Advertising and Satirical Culture in the Romantic Period

An engaging study of advertising and its interactions with literature, particularly satire and parody.

John Strachan (Author)

9780521293068, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 16 June 2011

370 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm, 0.54 kg

"Drawing on a wealth of new research, Strachan shows brilliantly how advertising and art (especially satirical art) were in dialogue with each other in this period, in ways that we are still only beginning to appreciate."
-Tom Mole,McGill University

Advertising, which developed in the late eighteenth century as an increasingly sophisticated and widespread form of brand marketing, would seem a separate world from that of the 'literature' of its time. Yet satirists and parodists were influenced by and responded to advertising, while copywriters borrowed from the wider literary culture, especially through poetical advertisements and comic imitation. This study to pays sustained attention to the cultural resonance and literary influences of advertising in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. John Strachan addresses the many ways in which literary figures including George Crabbe, Lord Byron and Charles Dickens responded to the commercial culture around them. With its many fascinating examples of contemporary advertisements read against literary texts, this study combines an intriguing approach to the literary culture of the day with an examination of the cultural impact of its commercial language.

Introduction
1. A 'department of literature': advertising in the Romantic period
2. 'Humbug and co.': satirical engagements with advertising 1770–1840
3. 'We keeps a poet': shoe blacking and the commercial aesthetic
4. 'Publicity to a lottery is certainly necessary': Thomas Bish and the culture of gambling
5. 'Barber or perfumer': incomparable oils and crinicultural satire
6. 'The poetry of hair-cutting': J. R. D. Huggins, the emperor of barbers
Conclusion: 'thoughts on puffs, patrons and other matters': commodifying the book
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural history [HBTB], Literary studies: general [DSB]