In bringing biography and celebrity together, the essays in Making Stars interrogate contemporary and current understandings of each. Although biography was not invented in the eighteenth century, the period saw the emergence of works that focus on individuals who are interesting as much, if not more, for their everyday, lived experience than for their status or actions. At the same time, celebrity emerged as public fascination for the private lives of publicly visible individuals. Biography and celebrity are mutually constitutive, but in complex and varied ways that this volume unpacks. Contributors to this volume present us a picture of eighteenth-century celebrity that was mediated across multiple sites, demonstrating that eighteenth-century celebrity culture in Britain was more pervasive, diverse and, in many ways, more egalitarian, than previously supposed.

Samuel Richardson was one of the great letter-writers in English. His three great novels, Pamela, Clarissa, and Sir Charles Grandison were written in epistolary form, and Richardson himself was known in his time for the way he used his letters for both professional and personal purposes. As a printer, Richardson corresponded with authors, readers, and other printers and publishers. As a friend, he supported his correspondents when they were personally struggling. As a novelist, he engaged readers both before and after the publication of his works, soliciting their opinion and defending his own methods. Correspondence Primarily on Pamela and Clarissa (1732–1749) gives us Richardson the printer, the friend, and the novelist in the crucial early years of his unexpected success and fame as a literary writer, providing insight into how and why he created innovative works that changed the course of literary history.

In bringing biography and celebrity together, the essays in Making Stars interrogate contemporary and current understandings of each. Although biography was not invented in the eighteenth century, the period saw the emergence of works that focus on individuals who are interesting as much, if not more, for their everyday, lived experience than for their status or actions. At the same time, celebrity emerged as public fascination for the private lives of publicly visible individuals. Biography and celebrity are mutually constitutive, but in complex and varied ways that this volume unpacks. Contributors to this volume present us a picture of eighteenth-century celebrity that was mediated across multiple sites, demonstrating that eighteenth-century celebrity culture in Britain was more pervasive, diverse and, in many ways, more egalitarian, than previously supposed.