s as a staunch Tory periodical, whereas Bulwer was a high-profile pro-reform Whig Radical. See Adburgham (25) and Latané (147).
- 5.
See, for example, ‘The History of Samuel Titmarsh and the Great Hoggarty Diamond’ (September 1841).
- 6.
Almack’s was an exclusive private club in London whose Assembly Rooms were viewed as an epicentre of fashionable society during the early nineteenth century.
- 7.
For a broader discussion of the significance of fashionable authorship and literary ephemera for Thackeray’s early career, see Salmon (2016). See also chapters 4 to 6 in Thackeray in Time (Ed. Salmon and Crossley) for varying discussions of Thackeray and historical fiction.
- 8.
Thackeray memorably defined the figure of the ‘snob’ in his Punch serial, ‘The Snobs of England’ (1846–7). An example of its association with the acquisition of new clothes can be found in his earlier Almanac story ‘Stubbs’ Calendar; or, The Fatal Boots’ (1839): see Salmon (29).
- 9.
Leary, for instance, suggests that ‘the imagined world of authorship as portrayed in the magazine is at variance with the role of its contributors’ (118). See Thrall for further information on individuals included in Maclise’s group portrait of ‘The Fraserians’ who do not fit comfortably within the magazine’s professed collective identity.
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Salmon, R. (2020). Fraser’s Magazine and the Instability of Literary Fashion. In: Egan, G. (eds) Fashion and Authorship. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26898-5_6
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