The biographer’s tale: Second thoughts about ‘Filter Hill’

Abstract

George Rousseau’s 2012 biography of Hill-The Notorious Sir John Hill: The Man Destroyed by Ambition in the Age of Celebrity-brought this neglected figure of mid-eighteenth century London to the attention of academic scholars. His biography explained why Hill had been neglected, why he deserved to be revisited and resuscitated, and painstakingly documented over many hundreds of pages Hill’s contributions to eighteenth-century life and thought in diverse fields. Now four years have elapsed. In this second ‘look’ Rousseau revisits the publication of his biography and explains why he might have approached some areas differently, particularly in the configuration of Hill as a ‘filter’ for mid-century London. The chapter begins with theoretical concerns about the varieties of biography and then moves to the perplexities of the form of biography as a container and frame for a subject as‘uncontainable’ as John Hill, all the time working to situate his biographical subject-Hill-within historical contexts of developing fame and celebrity. The chapter then distinguishes between mid-Georgian conceptions of fame and celebrity and traces differences brought into focus since 2012 as the result of work in the new subdisciplines gathered around celebrity studies. Finally, notoriety is discussed as a particular type of celebrity, both within the contexts of the 1750s and as a province of the biographer’s and historian’s field of vision. The essay ends on Rousseau’s summing up of the four-year interim 2012-2016.