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Intermedial AuthorshipPhotography, Portraiture and Nineteenth-Century Literary Celebrity

By Kathrin Yacavone

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£110.00

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Published 31 October 2026

About this book

Analyses photographic portraits of nineteenth-century authors as exemplars of intermedial authorship and modern literary celebrity culture

  • Investigates the under-researched visual and material-culture dimensions of literary theory and history
  • Draws on newly discovered archival material, both textual and visual
  • Introduces a new theory of authorship as intermedial
  • Revises long-held assumptions about certain canonical writers’ engagement with photography (Balzac, Baudelaire, Proust)
  • Includes illustrations entirely based on the original historical photographs

This book traces the nineteenth-century origins and rapid spread of the photographic author portrait. Innovatively exploring the combined socio-cultural, media- and photo-historical, and literary critical dynamics that shaped the trans- and intermedial production, uses, and reception of author portraits as exemplars of modern celebrity, it provides new perspectives on authorship as fundamentally shaped by photography. Based on extensive archival research, the book shows how photographic portraits of French authors were not mere visual appendages to their published works but significantly impacted on the (self-) presentation and reception of writers as cultural celebrities, through the unique affordances of the new medium.

Reviews

Learned and provocative, and broaching all sorts of fascinating questions, Intermedial Authorship reflects on the desire to know a text through a photograph of its author, a desire that especially exercised the literary culture of nineteenth-century France – and still preoccupies us today.
Kathrin Yacavone’s book compellingly demonstrates that photography has radically transformed the literary field and that we need to rethink the concept of authorship.
Table of contents

Acknowledgements
Note on Translations
List of Figures

Introduction. Portraits of the Writer Across Media
Chapter One. Photography, the Biographical Turn, and Literary Celebrity Culture
Chapter Two. Celebrity and Fame: Balzac and Early Photographic Media
Chapter Three. From Singular Portraits to Mass-Reproduced Images: The Multi-Medial Celebration of Hugolâtrie
Chapter Four. Baudelaire and Nadar: Photography, Posture, and Authorship as Notoriety
Chapter Five. Nadar and George Sand: In Search of the Iconic Author Portrait
Chapter Six. Portraits Between Old and New Media: Proust’s Literary Marketing Strategies
Conclusion. Intermedial Authorship in the Era of Networked Imaging and Generative AI

Bibliography
Index

About the author

Kathrin Yacavone

Kathrin Yacavone researches and teaches in the Department of Media Studies at the University of Marburg, Germany. She is a media studies scholar and photography theorist with a particular interest in cross-media phenomena, including in photography and literature. She is the author of Benjamin, Barthes and the Singularity of Photography (Continuum, 2012), co-editor of Die Fotografie und ihre Institutionen (Photography’s Institutionalization) (Reimer, 2024), and editor of five special journal issues on topics such as collaborative authorship, the history and aesthetics of photoalbums, contemporary photography in France, and nineteenth-century portraiture. Her current research project concerns the cultural impact of generative AI in relation to the aesthetic category of style.