Long-Wellesley & Publicity: The Role of Celebrity in the Public Sphere (1788-1832)

This thesis explores the relationship between celebrity and the public-sphere through a case study of the life of William Long-Wellesley (1788-1857). A junior member of the powerful and well-connected Wellesley family, Long-Wellesley married into the largest fortune in Regency Britain, became a Tory MP and enjoyed moderate success as an author. But he owed his celebrity status to public curiosity about his rakish and extravagant lifestyle.

A study of Long-Wellesley’s celebrity history is important because it enables an investigation into the framework of the public sphere. In the second half of the eighteenth-century a new form of public sphere emerged, partly as a result of the rise of urban intellectual middle-class society in Western Europe, especially in England. It has been argued that the collective engagement of private people, coming together in a ‘public sphere’, resulted in the formulation of ‘public opinion’ for the purpose of acting as a corrective authority to the state. The general scholarly consensus has therefore argued that public opinion belongs to the political sphere. This thesis sets out to challenge that premise, and the assumptions that underpin it, by demonstrating that public opinion was more culturally derived, and found its inspiration in publicity.

The parameters of the public sphere in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century were more broadly defined than the traditional political focus suggests. Instead, it will be established that audiences were stimulated through a wide variety of sources, including spectacle, novelty, and celebrity. This thesis aims to re-position celebrity in the public sphere, showing how it impacted upon public opinion. It focuses on the life of Long-Wellesley because he offers many examples of how celebrity was represented in Britain during the Regency period. His decision to create and distribute his own sensational narrative makes Long-Wellesley a worthy case study; not least because he was the chief purveyor of, rather than a helpless victim of, malicious rumour and gossip. He is a prime example of how non-political spectacle influenced public opinion and helped to change the moral climate.