You're Dead to Me - The History of Fandom, 1700-1900 (Live)

Episode Date: September 16, 2022

Greg Jenner is joined by Dr Corin Throsby and Stuart Goldsmith to look at early cultural fandom in the 18th and 19th centuries. Although many consider Beatlemania to be the start of what is now considered fan culture, Greg and his guests consider some much earlier and often hilarious examples of the birth of fandom. This episode was recorded live at the 2022 Hay Festival.You’re Dead To Me is a production by The Athletic for BBC Radio 4. Research by Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow Written by Emma Nagouse and Greg Jenner Produced by Emma Nagouse and Greg Jenner Assistant Producer: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow Project Management: Isla Matthews Audio Producer: Abi Paterson

This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK. All day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcastercaster and I'm the former chief nerd on the BBC comedy show Horrible Histories and today we are coming to you live from the Hay Festival in Wales meaning for the first time ever, I get to say this Hello audience!

You're lost aren't you, You're looking for the toilets. They're over there. Fine. Thank you so much for coming. We're hoping that by the end of this we'll have acquired more fans and that is very much what we're talking about today. Fandom is the crucial word because today we are jumping back three centuries to learn all about the history of cultural fandom. That's books,

theatre, music, but not sport, because it's the Hay Festival and frankly, we're not doing sport here. Joining me and our lovely audience in this extremely glamorous tent are two very special guests. In History Corner, she's a writer, broadcaster and academic who teaches at the University of Cambridge. That's one of the best ones. She's an expert in romantic literature and early celebrity culture. She's a BBC New Generation thinker. And this is her fifth stint on the show, making her, I think, the longest-serving historian. She's already tackled Lord Byron, Mary Shelley,

Gothic vampire literature, and Mary Wollstonecraft. We're officially superfans. It's the marvellous Dr Corinne Throsby. Welcome back, Corinne. Thank you. It's the marvellous Dr Corinne Throsby. Welcome back, Corinne. Thank you so much. The restraining order's in the mail, Greg. And in Comedy Corner, another stalwart star of the show making his fourth appearance.

He is the sensational stand-up and podcast host. I am a full-on fanboy of his podcast, The Comedian's Comedian, one of my absolute faves. He's been on Conan O'Brien's TV show. Yes. I mean, that was a phenomenal thing. He's gone viral recently on TikTok. Yes, horrifyingly so. And you'll remember him from our episodes on Blackbeard the Pirate, Jack Shepard, and Ancient Medicine. It's the marvellous Stu Goldsmith. Welcome back, Stu. Thanks for having me. Now, Stu, a word of warning here. Normally, I am just a mild-mannered, tame host.

Uh-huh. But not today. No? Oh, no. Today, you're in my house. This is my subject. You are surrounded not only by a lovely raucous phalanx of highbrow book lovers at the Hay Festival,

but you're also surrounded by two historians who work on this. This is also something I've worked on. I've written a book about it. So are you prepared for the onslaught? Yes, I am, but only because I know how nervous you are that it's a live show. Yes, damn it. All right. Look, you're doing great. Isn't he doing great?

Normally I do this in my shed. So usually the only people looking in are a cat that's wandered in from next door and occasionally a pigeon. So you are a lot better looking than the pigeon. All right. Well, we begin, as ever, with the So What Do You Know? This is where I have a go at guessing what you, our lovely listener, plural, knows about our subject, fandom. And I think you know what fandom is. You may know about fan communities. You definitely would have heard of Beatlemania.

You may know about the modern ones, the mixers, the monsters, the Whovians and the Hooligans. Some fandoms are wholesome and delightful, some are toxic and awful, and some are unexpected. Who knew that My Little Pony was so popular with grown men? I did not. Very interesting documentary about it.

It's very big in our house as well. OK. I never let my kids watch it. And perhaps you're a fan. Perhaps we're all fans in this room. But the question is, is this intense and all-pervasive phenomenon a modern thing? And we all know it's not, because that's how this show works. It's a very rigid format.

No, we are going to find out more about it, and we're going to find out how did he buy your merch before the invention of eBay? Dr. Corrin, what do we mean when we say fandom? What is a fan? A fan is someone who has an emotional connection to either a person or a cultural product. And right from the beginning, it's had a bit of a bad rap. You know, we sort of think of that cliche of the screaming teenage girl, you know, hysterical. And it's since the kind of 17th, 18th century being associated with women and young people, and therefore has been made fun of, you know, as an academic, I can't really say that I'm a fan of something, because that implies that I don't have a critical distance from it and

that I can't judge it intellectually because of that emotional response but hopefully a lot of the things that we talk about today will show that fandom is a really creative way of engaging with cultural products yeah and Stu the word fan where do you think it comes from, etymologically speaking? Oh, what? Fan? Fanatic. It's obviously a fanatic. I'm just looking at the audience going, well, it's obviously fanatic, Stu. This is hay. Raise your game. Yes, it's surely it's short for fanatic. Right. And if you ask me about the etymology of the word fanatic i cannot help you probably does it mean someone who is like um like in a fantasy was there no i'll just come i'll step back off that i don't know retreat away from yeah i think so but like

you're if you're a fanatic of something then you're kind of like isn't it like the word lunatic comes from the moon it's like you're so is there an isn't it like the word lunatic comes from the moon? So is there an equivalent, but with fans? Just really love air conditioning. Just love it. You're not that far off, Hugh. So the word fan actually didn't appear until the late 19th century, and it was in America to refer to baseball fans. But the idea of a fan had been around for a lot longer.

Like in 1812, Thomas More described the circle of people around Byron as a circle of stargazers. But the word, we think, is probably a shortening of fanatic, meaning someone with very intense religious fervour. Aha, gotcha. So what you're saying is I was right. I love being right on this show. There's another etymology that is sometimes suggested,

which is it might derive from the fancy, which in the early 1800s was the community around boxers. And so the fighting fancy were people who were really into boxing. So it's possibly from that too. So Stu, how far back do you think we can go to find evidence of fandom as a construct um well i know like i i enjoy the circus right i'm a fan of circus tricks and stuff it's a fantastic circus uh recently with my family and um i know that you can there are hieroglyphs of people juggling there's like a recognizable three ball cascade like a three ball juggle in egypt are hieroglyphs of people juggling. There's like a recognisable three-ball cascade,

like a three-ball juggle in Egyptian hieroglyphs. So probably back then, if there were people doing tricks for money, then there were people going back and seeing them every day. So I'm going to go 5,000 years. That's my other gambit. That's a bold gambit. I mean, it's difficult to know when fans began. You were letting me down.

No, no. It's possible. I mean, there's a thing that just because there isn't evidence for it doesn't mean that it didn't happen. Now you're speaking my language. Wild conjecture. But there is a sense that there probably was some kind of fan culture, possibly, in the ancient world. Like, certainly charioteers and gladiators were big stars in their day, we think,

and that there's some evidence that maybe there were kind of riots when people's favourite charioteer didn't win, but it's difficult to know. Certainly, chariot racing was the sport in ancient Rome and in the Byzantine world as well and there were some serious riots when one team beat another team there were four teams

We're still talking about sports Greg Sorry I keep coming back to sports but yeah certainly there seems to be some fan activity but we're not really focusing on the ancient world today because Corinne you're a specialist on the 18th, 19th century and that feels like where we're going to focus today. Fandom as we know it couldn't exist without mass media. And in 1702, you get the first daily newspaper

and with that came the sense of a public sphere. And then through the 18th and 19th century there was huge developments in printing technology and so suddenly there was this vast quantity of printed material and previously they'd been you know reading was a kind of luxury activity books were extremely expensive there were very few literate people so you're in a small group of readers you very often know the author of the book that you are reading and then in the 19th century you're part of this mass of readers and in this time we really see people start to long for a connection that in this mass audience people are searching for some connection to the author that they're reading.

And that's really when we see fan communities start to form. Did you say that you would know the author of the book you were reading? Potentially. Like, so authors would swan around. I mean, this is so hay, right? Authors would wander around. Oh, hi. Hey, please read my book.

I'll be checking up with you later that you've read my book. Yeah. I mean, there were just, there were so few literate people that you'd be kind of part of a community, you know, that this is a sort of elite community of readers. And now look at it. Yes, I mean, it's an interesting thing

in the 18th century that the print technology, the culture, the kind of, the invention of what we might call the public sphere, you know, some scholars have argued in the 18th century is where people become aware of themselves as a public and they want to join in i mean that's that's when celebrity gets off the ground as well so it's all kind of joined up and i think we should probably talk about well actually we never usually do this but we broke our own rule on this show we normally we just dump our comedian in and they sort of have to swim. But this time around, we sent you some homework. Yes. Well, you asked me some questions and I can't remember any of my answers.

Excellent. That's what we like to hear. Yeah, we asked you, what do you think of when you think of fandom? One of the things you mentioned was fan mail. Yeah. And have you ever written a fan letter? I have. I did have a fan encounter when I was about 16 at the Edinburgh Festival, because obviously I'm obsessed with comedy, so a lot of my comedy heroes I'm fans of.

I met Harry Hill in the Pleasance Courtyard in Edinburgh, and I was all 16 and green as grass, and I kind of excitedly met him, and I said, can I have your autograph? And I still have it somewhere. He wrote me an autograph that said, Dear Stu, glad to finally meet you, Harry Hill. And I was like, oh, what a gent!

What a gent! What a wonderful little secret joke that I've just blown wide open. But apologies if anyone listening had also received that joke. But what a lovely thing. That's adorable. Isn't it? Oh, good for Harry.

Today we're looking at the 18th and 19th centuries, and we've already done an episode on a major celebrity, Lord Byron. He got loads of fan letters. Yeah. So the question is, was he the first? He wasn't the first. Someone who Byron was a mega fan of, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who was a writer and philosopher.

He also received thousands of fan letters after the publication of his novel Julie or the New Eloise in 1761 and yeah he was inundated with mail from people who when they read this sentimental novel felt their emotions stirred and felt like they knew him through his work and so they address him as ami Jean-Jacques you know my friend Jean-Jacques we really see this happening again with Byron people felt like they address him as Ami Jean-Jacques, you know, my friend Jean-Jacques. We really see this happening again with Byron. People felt like they knew him and therefore wanted to make that connection to let him know how much they loved his work. And if he was the first guy that was happening to, that must have been so weird from his perspective

because he wouldn't have had anyone else with whom to go, they're getting a bit close. Do you know what I mean? you just need one other person to go yeah i know right they're all nuts i mean it's weird because we you know fan mail is just something that we accept as being a normal thing that someone might do and loads of the letter writers say this is completely mad that i am writing to an absolute stranger, but I feel compelled to tell you how much your work has meant to me. Wow. That shows admirable kind of self-analysis on their part that they weren't all writing going, I bet no one else is writing to you. I'm the only, I'm your biggest fan. We'll talk more about that, but there is this sense in fandom generally that even if there are loads of us and we're aware

that there are loads of us you still feel like you have the most personal connection and in fact in um letter in the letter to byron one of the women writes your lordship is not addressed by one of those frivolous beings who conclude that it is very sentimental and captivating to sigh away an hour over Lord Byron's poetry merely because it is what is deemed the fashionable reading of the day. So it's a very long-winded way of saying, you know, I am a true fan.

I, you know, I have this connection that no one else has. I remember Stephen Fry saying that in one of his books, that he said loads of people, like the majority of people say to him I bet you get really bored of people coming up to you, right? And they're all

thinking that they're the only person that said that. Jean-Jacques Rousseau's getting people going, I love you, you're my friend. Is Byron getting horny, hot, like, let's meet down by the bins. I'm learning so much about Byron. Bins guy. Yeah, I mean, there's sort of long been this sexist assumption

that female fans are groupies. Byron's fans were called menads, who are the menads, who are the female followers of Dionysus, who used to do kind of ecstatic dances at orgies and things like that there is you know I can't deny that in a lot of these letters that I've looked at there is an erotic element um sure but uh so often fans are sort of seen as this mass a kind of hysterical mass. And actually, these are individuals who are feeling this individual connection. And so each letter is different. Each letter, you know, they're often

kind of outpourings of their own life. So often saying, you know, I've read your thing, and it just reminded me so much of this thing in my life, which is totally different from the thing that is written about in this book, but I felt this um connection and so really I think fan mail occasionally it's about wanting to have sex with the person that you're writing to um but more often than not Harry Hill yes yes um but more often than not it's um a self-exploration it's like you know lots of lead writers in the 19th century literally describe it as a type of therapy and say that they've felt so much better having poured their heart out in this way i totally know how they feel i had a

wee next to kermode earlier on and i just i'm walking on air one of my favorites the story is really is a french actor called joseph talma who was famous at the same time as byron. He was a huge star in France. He got loads of fan mail. He got poetry. He got grandiose, like, I love you, you're great, you're a genius. But he also got fans sending him letters saying,

where's a good hotel to stay? Do you want to join a gambling racket? Can I get some legal advice? I am happy to administer legal advice. If anyone wants to email me, I would be thrilled if people asked me things I had absolutely no specialization in but I said we do kind of have a relationship so yeah but lots of the lots of the 19th century fan mail was the same it was yeah like people sort of felt like they knew the they knew the person and could write to them for these mundane pieces of advice.

And then we also got Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who's a renowned poet, whose sort of big breakout poem was Aurora Lee in 1856. And she has primarily women writing to her, and that's sort of a slightly different experience. We've talked so far about

Talmar and Byron and Rousseau, who are guys, great intellectuals, but she's an intellectual, but she's of a slightly different experience. We talked so far about Talma and Byron and Russo, who are guys, great intellectuals. But she's an intellectual, but she's got a slightly different audience. And what were her female fans saying to her? There's a reason why young people particularly write fan mail. I think that it's a way of exploring your own identity and emulating someone who you can follow.

And Elizabeth Barrett Browning is a perfect example of that because she herself was a massive fan. She called herself a hero worshipper. And she was a huge fan of Wordsworth. And in fact, she said that if she would happily grasp a thistle if Wordsworth's feet had trampled it. And she adored him. The scholar Eric Eisner has made a case that her fandom allowed her

to believe in herself as an author through emulation of him. And I think that women in this time didn't have a lot of creative outlet in the same way as men did. And fan letters were one way of expressing themselves and through fandom kind of seeing, hey, that could possibly be me and imagining themselves in that position. Stu, when we sent you your homework, another thing you said was fandom is memorising and reciting people's work. Yes, well, that's something I've sort of often felt on the outside of as a fan there's certainly things i'm i'm a huge fan of but uh i was never kind of like i can't think of many things i'm like a super fan of where i always felt a bit alienated where people would go i enjoy star

trek but i can't name all the characters and i can't name the episodes i can understand 50 of the memes you know but but um we're real kind of intense fandom, I think, is to do with being able to converse with other fans in almost like a secret, like a shared language. You're being part of a community. Yes. Yeah, belonging to something. Corinne, we've already sort of very, very gingerly touched

on medieval fandom as an idea, but there's a big discussion in fandom studies whether copying is a form of creativity and that is where we get into our medieval examples because actually this is where some of these really fascinating case studies sort of exist isn't it yeah i mean do you guys know about fanfic fan fiction it's yeah this is a thing know about they write it this is a thing where fans don't want a story to end we all know know this feeling and they take it upon themselves to write alternative endings extra episodes you can put characters in romantic situations they wouldn't normally be in.

You buried the lead there, that is the key driver of the whole thing right? Often the driver. There is this debate raging at the moment in medieval studies about whether Chaucer was essentially writing Virgil and Ovid fan fiction and certainly Chaucer had a lot of fans. My favourite was a guy called John Lydgate who rewrote The Canterbury Tales with himself as a character. Going and reading a bit.

When was this? This is like... This is like 600 years ago. Yeah. Chaucer's writings of 13 years. Was he hoping that no one had read the original? And he was like, oh, I'm the star of the Canterbury Tales.

You know, here it is. Well, this is the thing with fan fiction, that it's very much for people who have read the original. This is like in-jokes for other fans. That's really fanfic at its core. Is there a chance, and forgive me, I'm not kind of religiously minded, but is there a chance that anyone ever did that with the Bible, which is a more popular book than the canterbury tales let's not forget could anyone have rewritten the

at a time when the bible was produced by monks writing it and then passing it on writing it passing on as i understand it was it like here's the bible pop hey brother tony put yourself in it like you copy it and put yourself in noah's ark the animals went in two by two, but Brother Tony went alone because he was chased. Pop yourself in. I mean, there's hagiographies, right? So hagiographies are the lives of saints.

They have a sort of fanfic element to them, and they often are quite extraordinary. It's not necessarily the same thing. There was certainly, like, in art, you know, that, like, patrons would put themselves in, in like i was at the crucifixion um so i i mean i'm wonderful i need to check this out if there was any literature yeah but yeah so i mean this this medieval studies debate is really interesting because there's another counter argument which is that in the medieval world novelty and creativity were not we're not as prized as authority from the past. So sometimes when you're writing, you have to borrow from the past

because that's where the legitimacy is. So the notion of Chaucer sort of stealing from Boccaccio or Dante or whatever, maybe that's how you got famous at the time. It's really tricky because that sort of the line between adaptation and homage and, you know, it all gets a little bit tricky. And I mean, I think that you have to see sort of fan fiction in its purest form as this thing where it is for other fans the enjoyment of writing it yourself and then sharing it with other people who know this world there was what could be called Byron fan fiction where people were kind of writing lost cantos of his poetry

and that sort of thing. But then it gets a bit trickier for authors particularly when this edges into plagiarism and wanting to make money from someone's big name. Before copyright law got tighter, it was really standard practice to bring out pirated copies and what could sort of be described as fan fiction but you know really just ways of trying to make money from an author's big name and Samuel Richardson often complained about his characters being kidnapped by other authors who you know wanted to put them in in their work to kind of make money from him. I mean Dickens is the famous one who literally goes

to court over and over and over to try and stop pirate copies. In fact, Stu, can you guess the names of any pirated Dickens novels? Oh, whoa, come on. Well, hang on, A Muppet's Christmas Carol? Wait a minute. That's an absolute classic, how dare you?

His greatest work. Oliver Twist. Oliver Twist Oliver Twist oh okay this kind of stuff so great great expectorations Nicholas Nickelberry and then the

one that feels more fan fiction is Pickwick in America oh that yeah that's good because they've taken the character

and gone like this guy he's going to America amazing and some authors you know like Byron didn't like his name being stolen if people were kind of trying to pass this off as his work there was also a sense that this kind of added to his fame because so many people were kind of creating byron-esque works um and you know still today we see this thing where some authors

like it encourage it and others really find it very difficult have you ever written fan fictions do you i mean i know you're a huge fan of bottom the sitcom so would you ever write bottom fan fiction well not art fiction i mean i mean the show yeah yeah yeah not deliberately but certainly as a street performer age 16 i massively plagiarized the dangerous brothers okay which was rick male and adrian edmondson's kind of first outing i think on on tv yeah me and my mate Noel did street shows at Stratford College where we went to college which we eventually got busted on

because someone ran past the background who'd also seen the source material going Lady Adrian dangerous? We were like oh god they've caught us we've got to get out of here I mean it is fascinating stuff I mean we need to move on there's so much to get through but it is really interesting this sort of creativity,

this sort of who owns these stories. Obviously, authors will say, I own these stories. What are you talking about? But they do sort of exist in the ether. We all enjoy them. You mentioned that, so I went viral on TikTok, guys. So I had a video that's had like 3 million views of it,

which might actually mean like six people watched it for longer than half a second i don't know how it works but my friend alerted me to the fact that there are six little videos out there where people are now lip-syncing to my stand-up routine i know i was so flattered i commented on all of them personally i was like great job guys this is the best day of my life but when they get the netflix deal yeah, yeah, yeah. You were like... Very different story. Yeah, OK. So, pilgrimages. Going to a place to sort of enjoy the physical experience

of being somewhere special related to your fan fave. And you said you haven't gone abroad, but have you gone to a UK location and sort of stood in the hallowed halls of some great comedian? Yes, I've been to see... You know, I been to see you know i went to see pearl jam at milton keen's bowl put my wife through four and a half hours of pearl jam but have you been to a house maybe like a um like an actual you know have you been

somewhere that meant something in a person's life in a pearl jam song oh yes um have you been to see Jeremy? Why go? Nothing It's a Pearl Jam song So No, I don't think I have Unless I emailed you that I did No, no, no Just get the email up No, I don't think I've ever done that

I mean, Corin, we've been to I totally go to I went to Jane Austen's house that. I mean, Corinne, we've been to... I totally go to... I went to Jane Austen's house recently. Yeah, I've been. They were like, and this is the desk. And I was like, oh, and I kind of felt my heart swell. I was looking at the view that she looked at, and they're like, or it could have belonged to the neighbour.

We're really not sure. She lived in loads of places, and all of them were like, this is Jane Austen's house. It's the same with Rowling in Edinburgh. Every single cafe in Edinburgh is like, well, this is where she came up with the idea for muzzle grumps or something. But it's really funny because actually the authenticity isn't actually that important because it all takes place in the fan's head anyways. But it's not a new thing, right?

I mean, we have fan tourism, as it's called, in the 18th century, in the 19th century. Yeah, well, yeah. as it's called in the 18th century, in the 19th century. Yeah, well, yeah, Daniel Defoe talks about going to Byron's grave and even like a tour guide showing him around. Did I say Byron's grave? No. No, yeah, because that would be, that's time travel. That would be, that is time travel.

That would be amazing. That is. I'm going to Byron's grave in 100 years, you'll understand why. No, Daniel Defoe went to Shakespeare's grave. Yes, he did, that's right. And yeah, you know, Byron and Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley did a big trip around France and Switzerland, and there they visited places associated with Rousseau.

Lots of houses in the 19th century became tourist attractions. And, you know, the person doesn't even really need to be dead, at least in the 19th century. Hello, this is my house, get out. No, but literally poor old Tennyson, when he was poet laureate in the 19th century, he was so hounded that he moved out of London, he moved to the Isle of Wight,

hoping to get some peace and quiet. The town of Freshwater, where he moved to, became a total tourist attraction. People came all the way from america to visit him there and apparently he got really really jittery about that a friend talks about going on a walk with him and he like jumps at what turns out to be a flock of sheep thinking that it's like a bunch of autograph hunters so yeah he really we've all had that any performer has had the moment post show where people come up and say hey well done well done, loved it, fantastic, thanks, thanks, thanks.

And then the fifth person to come up goes, excuse me. And you're like, yeah? And they're like, where are the toilets? Oh, yeah, sure, they're over there. Professor Nicola Watson's done a lot of stuff on this. And the word we sometimes use as historians is necrotourism, which sounds a lot darker than it is. Sounds a bit like you're sort of poking, I don't know, skeletons. But it's not quite that.

It's visiting dead people's homes because they become innately interesting and this is a big, big deal. Yeah, Shakespeare gets it. Walter Scott. Walter Scott, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's sort of quite a big deal. And the other one, I suppose, is the Bronte Parsonage, isn't it? I mean, that's in Yorkshire, of course, it's Howarth, and

the Brontes are a huge brand after they die and there's an American collector called Charles Hale who buys the wood and the glass from Charlotte's bedroom. Do you know what he does with it, Stu? He brings it back to America. Wood and glass. Yeah.

Does he build... I don't know. I was going to say, does he build a kite? That doesn't make any sense at all, does it? A glass kite. Does he rebuild the window looking at a different... Does he put the window in his house? That's not bad.

So he can look out through the window through which they looked. Hey, I mean, you're not far off at all. He does exactly that, but smaller. He makes picture frames so he can look at his photographs through the same glass that Charlotte looked through. I'd have preferred a kite. If a glass kite came down in your head, you're in serious trouble.

Was this the Bronte? And then the other one we probably should mention is David Garrick and his big Shakespeare jubilee pageant. You know it well, do you? Oh, sure. Yeah, it combines my two favourite things. Which are?

Walking around and not knowing what I'm talking about. 1769 in the Bard's hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon. We have BardCon 69. That's what I'm calling it. No way! Tell me that date again. When was it? 1769.

1769. Okay. So a long time ago. Yeah. Did they do cosplay? Did they? Yes. They were like Darth Vader and stuff like that.

Great. Darth Vader, the famed Shakespeare character. Yeah, no, people dressed up as Shakespeare's characters. They were going to have a parade, but it obviously got rained out. Someone who grew up near there. Yeah, totally. It got rained out. Someone who grew up near there.

Yeah, totally. People bought souvenirs made out of the wood from the mulberry tree that Shakespeare had planted out the front of his house. Yeah, the only thing that didn't happen at Shakespeare's Jubilee was any performance of an actual Shakespeare play. Yeah, because they're not there for the content, they're there for the fandom, right? Exactly! This is what defenders of the Jubilee have said.

This is the same at conventions today. Everyone knows the original text. It's about creating new experiences and new material around it. But it got a lot of criticism at the time as being a kind of... just all about the consumption of Shakespeare rather than a real appreciation of his work. And in fact, a poet at the time said,

they know Shakespeare's name and have heard of his fame, though his merit, their shallow conception escapes. And there's sort of this sense with so many fans, again, that they have this like true intellectual connection and they're kind of above other fans. You know, other fans are just doing doing this frenzied consumerism, whereas that one guy in the Chewbacca costume feels that he alone has that real. Yeah, but it comes from both ends, doesn't it? So is that what you're saying? That it's like the the elite kind of look at it and go,

oh, I can't believe you're dressing up as Shakespeare, how pathetic. I'm a true fan. And the person who's dressed as Falstaff is like, well, come on, mate, I'm living it. It's hugely important, this Jubilee, because this is the moment where Shakespeare becomes the national poet. But it's David Garrick, who was a very famous actor at the time, who sort of embodies Shakespeare.

He basically steals Shakespeare's brand, makes it his own, and turns Shakespeare into the national poet. So it's a sort of big, it's a really interesting moment where fan culture actually elevates what becomes the great playwright, the greatest, arguably,

if you listen to many people. So it's quite interesting that low culture sort of shoves high culture up the ladder. So is that the fact that we regard him now as the greatest poet, is that informed by the fact of the Jubilee and how Garrick kind of framed him in the same way that now I often think as a non-football fan, people assume that it's kind of the lifeblood and actually it's because loads of money's been pumped into it. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, absolutely that. And so Garrick poses as Shakespeare for the famous sculpture of Shakespeare. So it's Garrick basically parasitically saying, I shall just steal some of his luster and I shall become him. Shakespeare wasn't even bald. Garrick was bald. Can you imagine that?

Garrick had a famous wig. He had the Garrick wig. It was a special stunt wig that he could pull a little thread and it would go up in the air if he was scared. You'd be like, oh my God, a ghost. Woo! Oh, that is so good. Just a very quick fun little tidbit uh the man who owned shakespeare's house called the reverend francis gastrell was so annoyed at all the fans

showing up he burnt the house down he literally did no yeah and and stew and he cut down the mulberry tree so this mulberry tree that people came to like like, bask under to kind of bask in Shakespeare's glory. And he started spreading rumours that it was all done by, what's his face, Marlowe. Yeah, exactly. But then, hilariously, fans started writing fan fiction from the point of view of the mulberry tree. That's nuts.

He burnt the house down. He pulled it down. Stop coming. In fairness, it was also a slight tax dodge as well. But he was really annoyed. Yeah, it's a new place. He pulled it down. Stop coming. In fairness, it was also a slight tax dodge as well. Okay. It was really annoying. Yes, a new place. He pulled it down and he cut down the tree.

Oh, my God. Yeah. Oh. You know, we've often talked about fandom. We're talking about the emotional intimacy here. We're talking about what it means to people. But as a historian of celebrity, I'm going to say, yes, but celebrity culture is about money. It's about cash.

It's about commercialism. It's about, you know, it's this industry. And we see it rising in the 1700s and 1800s. Celebs have their own micro economies. They are trendsetters. Their fans are eager to copy them. There's cash to be made in that kind of marketplace. The Marlbury Tree was a big merch producer.

I mean, that thing got chopped down decades before the Jubilee. And at the Jubilee, they were selling Marberry tree toothpicks, mulberry tree walking sticks. It produced so much merch. There's a long history of marketing stuff that has been associated. And there was also a whole world of prints. Like when print culture became a thing, we then see what is pretty much the early

pin-up um which were these print shops that would sell you know david garrick was great at um sort of utilizing the print to kind of spread his fame and his image yeah engravings prints i mean they're bestsellers also ceramic statue little statues of your favourite celeb. You could own those. Pin badges and all sorts. Byron neckties were very big. Byron neckties. These days the conversation about what merch to have as a comic is largely informed by weight and how much room it's going to take up in your house

if you don't sell it all. My friend brewed his own beer to advertise his comic character that he was doing and then he kept it at home. And any time anyone would come around, he'd go, hey, do you want one of my beers? And then he gradually drank his way through like 400 beers and sold none of them. So, yeah. So tea towels are a good item.

Yes. For comics at the Edinburgh Festival. Knocking out a tea. Not just a generic tea. Not just like three for a pound red and white Czech tea towel. But if you can put something on it, then yeah, pin badges and stuff like that, they're really good. And actually in the 19th century,

one of the biggest sort of celebrity merch crazes was there was a whole thing called Carter Mania. It was with the advent of photography, you could now have these little images of stars and politicians and all sorts of people, and people started collecting them. And there were like hundreds of millions of these were sold in the 1860s. You know, you could sort of get your little album and stick them. They were like the Panini football cards of their day.

It's called Carter-mania. Why Carter? Carter as in a little cart. Oh, as in a cart. As in the French, as in a cart. A lot of the kind of the merch transaction i find is to do with meeting the people afterwards like often if it's like you know people at edinburgh you might like sell a rubber duck or that you've signed or something you know um brilliant paul

curry used to do that um and really it's just a sort of it's an opportunity for the fans to come up to or a book signing you sign books after a talker hey people really they'd like it signed that's nice but what they want is just a couple of seconds of just you and me hey look we you get me right those kind of moments and i suppose if you've got like a a t-shirt of something or a little card that you can sort of put on your on your lapel then it's a means of identifying yourself to other fans isn't it it's like standing out and saying yeah so i mean cartomania brings us to the the mania section and we'll we'll talk more a little bit about something in your nuance window we'll talk about another form of curation and

collection which is commonplace books but that's for later but mania wise have you ever heard of lindomania stew lindomania yeah is that for the little chocolate yes it is yes is it no no come on i got so lucky with burnt his house down i thought i'd just try it lindomania as in um uh oh linden i want to is it a oh god is it a baby or a famous aeronaut no no i've got nothing it's jenny lind who was an opera singer have you ever seen the everyone seems to love it i think it's terrible the movie the greatest showman i have not oh okay so it's the pt barnum story yes gotcha all right so jenny lynn was a swedish opera singer and she was super famous and and he brought her to america and made

an awful lot of money she made a lot of money well i mean she's got all sorts of merch that barnum is sort of flogging through her isn't't he? Yeah, absolutely. And she, I mean, with a lot of the merch we've been talking about, you know, none of this, none of the proceeds were going to the star. You know, like any dude could make a Byron necktie and sell it and Byron's not getting a cent of that. And Lyndon Barnum were very good at finding ways where the money would come to them. And so really she was one of the first people to do the celebrity endorsement,

I guess is what we might call it now, the kind of sponsorship deal. Oh my God, can you imagine being the first person to invent that? You can just stand next to a thing and go, I like the thing. And people give you money. She stood next to so many things. She's the first influencer. So it was like gloves,awls pianos she sold pianos um and it made them both incredibly rich it was what was it what was her name jenny lind jenny lind lindamania she sort of had this image of like the

kind of perfect christian lady yeah um and very pure her brand was very sort of you know she was very nothing but yeah it's that that sense of like you know this is a friend who is recommending something and um but she's recommending to a million of her friends yeah i mean she had robes chairs sofas pianos bonnets riding hats gloves all of them with her face in them yes she didn't need to take them on tour in the back of her Peugeot. Got it. And there were also dolls of her, weren't there? Yeah, Jenny Lind was one of the first celebrities to be made into a paper doll.

Paper dolls came out in the 1810s. But hilariously, they didn't even really need to look like her. I mean, we sort of all know this, if anyone's had paper dolls. It's often a very scant resemblance. But with her, it was like some of the surviving ones, there's like a blonde one and she was a brunette. Yeah.

You know, it's like... It'll do. It'll do. Yeah. Stu, would you have any bespoke Goldsmiths merch if money was no object? Oh, what would I have? Like a golden fishbowl you could wear on your head.

Oh, pure gold. No, no, that would be preposterous, Jenna. No, like I just remember trying to find one for Glastonbury once, but like Mysterio from the old Marvel comics, just a completely spherical fishbowl that you could put in your head. So from the inside, you'd be able to see out, but it would be just totally golden from the outside. And it would say something like,

Classic Goldsmith on the back. You put me on the spot there. That's my merch idea. i'm judging by the uptake here it's going to be one item sold to the highest bidder yeah so we've got lindomania but it wasn't the only mania we got other manias uh we got uh sidans mania that's sarah sidans 18th century actress betty mania uh william master betty was a child star we'll tell a little bit about him in a second and then Listomania you heard of Franz Liszt? yes

what do you know of Franz Liszt? composer? yeah one of the most brilliant pianists of all time incredible technique you know the top ten Gary Barlow astonishing technique

what was his biggest hit a candle in the wind it's really good i know that guy good guy yeah he was a child star child prodigy and then he has this sort of second wind in the 1840s where he is like a rock star he's got long emo hair he kind of looks like i don't know like tom hiddleston don't know, like Tom Hiddleston as Loki, but if Tom Hiddleston as Loki was in My Chemical Romance. People are obsessed with him, Corinne, aren't they? They're properly obsessed. He was a huge star. Like, there's a story that people used to collect his half-drunk tea

and put it into perfume bottles. Oh, come on, we've all done that. Take his, like, smoked cigar butt. Apparently, a couple ofarian countesses drew blood fighting over one of his like dropped hankies oh they drew i thought you meant they drew blood from him hold still um there was some reports at the time um henry kind of suggested that maybe there was some manufacturing of this frenzy and that perhaps even some people were being paid now we think i mean think it was legit

but yes there was this sort of like people were sort of saying are some of his fans not true fans are they professionals and actually i wanted to ask you have you ever heard of professional fans as a concept i feel like i've got a distant memory of something like in Japan, you get kind of professional wedding guests and people like that. I think people that are paid to turn up, or they'll go on a date with you, but just so that you're sitting in a restaurant, not on your own, if you're in a business, not on a trip.

But a professional fan, or when Twitter first started, you used to be able to buy Twitter followers, apparently. Yeah. Yes. So, yeah, the professional fans, particularly in the French opera and French theatre world in the 18th century, were called the clac. The clac.

The clac, with an S on the end. How are we... The clac, as in, like, C-L-A-Q-S. Q-U-E-S. Exactly. Beautifully done. The clac. And they had a variety of skill sets.

So within the clac, there were then different types of clackeurs. And you had the re-er. Do you know what they did? The laugher. Very good. Yes. You had the pleurs.

The criers. Oh, he's good at listening. You had the biser. Not what I thought of from my first thought. The biser. Oh, the kisses. Blow kisses.

Yeah. And they asked for encore. Yeah. And they also had sometimes the commissaire. They would commiserate with you at the end of a terrible performance. Oh, don't worry.

I'd pay one of them. That's good. I'd love one of those. That'd be amazing, wouldn't it? No, that's a really good guess. But no, the commissaire were the ones who would memorise the good bits in advance

and then would lean into their friend and go, this bit's good. What? Pay attention, this bit coming up, that's going to be really good you're gonna love this for the benefit of the friend or for the benefit of people around them exactly if you're planting the seed the idea so you station them through the theater yes and the brilliant thing about this this um this clack sort of high community is you could hire them to also boo oh Oh, nice. A re-rival performance. Yeah, exactly. Amazing.

So Voltaire, the very famous French playwright and philosopher, he wrote about how he hated clack, and then he hired them to boo a rival. Oh, man. I didn't even know that was a thing. This is dangerous knowledge. We shouldn't release this bit. So, yeah, these manias are very intense,

but I'm also really fascinated by how quickly they fizzled. So very quickly, I mentioned Betty Mania. This is Master Betty. He's a child star. This is in 1804. He was about 12, 13. And people went berserk for him. Absolutely berserk.

They're smashing up the theatres. They are bringing pistols. Byron went to a William Betty concert and... Concert, yeah. Performance. Performance. Yeah. It feels like a concert, doesn't it?

Yeah. Because it's like, it's that same kind of vibe. But yeah, he said that he feared for his life. It was so intense. 30 people are carried out unconscious. Women are screaming. Men are hysterically crying. Guns.

Like, at which point of the show, good evening, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. Yeah, I mean, it's absolutely intense. So he was 12 when he was famous and he was 14 he was done oh that is a complete cull kid isn't it yeah it is what an absolute cull kid yeah oh my god yeah yeah it's brutal isn't it he tries to have a comeback at uh 20 okay people were sort of vaguely interested and then they were like nah you're done mate that must be so heartbreaking when you've done that burning brightly thing,

and then no one will answer your call, that must be awful. Yeah, yeah. Oh, man, no one will so much as blow up the theatre and run out screaming. So, yeah, so that's Master Betty. But we need to, I mean, we should move now quickly. We'll get out of it fast, because we want to dwell on the nice things, the positive things.

But we should talk just a little bit about sort of the darker side of fame and fandom. So when we emailed you, Stu, one of the words you mentioned was stalking. Yes. That brings us to the psychological term, parasocial intimacy. I don't know if any of you,

there's some nodding going on in the room. Oh, that's the clingy fan who thinks they've got more of a relationship with you than they have. Yeah, it doesn't have to be that intense, but yeah, it's the idea that it's a sort of one-way relationship. Yes. The fan knows a lot about the famous person, the famous person doesn't know anything of the fan yeah so that does sometimes go a little bit too far one case study is uh francis maria kelly which she was an actress

very famous in the 1816 and uh her fan goes a bit far yeah she was um at a performance, I mean, she'd been receiving letters from a fan who felt that they should get married. And she performed a lot of her roles in britches, so in men's clothing. He really did not approve of this and let her know and kind of felt like they were in this relationship which she was oblivious

to. And then in a performance he bought a ticket, came came in stood up and shot her um shot at her shot at her and luckily no one was hurt and he was sort of wrestled to the ground but yeah i mean it's it's not a great way of getting someone to accept a marriage proposal um but yeah and it's it's a sort of he he was declared mentally ill and there is a thing you know we know with figures like john lennon and it's it's a sort of common he was declared mentally ill and there is a thing you know we know with figures like john lennon and it's it's a sort of common fan story that um fans can become violent but it's by far and away i mean most fans peace loving yeah yeah it's extremely rare but we thought we'd give you

one case study just to say that you know it can happen i mean i i too can't honestly say i like britches on a woman i'm just going to put it out there what was her name Francis Maria Kelly but let's move away from that because we don't want to dwell on the negatives because fan as we say fan culture gets a lot of a bad rep and that's not fair so let's let's talk about the positives let's talk about collaborative fan communities Corinne yeah it's a huge part of fandom and you know the fan club has been around for quite a while. Dickens is a really great example. When Charles Dickens was writing the Pickwick Papers he was doing it in installments and in this novel there is a kind of jovial gentleman's club and fans became really inspired

by this and started creating their own clubs and they would make it clear to Dickens which characters they liked and which characters they didn't like. And Dickens was really delighted by this. And he ended up, you know, bigging up characters that fans liked. And I'm not sure he ever killed off a character that they didn't like. But it's something that we think of in terms of television today. Like lots of TV shows do this now. Because he was writing serially. He now it's like that because he was

writing serially he was writing serially so he was able to respond to people who get together we love that guy yeah exactly yeah great yeah and then make oliver more orphan more of an orphan kill more of his parents but then even after dickens died and obviously the novel was finished pickwick clubs became this huge thing and they were established all over the world. And Louisa May Alcott formed a women's Pickwick Club in Massachusetts in America. And for anyone who's read Little Women, the March Sisters form a Pickwick Club and give themselves all names from the novel. So there was this lovely kind of meta-fandom because then loads of women started Pickwick Clubs

because they were fans of Little Women, not actually the original. So it was sort of this lovely chain of fandom. That's beautiful. I love how inception that is. Should we start a Little Women Club now? Well, we've had a lovely old chat, but I think it's time for the classic end of the show, which is

the nuance window. This is where our expert, Dr. Corrin, takes us on two uninterrupted minute journey to tell us something whilst you and I hire our clacks to boo our enemies. So, Dr. Corrin, you're going to tell us about commonplace books, which are

blank notebooks, and they become really almost like social media, I think. So I'm going to get my stopwatch up. And without much further ado, Dr. Corrin, the nuance window, please. It's easy to think that creating your social profile is a peculiarity of the internet age. But commonplace books, which are really one of my favourite forms of fan activity, were the social media of their day. They were bound blank notebooks kept since the 15th century, initially mostly by male scholars who would copy down favourite passages of what they were reading. And so in that way, they were a kind of tool, like a record for reading. And in this time, books were so expensive that this was a way of cheaply having the literature that you were reading.

And in the late 1700s, the books started to become popular with the ever-growing number of female readers. And at this time, there was a real shift in the way commonplace books worked. They started to be shared between people. So you would be able to show off the stuff that you were reading, you know, and show that you were kind of had the latest, you're reading like whatever the latest popular work was. And there were a way of constructing your social identity, really. This was a time when what you liked became kind of who you were.

It's like, this is me, this is my commonplace book, this is what I'm reading. And they started to be signed by your social circle. If a visitor came to the house or a friend came over, then they might write in your commonplace book. And then everyone who then came would see who had written. So it was also, much like social media, an advertisement of your social circle. It was what you're reading and

who you were friends with. The interesting thing I find about these books is that although they were widely shared like this, there was this weird pretense that they were private. Lots of them had locks on them like they were a private diary. So it was like you were getting access to the person's innermost thoughts. This was a private space that you were able to access. And so it was really this kind of way of building your social identity. And just like contemporary social media, commonplace books created their own moral panic. The conservative educationalist Hannah Moore was extremely concerned that commonplacing was the cause of a moral and intellectual decline in the young.

She said that it inflames young readers with vanity. And like all good fan culture, commonplace books were eventually commercialised. They were replaced with Victorian pre-printed albums where the poetry was all kind of pre-printed in the back and then you cut it out a bit like a scrapbook. But commonplace books, for me, were really in their kind of heyday an example of fan culture at its very best. This is a creative, social form of self-expression that offered a sense of connection in an increasingly mediated world beautifully done

stu any thoughts on that any uh any comeback on the commonplace book i'd never heard of them before so it's like a journal and a scrapbook of ideas that you then leave lying around the house. Don't look at my commonplace book. You'll find out about all the cool stuff I like. Exactly. And it was, they were sort of everywhere in the 19th century. Everyone had them. And it would be really cool if you could get someone famous to sign your commonplace book. So Byron wrote in a lot of commonplace books and he kept one himself. Leave me alone, yeah. I don't know you. But it was really also, again, like a lot of fan culture, it was associated with women, it was associated with young women particularly.

It was this way of building your identity, building who you were. And it was really mocked. There's a character in the novel Middlemarch who keeps a commonplace book, and she's shown as shallow, and it was sort of seen as this thing that, much like influencers or people who are very into social media now, are kind of seen as being really superficial. It was the same with commonplace books. Like people with huge followings on TikTok.

Exactly. Well, I think it's time now to see how much our comedian Stu Goldsmith can remember. Oh, God. It's time for the quiz. We've talked about all this stuff, so ten questions. Right. Okay. Here we go.

Question one. The word fan was probably first used to describe which group of sports fans? Baseball. It is. Baseball fans. Question two. Fans of the Swedish opera star Jenny star jenny lind could buy what representation of her physical form complete with different outfits paper dolls it

was paper dolls question three the bedroom window of which bronte was sold to an american collector so he could just i could have told you a bronte which bronteonte? Which Bronte? One of the many Brontes. The... Well, I mean, Charlotte's the obvious one. No, that's not my final answer. Let's go Charlotte. Charlotte Bronte is correct.

Case to the glass. Well done, Stu. Flawlessly executed. Question four. What didn't they do at Shakespeare's big Jubilee Convention in 1716? They didn't put on any of his plays.

Yeah, they didn't need it. Question five. What did some fans of musician and composer Franz Liszt keep in their perfume bottles? Don't, don't, don't.

Franz Liszt, I'm thinking Carter thingy, but was that him? Was that... I think liquids. Oh, they extracted his Carter thingy, but was that him? I think liquids. Oh, they extracted his blood. No, they didn't.

They didn't do that. They, what did they put in their, like his hair? His teeth. His teeth. From his hairy teeth. His teeth. His half-drunk teeth. That's right.

Question six in 1816. How did obsessive fan George Barnett try to get Frances Maria Kelly to marry him? Tell me those names again. In 1816, how did obsessive fan George Barnett try to get Frances... Oh, yeah. He challenged her to a duel for her hand in marriage. He did. And then shot at her as she stood in her britches.

And she still didn't marry him, honestly. Question seven. You're doing very well so far, and so is the audience. I'm sure I don't know what you mean, and I hope the edit will reflect that. Question seven. Which famous novel with its own fandom included

main characters joining a Charles Dickens Pickwick fan club? Little Women, because they did the Pickwick fan club. Question eight. In 1804 Betty Mania caused a frenzy in Britain, but how long was the fandom before it fizzled out? It was two years. It was two years.

Nine, nine. Question nine. Sorry, I'm getting very excited. Nine. Nine. Question nine. Which 19th century poet was inundated with fan mail, mostly by women,

and was herself a huge fan of Wordsworth? Herself. It was Browning. And her name was Elizabeth... Not Barry, that would be ridiculous. Not Bennett. Barrett. Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

This for a perfect score, Stuart Goldsmith. Oh, man, don't do this to me. What was a commonplace book? What? Oh, it was a little book where you put your private public thoughts that you didn't want anyone... Like bits of... Like kind of collage-y, but in a literature way,

and also autographs. Beautifully done. Stu Goldsmith, you scored ten out of ten. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks. I think I can live with that. I think I can live with myself.

All right, well, well done, Stu, and well done, audience, for helping Stu over some of the trickier hurdles. With their kind appreciation and belief in me. Let the record show that's how they helped. Okay. And listener, if you are fangirling over Stu or fanboying over Stu, want more 18th century stars, then check out our episode on bad boy Jack Shepard.

Yes. I love him. He's my fave. If you're crazed for Corinne, scurry over to our episode about Lord Byron or all the other things we've talked about. But there's a big old back catalogue available on BBC Sounds. And remember, if you've enjoyed the podcast please leave a review share the show with your friends, make sure to subscribe

so you're dead to me on BBC Sounds so you never miss an episode. But it's time now for me to say a huge thank you. In History Corner we have the incomparable Dr Corinne Throsbury from the University of Cambridge Thank you Corinne. I'm off to look for thistles that might have been trampled by Stephen Fry. And in Comedy Corner, we have the inventor of the glass kite,

the man himself, the stupendous Stu Goldsmith. Thank you, Stu. Thank you. stupendous Stu Goldsmith. Thank you, Stu. Thank you. It's an absolutely workable idea. I'll get back to you. Patent pending.

Yeah, absolutely. And we also had the wonderful audience here at Hayes. So give yourselves a round of applause. Thank you so much. And to you, lovely listener, join me next time as we pen another chapter of historical fanfic on a totally different topic. But for now, I'm off to go and fill my aftershave bottle with Harry Kane's sweat, because that's what I'm a fan of.

Bye! Bye! Greg Jenner's first live You're Dead to Me You're Dead to Me was a production by The Athletic for BBC Radio 4 This episode was written and produced by Emma Neguse and me The assistant producer and researcher was Emmy Rose Price-Goodfellow The project managers were Sypho Mio and Isla Matthews. And the audio producer was Abby Patterson.

Nailed it! Hiya, Greg again. Sorry, just wanted to say that is the end of Series 5, I'm afraid. Oh, sad face emoji. If you were forced to listen to it against your will, then I can only apologise. However, if you enjoyed it, then I hopefully have good news for you. Happy face emoji, I guess. If you tune in to BBC Radio 4 on Saturday mornings for the next few weeks, you will hear radio edits of some of our favourite

episodes. We'll also upload these slightly shorter and less rude versions to BBC Sounds as well. And we're making another Christmas special this year, which you'll be able to hear on Radio 4 and BBC Sounds. And then in January, there'll be more You're Dead to Me on Saturday mornings on Radio 4. And then in February, we'll be back with series six of the podcast. We're already busy beavering away on that right now. And if that's not enough, remember, we now have five series of You're Dead to Me lurking in our back catalogue, plus a few special extra episodes. So why not go have a rummage around on BBC Sounds and check out if there's any episodes you've missed. And if you didn't miss them, just listen to them again.

So at this point, contractually, I have done my duty and it is time for me to now say to you, thanks very much for listening and bye! Hello, fans of You're Dead to Me. I'm Lucy Worsley and I'd like to tell you about my Radio 4 series Lady Killers. When a woman commits murder, it's always a sensation. Murders committed by women in the Victorian era were no different and I'm joined by a crack team of female detectives

to take a look at these historical crimes from a modern feminist perspective. You can listen to the whole series by searching for Lady Killers on BBC Sounds. This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon Pull Apart, only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th.

Terms and conditions apply.