Elise Garritzen

What constitutes a historian? What skills and qualities should a historian cultivate? Who is entitled to define historians’ “physiognomy”? Victorians sought to answer these questions as history transformed from a Romantic literary pursuit into a modern discipline during the second half of the nineteenth century. This book offers a novel interpretation of this critical historiographical period by tracing how historians forged themselves a collective scholarly persona that legitimized their new disciplinary status. By combining historiography and book history, Elise Garritzen argues that historians appropriated titles, prefaces, footnotes, and other paratexts as an institutionalized space for fashioning the persona. Yet, historians did not have a monopoly on the persona as readers and reviewers offered their interpretations of the persona, and publishers influenced the paratextual presentation of the persona. By ascribing agency to paratexts and the literary marketplace, Garritzen makes an important shift in the way we perceive the formation of scholarly personae and modern disciplines. The book offers a novel approach to the role which scholarly virtues held in the Victorian society, the formation of scholarly communities, the commodification of knowledge, and the management of scientific reputations. It provides new insights for scholars interested in the history of humanities, science, and knowledge, book history, and Victorian culture.

What constitutes a historian? What skills and qualities should a historian cultivate? Who is entitled to define historians’ “physiognomy”? Victorians sought to answer these questions as history transformed from a Romantic literary pursuit into a modern discipline during the second half of the nineteenth century. This book offers a novel interpretation of this critical historiographical period by tracing how historians forged themselves a collective scholarly persona that legitimized their new disciplinary status. By combining historiography and book history, Elise Garritzen argues that historians appropriated titles, prefaces, footnotes, and other paratexts as an institutionalized space for fashioning the persona. Yet, historians did not have a monopoly on the persona as readers and reviewers offered their interpretations of the persona, and publishers influenced the paratextual presentation of the persona. By ascribing agency to paratexts and the literary marketplace, Garritzen makes an important shift in the way we perceive the formation of scholarly personae and modern disciplines. The book offers a novel approach to the role which scholarly virtues held in the Victorian society, the formation of scholarly communities, the commodification of knowledge, and the management of scientific reputations. It provides new insights for scholars interested in the history of humanities, science, and knowledge, book history, and Victorian culture.

Henry Biaudet ja Liisi Karttunen olivat 1900-luvun alussa epätavallisia suomalaisia historioitsijoita. He tutkivat Roomassa uuden ajan alun ja paavillisen lähettiläslaitoksen historiaa ja olivat alan kansainvälisesti arvostettuja edelläkävijöitä. Kotimaassa heidät tunnettiin pikemminkin epäsovinnaisesta elämäntavastaan ja poliittisiksi leimatuista Ruotsin historian tulkinnoistaan. Kulkemalla Biaudet'n ja Karttusen jalanjäljillä eteläisen Euroopan arkistoissa tutkimus selvittää, millaista oli historiantutkimus 1900-luvun alussa. Tutkijaparin kautta avautuu uudenlainen näkökulma suomalaiseen historiankirjoituksen historiaan. Elise Garritzen on historiantutkija Helsingin yliopistossa.