Rohff Persona Non Grata

This book traces the transformation of history from a Romantic literary pursuit into a modern academic discipline during the second half of the nineteenth century, and shows how this change inspired Victorians to reconsider what it meant to be a historian. This reconceptualization of the ‘historian’ lies at the heart of this book as it explores how historians strove to forge themselves a collective scholarly persona that reflected and legitimised their new disciplinary status and gave them authority to speak on behalf of the past. The author argues that historians used the persona as a replacement for missing institutional structures, and converted book parts to a sphere where they could mould and perform their persona. By ascribing agency to titles, footnotes, running heads, typography, cover design, size, and other paratexts, the book makes an important shift in the way we perceive the formation of modern disciplines.