Download or read book Sentiment & Celebrity written by Thomas Nelson Baker and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 1999 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sentiment and Celebrity tells the story of a man the New York Times once called "the most talked-about author in America". A widely admired, if controversial master of the sentimental appeal poet and "magazinist" Nathaniel Parker Willis (1806-1867) was a pioneer in the modern business of celebrity. By charting the shape and thrust of the various controversies that surrounded Willis, this book shows how the cultural and commercial impulses that fostered the development of antebellum America's love affair with fame and fashion drew power and sustenance from the concurrent allure of genteel cultivation and sentiment.