The strange genius of Mr. O : the world of the United States' first forgotten celebrity /
Carolyn Eastman.
- 1 online resource (x, 348 pages).
- Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press Ser. .
Description based upon print version of record.
Includes bibliographies and index.
Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Introduction. A Celebrity in the Early Republic -- 1. The Ogilviad -- or, Two Students at King's College Fight a Duel in Poetry, 1786-1793 -- 2. "Restless and Ardent and Poetical": An Ambitious Scottish Schoolteacher in Virginia, 1793-1803 -- 3. Ogilvie and Opium, a Love Story, 1803-1809 -- 4. A "Romantic Excursion" to Deliver Oratory, 1808 -- 5. Navigating the Shoals of Belief and Skepticism, October-November 1808 -- 6. How to Hate Mr. O, 1809-1814 7. A Cosmopolitan Celebrity in a Provincial Republic -- 8. Forging Celebrity and Manliness in a Toga, 1810-1815 -- 9. Fighting Indians in a Masculine Kentucky Landscape, 1811-1813 -- 10. A Golden Age of American Eloquence, 1814-1817 -- 11. A Fall from Grace -- or, Oratory versus Print, 1815-1817 -- 12. "A Very Extraordinary Orator" in Britain, 1817-1820 -- 13. The Meanings of Melancholy, 1780-1820 -- Epilogue. Celebrating and Forgetting -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y
"The Strange Genius of Mr. O is at once the biography of a remarkably odd celebrity--a gaunt, opium-addicted Scottish orator who lectured in a toga--and a tour of the fledgling United States. James Ogilvie arrived in the United States in 1793 as an educated, impoverished, and deeply ambitious teacher. By the time he returned to Britain in 1819, he was a celebrity known simply as "Mr. O" who counted the nation's leading politicians, writers, and intellectuals among his admirers. Following Ogilvie on lecture tours from the Atlantic coast as far west as frontier Kentucky, Eastman reconstructs his path to renown, explaining how and why Ogilvie mattered to the citizens of the early republic. His example inspired countless men and more than a few women to become amateur orators and helped inaugurate America's golden age of oratory. At a time when Americans were eager for national unity, Ogilvie and his audiences hoped that eloquence might knit a divided public together--that educated, elevated oratory might provide a bedrock for citizenship and civic belonging. In Eastman's hands, Ogilvie's remarkable life story has as much to tell us about a fascinating man as it has to reveal about the nation he helped fashion"--
9781469660530
Orators--United States--Biography. Oratory--History--United States--19th century. Oratory--Social aspects--United States. Celebrities--United States.