Abstract
When asked for a daguerreotype portrait to accompany a magazine article, Herman Melville strongly refused the request. He wanted to be judged by what he wrote and how he thought, not how he looked. Melville was disturbed by the ramifications of the daguerreotype, the first commercially feasible method of photography. Daguerreotypes had begun to affect the public’s interpretation of literature. They used the personal images of authors to understand the literature they read. This chapter investigates Melville’s response to the daguerreotype, and the method’s general appeal to the contemporary audience. It argues that the daguerreotype in Melville’s day prefigures the impact that photography would have on modern and contemporary celebrity culture.
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Hayes, K.J. (2016). The Daguerreotype Devil: Herman Melville (1819–1891). In: Franssen, G., Honings, R. (eds) Celebrity Authorship and Afterlives in English and American Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55868-8_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55868-8_5
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