Module overview
This module explores the development of celebrity in Britain 1888-1952, focusing particularly upon the influence of technologies and mass media. The years between the late 1880s and early 1950s saw a massive expansion in printed and visual media, and this module charts representations of celebrity from the pages of illustrated newspapers (from the late 1880s) to modern technicolour film (1952), via turn-of-the-century developments in silent film, the 1920s invention of radio and advances in photography. How should we understand the development of celebrity during this period? In examining this question, you will encounter a variety of men and women who became famous, from glamourous film and sports stars to political icons and seedy criminals. But as importantly, you will get to grips with the wider social, cultural, economic and technological contexts that underpinned celebrity in late-nineteenth and early/mid twentieth-century Britain, including the emergence of mass communications and the uses celebrity was put to in endorsing political and social causes and new consumer lifestyles. As part of this investigation you will examine the plausibility of historians’ arguments that, for example, link celebrity to supposedly increased opportunities for leisure and the ‘Americanisation’ of British popular culture.
As you move through the module you will examine in depth the ways in which celebrities and their life stories were reported across a variety of different media. In each session you will be introduced to a different genre of primary source material, and will explore what light that genre of source sheds upon celebrity in our period. Sources to be studied include biographies; autobiographies; newspapers; magazines; photographs; paintings; letters; radio programmes and radio journalism; film; and material culture sources (for example, cigarette card collections and consumer goods). In examining these sources you will be pursuing two goals. Firstly, to gain an understanding of the chronology, personalities and key events in the history of celebrity in late-nineteenth and early/mid-twentieth-century Britain. Secondly, to consider how the primary source materials you study not only document these individuals and historical moments, but also take on a key role in shaping celebrity. This means you will also consider the impact of technological change, new styles of journalism, and changing consumer tastes between the late 1880s and early 1950s, and some of the leading journalists, photographers and agents who ‘made’ celebrities in these years.