The Visual Worlds of Life Writing

The Visual Worlds of Life Writing brings into conversation the two most popular genres in long-eighteenth-century England: portraits and biographies. As key instruments of social formation when Britain was “forging the nation” (Linda Colley), they were wielded alike by Whigs and Tories, the aristocr...

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সংরক্ষণ করুন:
গ্রন্থ-পঞ্জীর বিবরন
প্রধান লেখক: Pahl, Kerstin Maria
বিন্যাস: Online
ভাষা:ইংরেজি
প্রকাশিত: Liverpool University Press 2025
বিষয়গুলি:
অনলাইন ব্যবহার করুন:https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/97111
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author Pahl, Kerstin Maria
author_browse Pahl, Kerstin Maria
author_facet Pahl, Kerstin Maria
author_sort Pahl, Kerstin Maria
collection Directory of Open Access Books
description The Visual Worlds of Life Writing brings into conversation the two most popular genres in long-eighteenth-century England: portraits and biographies. As key instruments of social formation when Britain was “forging the nation” (Linda Colley), they were wielded alike by Whigs and Tories, the aristocracy and the commercial middle-classes, high-class artists and grub-street writers. They were most persuasive, however, when used jointly: portrait prints, ideally accompanied by ‘Brief Lives’, sold by the thousands. National histories were re-issued to include pictures. Portraitists were required to stage their sitters as though taken from real-life situations. Embedded into such interplay between texts and images was an aesthetic claim: doing biography was a multimedia enterprise. Far from being just words on a page, eighteenth-century life writing came with frontispiece portraits, illustrations, or elaborate title pages. Biographers directed their readers to existing portraits of their subjects to enhance the reading experience. Portraits made of calligraphic writing blurred the boundaries between text and image. As a thorough reassessment of visual culture’s role in producing biographies, this book offers an in-depth analysis of the rhetorics of portraiture and life writing, an historical account of their sister arts tradition, and an inquiry into the social function of profiling people.
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spelling doab-20.500.12854ir-1511262025-07-21T15:44:21Z The Visual Worlds of Life Writing Pahl, Kerstin Maria biography;life writing;visual culture;history of the book;portraiture;long eighteenth-century thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History::NHD European history thema EDItEUR::A The Arts::AF The Arts: art forms::AFC Paintings and painting thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History::NHD European history thema EDItEUR::A The Arts::AF The Arts: art forms::AFC Paintings and painting The Visual Worlds of Life Writing brings into conversation the two most popular genres in long-eighteenth-century England: portraits and biographies. As key instruments of social formation when Britain was “forging the nation” (Linda Colley), they were wielded alike by Whigs and Tories, the aristocracy and the commercial middle-classes, high-class artists and grub-street writers. They were most persuasive, however, when used jointly: portrait prints, ideally accompanied by ‘Brief Lives’, sold by the thousands. National histories were re-issued to include pictures. Portraitists were required to stage their sitters as though taken from real-life situations. Embedded into such interplay between texts and images was an aesthetic claim: doing biography was a multimedia enterprise. Far from being just words on a page, eighteenth-century life writing came with frontispiece portraits, illustrations, or elaborate title pages. Biographers directed their readers to existing portraits of their subjects to enhance the reading experience. Portraits made of calligraphic writing blurred the boundaries between text and image. As a thorough reassessment of visual culture’s role in producing biographies, this book offers an in-depth analysis of the rhetorics of portraiture and life writing, an historical account of their sister arts tradition, and an inquiry into the social function of profiling people. 2025-02-12T15:29:33Z 2025-02-12T15:29:33Z 2025-01-14T14:23:15Z 2025 book https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/97111 9781802074567 9781835532683 https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/151126 eng open access image/jpeg Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/97111/1/Pahl_9781837645497_web.pdf Liverpool University Press aa5f0a3b-b4a0-4754-9840-b645b364c5ef 9781802074567 9781835532683 312 open access
spellingShingle biography;life writing;visual culture;history of the book;portraiture;long eighteenth-century
thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History::NHD European history
thema EDItEUR::A The Arts::AF The Arts: art forms::AFC Paintings and painting
thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History::NHD European history
thema EDItEUR::A The Arts::AF The Arts: art forms::AFC Paintings and painting
Pahl, Kerstin Maria
The Visual Worlds of Life Writing
title The Visual Worlds of Life Writing
title_full The Visual Worlds of Life Writing
title_fullStr The Visual Worlds of Life Writing
title_full_unstemmed The Visual Worlds of Life Writing
title_short The Visual Worlds of Life Writing
title_sort visual worlds of life writing
topic biography;life writing;visual culture;history of the book;portraiture;long eighteenth-century
thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History::NHD European history
thema EDItEUR::A The Arts::AF The Arts: art forms::AFC Paintings and painting
thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History::NHD European history
thema EDItEUR::A The Arts::AF The Arts: art forms::AFC Paintings and painting
topic_facet biography;life writing;visual culture;history of the book;portraiture;long eighteenth-century
thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History::NHD European history
thema EDItEUR::A The Arts::AF The Arts: art forms::AFC Paintings and painting
thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History::NHD European history
thema EDItEUR::A The Arts::AF The Arts: art forms::AFC Paintings and painting
url https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/97111
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