There wasn’t room for both references and a bibliography, so please go to www.gregjenner.com to see the latter.
But, if you’re curious to know more about some of the subjects mentioned in Dead Famous, here’s a thematic selection of books I’m happy to recommend. I’ve put an asterisk beside those that are written for a popular audience. The others are more scholarly, and might use academic language sometimes, but nothing in this list is too challenging for the adventurous reader. Enjoy!
Edward Berenson and Eva Giloi (eds.), Constructing Charisma: Celebrity, Fame, and Power in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Berghahn Books, 2010)
* Joe Berlin (ed.), Toxic Fame: Celebrities Speak on Stardom (Visible Ink, 1996)
Daniel Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (Atheneum, 1980)
Leo Braudy, The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and Its History (Vintage, 1997)
David Cannadine, ‘The Context, Performance and Meaning of Ritual: The British Monarchy and the “Invention of Tradition”, c.1820–1977’, in Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge University Press, 1983)
* Carol Dyhouse, Glamour: Women, History, Feminism (Zed Books, 2011)
Joshua Gamson, Claims to Fame: Celebrity in Contemporary America (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1994)
* Fred Inglis, A Short History of Celebrity (Princeton University Press, 2010)
H. J. Jackson, Those Who Write for Immortality: Romantic Reputations and the Dream of Lasting Fame (Yale, 2015)
* Antoine Lilti (trans. Lynn Jeffress), The Invention of Celebrity: 1750–1850 (Polity, 2017)
P. David Marshall, Celebrity and Power: Fame in Contemporary Culture (University of Minnesota Press, 1997)
* John Potts, A History of Charisma (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)
Joseph Roach, It (University of Michigan Press, 2007)
Chris Rojek, Celebrity (Reaktion, 2004)
Jerome C. Young, The Age of Charisma (Cambridge University Press, 2017)
Melissa A. Click (ed.), Anti-Fandom: Dislike and Hate in the Digital Age (New York University Press, 2019)
Mark Duffett, Understanding Fandom: An Introduction to the Study of Media Fan Culture (Bloomsbury Academic, 2013)
Henry Jenkins, Textual Poachers: Television Fans & Participatory Culture (Routledge, 1992)
Corin Throsby, ‘Byron, Commonplacing and Early Fan Culture’, in Tom Mole (ed.), Romanticism and Celebrity Culture, 1750–1850 (Cambridge University Press, 2009)
* Mary Beard, The Roman Triumph (Harvard University Press, 2007)
Alan Cameron, Porphyrius the Charioteer (Oxford University Press, 1973)
Isabel Davis and Catherine Nall (eds.), Chaucer and Fame: Reputation and Reception (D. S. Brewer, 2015)
Hazel Dodge, Spectacle in the Roman World (Bristol Classical Press, 2011)
* Robert Garland, Roman Celebrity (Duckworth, 2006)
Gianni Guastella, Word of Mouth: Fama and Its Personifications in Art and Literature from Ancient Rome to the Middle Ages (Oxford University Press, 2017)
Philip Hardie, Rumour and Renown: Representations of Fama in Western Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2012)
* Maria Wyke, Caesar: A Life in Western Culture (Granta, 2007)
* Alfred Owen Aldridge, Voltaire and the Century of Light (Princeton University Press, 2015)
Donna T. Andrew and Randall McGowen, The Perreaus and Mrs. Rudd: Forgery and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century London (University of California Press, 2001)
* Robyn Asleson et al., A Passion for Performance: Sarah Siddons and Her Portraitists (Getty Publications, 1999)
* Helen Barry, The Castrato and His Wife (Oxford University Press, 2011)
* Ian Campbell Ross, Laurence Sterne: A Life (Oxford University Press, 2001)
* Ron Chernow, Washington: A Life (Penguin, 2011)
* Quintin Colville (ed.), Emma Hamilton: Seduction & Celebrity (Thames & Hudson, 2018)
* Leo Damrosch, Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius (Mariner Books, 2007)
Laura Engel, Fashioning Celebrity: Eighteenth-Century British Actresses and Strategies for Image Making (Ohio State University Press, 2011)
* John Ferling, The Ascent of George Washington: The Hidden Political Genius of an American Icon (Bloomsbury, 2009)
* Michelle Hetherington (ed.), Cook & Omai: The Cult of the South Seas (National Library of Australia, 2001)
* Ian Kelly, Mr Foote’s Other Leg: Comedy, Tragedy and Murder in Georgian London (Picador, 2012)
Matthew J. Kinservik, Sex, Scandal, and Celebrity in Late Eighteenth-Century England (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)
Heather McPherson, Art & Celebrity in the Age of Reynolds and Siddons (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2017)
Felicity Nussbaum, Rival Queens: Actresses, Performance, and the Eighteenth-Century British Theatre (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010)
* Glynis Ridley, Clara’s Grand Tour (Atlantic, 2004)
Leslie Ritchie, David Garrick and the Mediation of Celebrity (Cambridge University Press, 2019)
* James Sharpe, Dick Turpin: The Myth of the English Highwayman (Profile, 2005)
* Doug Stewart, The Boy Who Would Be Shakespeare: A Tale of Forgery and Folly (Da Capo Press, 2010)
* Caroline Weber, Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution (Aurum, 2007)
* Kate Williams, England’s Mistress: The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton (Arrow, 2006)
Malcolm Andrews, Charles Dickens and His Performing Selves: Dickens and the Public Readings (Oxford University Press, 1997)
* Barry Anthony, The King’s Jester: The Life of Dan Leno, Victorian Comic Genius (IB Tauris, 2010)
* Debby Applegate, The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher (Doubleday, 2006)
* Mark Bostridge, Florence Nightingale: The Woman and Her Legend (Penguin, 2008)
Charlotte Boyce et al., Victorian Celebrity Culture and Tennyson’s Circle (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013)
Daniel Cavicchi, Listening and Longing: Music Lovers in the Age of Barnum (Wesleyan University Press, 2011)
* Ruth Cowen, Relish: The Extraordinary Life of Alexis Soyer, Victorian Celebrity Chef (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2007)
Clifton Crais and Pamela Scully, Sara Baartman and the Hottentot Venus: A Ghost Story and a Biography (Princeton University Press, 2008)
* Hugh Cunningham, Grace Darling: Victorian Heroine (Hambledon, 2007)
* Raymund Fitzsimons, Edmund Kean: Fire from Heaven (Dial Press, 1976)
Michael D. Garval, Cléo de Mérode and the Rise of Modern Celebrity Culture (Ashgate, 2012)
* Eve Golden, Anna Held and the Birth of Ziegfeld’s Broadway (University of Kentucky Press, 2000)
* Robert Gottlieb, Sarah: The Life of Sarah Bernhardt (Yale University Press, 2010)
* Claire Harman, Charlotte Brontë: A Life (Penguin, 2015)
* Oliver Hilmes (trans. Stewart Spencer), Franz Liszt: Musician, Celebrity, Superstar (Yale University Press, 2016)
Matthew Hofer and Gary Scharnhorst (eds.), Oscar Wilde in America: The Interviews (University of Illinois Press, 2010)
* Michael T. Isenberg, John L. Sullivan and His America (Illini Books, 1994)
* Jeffrey Kahan, Bettymania and the Birth of Celebrity Culture (Lehigh University Press, 2010)
* Jeffrey Kahan, The Cult of Kean (Routledge, 2018)
Christine Kenyon Jones (ed.), Byron: The Image of the Poet (University of Delaware Press, 2008)
* Christopher Klein, Strong Boy: The Life and Times of John L. Sullivan, America’s First Sports Hero (Lyons Press, 2013)
Ghislaine McDayter, Byromania and the Birth of Celebrity Culture (State University of New York Press, 2009)
* Lynn McDonald, Mary Seacole: The Making of the Myth (Iguana, 2014)
* Larry McMurty, The Colonel and Little Missie: Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley, and the Beginnings of Superstardom in America (Simon & Schuster, 2006)
* Sara Maitland, Vesta Tilley (Virago, 1987)
* Sharon Marcus, The Drama of Celebrity (Princeton University Press, 2019)
Mary O’Connell, Byron and John Murray: A Poet and His Publisher (Oxford University Press, 2015)
Stanley Plumly, Posthumous Keats: A Personal Biography (W. W. Norton & Company, 2008)
* Simon Rae, W. G. Grace: A Life (Faber, 1998)
* Lucy Riall, Garibaldi: Invention of a Hero (Yale University Press, 2008)
* A. H. Saxon, P. T. Barnum: The Legend and the Man (Columbia University Press, 1989)
* Mary Seacole, The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands (1857)
Renée M. Sentilles, Performing Menken: Adah Isaacs Menken and the Birth of American Celebrity (Cambridge University Press, 2004)
* John Stauffer et al., Picturing Frederick Douglass: An Illustrated Biography of the Nineteenth Century’s Most Photographed American (Liveright, 2015)
* Richard Tomlinson, Amazing Grace: The Man Who Was W. G. (Little, Brown, 2015)
* Vesta Tilley, Recollections of Vesta Tilley (Hutchinson, 1934)
Clara Tuite, Lord Byron and Scandalous Celebrity (Cambridge University Press, 2015)
* Alan Walker, Franz Liszt: The Virtuoso Years, 1811–1847 (Cornell University Press, 1983)
* David Waller, The Perfect Man: The Muscular Life and Times of Eugen Sandow, Victorian Strongman (Victorian Secrets, 2011)
* Mary Warner Blanchard, Oscar Wilde’s America: Counterculture in the Gilded Age (Yale University Press, 1998)
* Luke G. Williams, Richmond Unchained: The Biography of the World’s First Black Sporting Superstar (Amberley, 2015)
* David S. Brown, Paradise Lost: A Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Belknap Press, 2017)
* Kelly R. Brown, Florence Lawrence, the Biograph Girl: America’s First Movie Star (McFarland, 2007)
* Gioia Diliberto, Debutante: The Story of Brenda Frazier (Alfred A. Knopf, 1987)
* Marybeth Hamilton, The Queen of Camp: Mae West, Sex and Popular Culture (HarperCollins, 1996)
* John F. Kasson, The Little Girl Who Fought the Great Depression: Shirley Temple and 1930s America (W. W. Norton & Company, 2014)
* Barbara Leaming, If This Was Happiness: A Biography of Rita Hayworth (Viking, 1990)
* Jane Leavy, The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created (HarperLuxe, 2018)
Karen Leick, Gertrude Stein and the Making of an American Celebrity (Routledge, 2009)
Adrienne L. McLean, Being Rita Hayworth: Labor, Identity, and Hollywood Stardom (Rutgers University Press, 2004)
Neepa Majumdar, Wanted: Cultured Ladies Only! Female Stardom and Cinema in India, 1930–1950s (University of Illinois Press, 2009)
* Barry Paris, Louise Brooks: A Biography (University of Minnesota Press, 1990)
* Deborah Paul (ed.), Tragic Beauty: The Lost 1914 Memoirs of Evelyn Nesbit (Lulu, 2006)
* D. J. Taylor, Bright Young People: The Rise and Fall of a Generation 1918–1940 (Vintage, 2008)
* Paula Uruburu, American Eve: Evelyn Newsbit, Stanford White, the Birth of the ‘It’ Girl, and the Crime of the Century (Riverhead Books, 2008)
* Mae West, Goodness Had Nothing to Do with It: The Autobiography (W. H. Allen, 1960)
* Samantha Barbas, ‘Movie Crazy: Stars, Fans and the Cult of Celebrity, 1910–1950’, PhD thesis (University of California, Berkeley, 2000)
* Scott Eyman, The Speed of Sound: Hollywood and the Talkie Revolution 1926–1930 (Simon & Schuster, 1997)
* Jennifer Frost, Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood: Celebrity Gossip and American Conservatism (New York University Press, 2011)
* Tom Kemper, Hidden Talent: The Emergence of Hollywood Agents (University of California Press, 2010)
* Adrienne L. McLean (ed.), Glamour in a Golden Age: Movie Stars of the 1930s (Rutgers University Press, 2011)
* Anne-Helen Peterson, Scandals of Classic Hollywood: Sex, Deviance, and Drama from the Golden Age of American Cinema (Plume, 2014)
* Neal Gabler, Walter Winchell: Gossip, Power and the Culture of Celebrity (Alfred A. Knopf, 1994)
Kate Jackson, George Newnes and the New Journalism in Britain 1880–1910: Culture and Profit (Ashgate, 2001)
David Vincent, Privacy: A Short History (Polity Press, 2016)
Joel H. Wiener, The Americanization of the British Press, 1830–1914: Speed in the Age of Transatlantic Journalism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011)
* Scott Bonn, Why We Love Serial Killers: The Curious Appeal of the World’s Most Savage Murderers (Skyhorse, 2014)
Michael Dobson, The Making of the National Poet: Shakespeare, Adaptation and Authorship, 1660–1769 (Clarendon, 1992)
Nadja Durbach, Spectacle of Deformity: Freak Shows and Modern British Culture (University of California Press, 2010)
Paul Fryer (ed.), Women in the Arts in the Belle Epoque: Essays on Influential Artists, Writers and Performers (MacFarland, 2012)
V. A. C. Gatrell, The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English People, 1770–1868 (Oxford University Press, 1996)
Ruth Penfold-Mounce, Death, the Dead and Popular Culture (Emerald Publishing, 2018)
* David Schmid, Natural Born Celebrities: Serial Killers in American Culture (University of Chicago Press, 2005)
Jacob Smith, The Thrillmakers: Celebrity, Masculinity, and Stunt Performance (University of California Press, 2012)
Marlene Tromp (ed.), Victorian Freaks: The Social Context of Freaks in Britain (Ohio University Press, 2008)
Nicola J. Watson, The Literary Tourist (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006)