Peeps, shows and chats: the promotion of artists in Late-Victorian London and The Artist as Celebrity in Victorian London

‘Peeps, shows and chats’ examines merchandising and consumption, the relationship between advertising, biography, photography and the commercial/ critical success of the artist. My research is inter-disciplinary in approach, building on the cultural histories of Mark Girouard and Peter Mandler, the history of consumption (Styles, Brewer, Porter), and literary history (Henry James and Oscar Wilde depiction of artists) and the history of the press and advertising. Primary research makes use of unpublished letters, diaries and memoirs; business records; 19th century magazines and journals, related advertising material and fiction. My new area of research, which includes profiling the late 19th century millionaire collector Alfred Morrison, is informed by this methodology: his character as an obsessive seeking acceptance by ‘high society’ can be traced through coverage in contemporary journals and his depiction in the fictions of Henry James